For owners, the Rubik’s Cube of construction is reducing, repurposing and augmenting design and construction data into accurate and useful facilities models for operations and maintenance. Now, owners, designers, builders, facilities managers and vendors are working together on projects around the country to solve the puzzle. They say they are not only succeeding, but the payoff is significant.
“It’s really catching on. Owners are starting to realize the value of it,” says Hyde Griffith, vice president for BIM services at Broaddus & Associates Inc., Austin, Texas. Broaddus is the owner’s rep and project manager for construction and data capture on a $110-million health sciences center at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. “When it came up a couple of years ago, I didn’t know how I was going to get it done, but I knew it was possible,” Griffith says.