RDK Engineers

For more information on BIM at RDK feel free to contact Dan Villeneuve at dvilleneuve@rdkengineers.com. 

 

Building Information Modeling at RDK
An interview with Dan Villeneuve, RDK’s Design Technology Manager

Q: Why is BIM Design Technology so important to RDK?
A: All areas of production across every industry in the world reaches points in time where technology improves past processes. That improvement may be better materials, improved production times, lower cost of production or improved quality. The entire Building Design Industry is currently at the transition period of adopting such a technology. It is a clear benefit to adopt, understand and improve on the technology early so we are ready and fluent in any design that a client may be interested in receiving.
 
Q: What improvements do you see BIM technology make for the Engineering industry?
A:  Communication is the first and clearest improvement that comes to mind, it has always been sold and pushed that BIM technology will help the communication and coordination efforts and seeing is believing. Having a virtual duplicate of your intended design very clearly communicates your thinking behind your design and can be seen by others outside of your discipline or industry. Coordination between the entire design team is essential and seeing possible areas of conflict in advance is a great benefit.
 
Q: What hurdles is RDK expecting to overcome with BIM technology being implemented?
A:  There are many different hurdles that we face. With the technology being still new to the industry we are seeing a large and surprising acceptance by vendors to provide us content. This is great but provides the industry with a demand for standards for this content and right now we are not seeing enough consistency from vendor to vendor. A process of maintaining vendor content on a networked library in house and ensure that it is the latest content available by that vendor is something we will have to conquer. We have new BIM standards and processes that are being created and modified regularly to adjust new and better processes. Communicating, educating and enforcing these changes is an ongoing process that we are focused on continuing and has been accepted by all staff as a beneficial adoption.
 
 Q: How do you think the industry will change to adapt to BIM Technology?
 A: If I were to look ahead and out of the box I would say that soon (in the next 5 years) we will all be working in the same model in a central location. All of the design team will be able to access the same file and see its latest state of design. Communication of all team members will be a fluid process from design to communicate and back to design. The model may eventually have the capability to notify us of an upcoming maintenance date such as filter replacements or end of life cycles for pumps. The industry is now demanding a better, clearer, more accurate design by all project team members that will be clear to see by any viewer of the model. We can see great potential in so many areas that can come of BIM design. Ultimately I think complete flow of the model and communication from point of design to point of build can improve current design processes and reshape the process entirely.
 
Q:  What cost impacts have you realized implementing BIM?
A: BIM design costs are said to be lower than traditional design, I believe this has been misconstrued in the industry to think this lowers the time spent designing. The reality is that we are adding levels of complexity into the design that has rarely been attempted. New methods require new thought processes as well as software tools that may not entirely be ironed out or thought out enough to function 100% efficiently yet. With that said it is accurate to say we are seeing building cost savings on the back side of design from these more complex efforts earlier in the design. Our BIM Models have been seeing up to 50% less RFI’s and Change orders then traditional design procedures. Contractors are able to visibly see workable design earlier than ever before, some are even fabricating from models being passed to them from design off site and bringing more completed fabrication onto the site.
 
Q: How has RDK dealt with any software or hardware changes directly related to implementing BIM?
A: We have developed a specification test designed to compare possible PC’s to each other and how they perform using our design software. We went through a series of these tests from several PC distributors and found the highest performing PC from the 5 that we tested. We then purchased a PC for each member of our BIM teams and found that it greatly improved the performance from our existing PC’s and has made designing 3D and BIM models much more efficient. We are constantly analyzing software packages available to see if it fits our environment and how we can implement them to improve our current processes. We just recently implemented Navisworks Manage into our offices and are developing a process to use this software package to more fluidly find conflicts, communicate them and correct them. Our platforms are constantly being improved through customization, modifications or added tools requested by our drafters and designers. Also with each yearly release of software we research in depth the pros and cons of implementing the software. This year we are looking to transition to 2011 shortly after it is released unless our research determines the software is problematic.