Working together

Along with advances in design, construction techniques and materials, the process of producing and sharing information in the project team has also evolved.

Part of the strategy being used by the team constructing the Freedom Tower – going up on the former World Trade Centre site – is the use of a single building model. Led by architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), the entire design team including M&E consultants Jaros Baum & Bolles and structural engineers Cantor Seinuk Group, are using Autodesk’s building information modelling platform, Revit Building.

According to Paul Seletsky, digital design director with SOM, complex projects with vast amounts of design information and drawings – such as the Freedom Tower – couldn’t be designed and built with traditional drafting tools. By using a single building information model, all of the data is co-ordinated and kept up-to-date across the hundreds of members of the project team. “Changes made to the model are immediately co-ordinated throughout the entire project, minimising the time required for making revisions and redrawing,” says Seletsky.

Revit was first used on the original design for the building’s complex underground levels and then expanded to cover the entire building. The digital model of the tower incorporates data from third-party applications, including those used to perform people flow and energy analysis, which effectively enables the building to be pre-built. This allows the design team to visualise the project as it will be constructed in 3D, not as it is drawn, and quickly address issues not readily apparent with a traditional 2D approach.

One of the main benefits of the model has been improved co-ordination throughout the different disciplines, including the M&E systems and the building’s structure, and checking for clashes early on. Tishman Construction, the project’s construction managers, is also exporting data from Revit to Excel for quantity take-offs as a way to verify the results received from traditional methods.

Creating a buzz

In addition to using Revit Building, the project team members are kept connected using Autodesk Buzzsaw. This tool is used for communicating project reports and sharing design documents (project members share at least 100 different subsets of drawings). It acts as a virtual project environment that brings together all project information in one place and provides an ongoing communication log that documents team interaction. As well as enabling team members to access data anytime, anywhere it should also improve collaboration between the design team and enhance accountability.