Data for the Life Cycle
...“we were 50% of what their cost would have been if they had to go out and survey the building near the end of construction,” he says. If the owner had to do it after handover Griffith estimates it would have cost the owner twice the time and twice the money. “As we go along we have much better access to the information. We can crawl around and get serial numbers before the hard lid goes down,” he explains.
Griffith predicts that when the process becomes the norm and is done automatically and routinely as work progresses, “it will cost virtually nothing.”
Project managers on other Texas A&M jobs have since put the COBie requirement into their contracts, Griffith says. Broaddus and EcoDomus have signed two more projects on other Texas A&M campuses that include facilities management content collection.
Eli Lilly & Co.’s Quality Management
In presentations at the Construction Users Roundtable in Orlando last November, Bruce Beck, Eli Lilly’s director of global facilities delivery, explained how the company is pushing to improve capital project delivery, including handover documentation, through a deliberate construction quality-management program modeled on contractor safety plans.
CQM is only one part of Eli Lilly’s four-part campaign to speed project delivery, reduce cost and risk, improve handover documentation and eliminate commissioning delays. Lilly also has structured initiatives for project information management, managing the commissioning and systems qualifications process and developing facilities maintenance models during the course of construction. The initiatives require designers and contractors to collect equipment and materials data as projects unfold, rather than near handover, which was the previous process.
It all came together for the first time on construction of a $400-million biotech manufacturing facility in Kinsale, Ireland. Construction finished last September, under budget and two and a half months early.
“All four [parts of the campaign] were used. All four were very, very critical to the success of that facility,” Beck says. “It was like a symphony, with each of them playing instruments and having a role in bringing a successful conclusion to the project.” But, he adds, success depended on two things: continual construction quality assurance and the collection of accurate and complete FM data throughout construction.
“In our world, during construction quality management, we not only do inspections of physical things in the field like welding and installations, we also review the documentation the contractor has responsibility for,” Beck says. “You may find fieldwork is going beautifully, but if I don’t have the weld maps and the sign-offs and documentation, it’s a serious problem.”
The CQM process starts in pre-design as planning identifies potential defects that could cause a suspension in the commissioning process after handover. A plan and schedule is developed for quality-assurance checks using spec-based templates that feed into a data management system. Lilly used field-data collection tools from Latista Technologies Inc., New York City. The database logs findings of scheduled assurance checks and tracks issues and resolution.
As designs are developed and contractors and subs come onboard, the plan is tweaked and all parties are enrolled in the execution. During construction, inspections are scheduled and frequent. They are recorded with tablet PCs and digital photographs and categorized by the severity of the potential impact on commissioning, ranging from issues requiring immediate attention, to minor repairs. Still another element is design changes that need evaluation for future work. Most issues are addressed immediately, rather than being caught as punch-list items at the end.
Inspectors flagged 10,990 issues during construction at Kinsale, and at the moment of “transfer of care, custody and control,” 999 were still being worked on; of those, 148 were classed as significant-impact issues. By final handover, there were no punch-list items. The plant has passed commissioning and qualification is now in the validation phase, producing test batches for regulatory approval. “The operations group is completely satisfied with what they’ve got,” says Beck.
The cost of the CQM program was $2 million. The company calculates it avoided between $4.3 million and $11.2 million in rework costs based on industry norms for this kind of facility by catching and addressing issues early. In addition, documentation was collected during construction and fed into the system, and the facilities maintenance model and plans were in place and ready at handover.
Maryland General Hospital Links Objects to Data
Barton Malow Co., Southfield, Mich., also is capturing as-builts and equipment data for the life cycle using bar codes to link objects to the data.
Corinne Ambler was senior project engineer on a recent $57-million, five-story hospital expansion that included extensive HVAC and mechanical and electrical systems upgrades. She was responsible for the MEP contracts and was the main point of contact on the construction management side for commissioning.
Ambler reports that the project to deliver FM data began in meetings with maintenance managers to identify equipment attributes they needed. They set up bar-coding nomenclature using a custom data structure and models created by the mechanical contractors for fabrication and construction. “We added data on a daily basis as we completed all the things we would normally do to commission and handover a health-care project,” Ambler says. Vela Systems, Burlington, Mass., supplied the field-data acquisition system. Tekla Structures was the BIM software integrating the data.
The hospital used the database Barton Malow compiled in Tekla to import into facilities management software. “All close-out information, including operations and maintenance information, warranties, product data, field pictures, etc., also are linked to the object,” Ambler explains. Hospital staff now uses tablets with bar-code readers to find information needed to perform maintenance. And they recently began using a new, free BIM navigator, Tekla BIMSight, to more easily navigate the BIM model, Ambler says.
Data Handover at New York City’s City Hall
In New York City, Hill International, Marlton, N.J., is using a web-based collaboration system from San Francisco-based Aconex Ltd., to manage facility data. Hill is prime contractor and construction manager for the city’s Dept. of Design and Construction on a $100-million restoration of City Hall, which was built between 1803 and 1812. Its last major update was in the 1950s. Work began in 2003, and major construction is expected to finish in late 2012.
Hill Vice President Michael Brothers reports that his team is using Aconex to support data handover. Hill expects the system to help the city plan and budget maintenance, create single and recurring work orders and track parts and labor. Its content also is expected to aid disaster response and recovery, centralize critical information, and track assets assigned to locations. Aconex is a neutral and secure online platform for data capture and audits, Brothers reports, adding “Hill’s position and take on this from the beginning was, and is, evolutionary.”
“We know what we need to do now so that in the future, if the client asks for this information, it is in a form that can be digested,” Brothers explains. Brothers says the plan is to use the available software and systems to help protect the data so that Hill can weave it all into the BIM. He adds, “This way, the data will be fully available as needed, usable upon request and secure as required.”
