$1-Billion Jigsaw Puzzle Has Builder Modeling Supply Chains
The virtual heart of the $1-billion project, whose lead contractor is Skanska USA Buildings Inc., Boston, is a Web-browser-accessible, color-coded, 4D building information model that tells the team at a glance the status of 3,200 precast risers being manufactured and assembled to form the bowl of the 84,000-seat stadium. The data is refreshed several times a day, about as frequently as Skanska’s supervisors at the precast yards or on the jobsite dock their pen-sensitive tablet PCs.
“The old method was to use spreadsheets and color-coded drawings to track things,” says Nery Pascoa, Skanska’s quality-control manager on the project. “Now we can, at a glance, figure out if the manufacturer is producing in the correct construction sequence, which tends to be a problem with precasting yards. They like to produce all of the various types of pieces when they have the forms in place. It’s more efficient and reduces their cost, but it can cause problems with the sequence,” Pascoa explains.