The digitalisation of the construction industry relies on attitude, commitment and somewhat relinquishing the comfort of ‘business as normal’ to enact real beneficial change.
OSG are thrilled to have been recognised as a finalist in the Constructing Excellence Awards for our work in digital construction. Read on to learn about our work in digital construction.
OSG was appointed in 2021 to undertake the RIBA stage 3 architectural design services of Chalvey Medical Hub in Slough. A highly complex project in terms of healthcare requirements and overall volumetric design, OSG and the other major design disciplines excelled in utilising Autodesk Revit and the BIM 360 cloud server (Common Data Environment-CDE) to develop a highly coordinated and collaborative 3D BIM model and digital information exchange strategy. The 3D model successfully integrated the Architecture, MEP and Structural designs spatially and functionally, using visual clash detection methods pre-tender to limit errors, design change and ensure the client’s complex needs were to be met.
During this project, OSG and the other design disciplines harnessed the power of digital information to provide an exemplar service to the client. The level of modelled information (approx. LOD 3 for all disciplines) and the workflow we undertook saved time in the design process and provided a confidence in the coordination undertaken. This would be essential in minimising or eliminating site errors or costly design changes following let of the building contract.
This is not to say it was a seamless process. As is the case with shifting workflows, ourselves and the other disciplines needed to subscribe to different working methods in a collaborative, flexible and understanding way to ensure the process ran smoothly. Without this common aspiration for the full digitalisation of the project, we don’t believe it would have been as successful an outcome – highlighting that -
whilst processes are important, the digitalisation of the construction industry relies on attitude, commitment and somewhat relinquishing the comfort of ‘business as normal’ to enact real beneficial change.
Whilst not everything resembled a fully ‘by the book’ BIM project, we believe that our approach embodied this spirit.
At OSG, our experience of the industry is that whilst many projects utilise Revit as a 3D modelling software, the uptake of BIM as a workflow in smaller projects is less common, even following the 2016 government mandate.
We’re proud that this project, among others, has pushed our practices in BIM, allowing us to be able to provide these services with confidence to more clients as we see more and more projects requiring this workflow in our industry.
Unfortunately, the project has been paused and therefore the benefit of the process we undertook is yet to be realised.
As a practice, we continue to drive forward with developing our digital practices – our aim is to lead and drive progress in this area in our industry.