BIM - STRUCTURAL STEEL DETAILING DELIVERED EARLY THANKS TO BIM

ADVANCE STEEL AND BIM COLLABORATION HELPED STEEL FABRICATOR TSI STRUCTURES, DELIVER A NEW MATERNITY UNIT ON TIME. THE SOFTWARE'S EASE OF USE, SPEED OF MODELLING, CONNECTION DESIGN AND INTEGRATED DESIGN CHECKS - COMBINED WITH THE ABILITY TO REUSE THE STRUCTURAL ENGINEER'S REVIT MODEL - HELPED REDUCE TSI STRUCTURES' ANTICIPATED SCHEDULE TIME BY APPROXIMATELY 20%.

Kettering General Hospital in Northamptonshire completely replaced its old maternity and with a new £4.5million expansion and renovation. Steel fabricator TSI Structures provided steel connection design, detailing, fabrication, and erection for the new expansion.

The hospital's existing maternity operating rooms and facilities had become outdated and were causing inefficiencies in services. "We had an uncompromising schedule for our drawings and steel works," explains Adrian Betts, TSI's Drawing Office Manager. "Adding to our schedule challenge was the requirement that we provide full connection design to the new Eurocode 3 that is replacing an existing British Standard code."

The extended project team including TSI, the general contractor Interserve, and BWB Consulting for structural engineering - were all required to use some of the collaborative BIM practices that are now mandated for all UK government public projects, including the sharing of model-based project data amongst the project team.

THE SOLUTION

TSI used Autodesk® Advance Steel software for its steel connection design, detailing, and fabrication on this project and Advance Steel's built-in steel connection design engine which fully supports the Eurocode 3 to check connections in real time. Furthermore, the Advance Steel model was used to automatically generate CNC data for TSI's fabrication processes.

"The bi-directional link between Advance Steel and Autodesk® Revit software- used by BWB's structural engineers-made it easier to reuse their design model and work more efficiently with their engineers using a BIM workflow," says Adrian Betts. "Due to this link, as well as the accuracy and detail of BWB's model, we did not have to waste time recreating the steel model in Advance Steel and could immediately start adding our steel connections."

During the project, TSI uploaded its Advance Steel model, drawings, and reports to the contractor's common data environment. BIM mandate was used to collect, manage, and disseminate all relevant approved project documents for multidisciplinary teams and ultimately the facility owner. Along with the native Advance Steel model, TSI also exported and uploaded Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) models of its steel design. In addition, the company provided a brief instructional video for the extended project team members who used Revit-and eventually the hospital if they choose to use Revit for their ongoing facility operations-that explained how to get the Advance Steel Plug-in for Revit® from the Autodesk® App Store and how to open TSI's model in Revit to help synchronise or check it against their own models and drawings.

For more information visit: www.autodesk.com

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