In my previous post, I argued that Location-based management gets to the heart of BIM ROI. The goal of this article is to give examples of two projects where durations were successfully compressed by using BIM and analyze the factors contributing to the success of those projects. I have been personally involved in both of these projects but most of them happened before LBMS was connected to 3D models. In all of the projects it was a major challenge to get location-based quantities and a lot of manual work was invested to do quantity takeoff manually to get the starting data. In addition to these example projects, the Finnish contractors have been able to achieve consistent duration compression in most of their projects. Some projects and companies do not seek duration compression but instead try to increase the probability of achieving the originally planned duration. This may be even bigger benefit than duration compression because I have never been involved in a project implementing LBMS which finished late! I have been involved in five projects of this type from start to finish and will write about these case studies and schedule risk in another article.
Case study 1: Kamppi Center, Finland
Kamppi Center building complex is located in the center of Helsinki. The total budget was €500M. The center consists of a central bus station, a metro terminal, an internal parking area, a six-floor shopping center, and three combined office and residential towers. The total duration of the project was planned to be four years.
LBMS was adopted as the sole schedule planning and control system. The implementation started after earthworks phase and lasted until the hand-off of the building. The goal of LBMS use was to optimize the schedule, to compress duration, and to control production so that the optimized duration could be met. Two consultants from my team tracked production and analyzed information and generated reports and recommendations for production management. We were also present in subcontractor meetings showing production status. The LBMS room came to function as the nerve center of the project because the subcontractors, superintendents, and project managers knew that we had the best information.
Our goal was to compress the original four year schedule by six months. Through proactive production control, the GC was able to achieve this and saved millions in overhead costs. The project was completed in June 2005.
Case study 2: Opus Business Park, Finland
Opus Business Park was a case study in my PhD research. It was a simple office building of 14,528 m2 in Helsinki. The contract duration was from May 2004 to February 2006. However, the General Contractor wanted to hand the building over two months earlier than planned.
LBMS was again the only schedule planning and control system that was used in the project. The implementation started from earthworks and continued until the hand-off. The project engineer used the software, and I helped by having weekly meetings on site where we analyzed progress and planned control actions. The project engineer communicated the required actions to the project manager and superintendents and to subcontractors in weekly meetings. Initial schedule optimization and risk analysis revealed that it was possible to compress the duration by two months without adding too many resources. Location-based milestones were given in RFPs to subcontractors and the project finished according to the compressed schedule.
Company -level implementations
In addition to individual case studies, five large GCs in Finland have implemented LBMS to be their only allowed planning and control system. All GCs have reported good results - better overall quality of schedules, consistent duration compression, and better project data for use in company -level systems, such as procurement systems. An example implementation case study can be found in (Soini, Leskelä, Seppänen 2004).
Why are all of the successful case studies in Finland?
The Finnish construction industry has practiced location-based techniques since the 1980s, starting with manual techniques (pen and paper), evolving to simple flowline drawing software in the 1990s, and finally to Vico Control (previously DynaProject) in 2002. Already in the 1980s, location-based management was shown to compress schedules and result in better control of production. Gantt charts resurfaced in the 1990s because of better availability of automated software for CPM applications. Because of this history, it was easy to convince people to throw everything else aside and do the project completely with LBMS from start to finish.
Although the earliest known implementation of LBMS in construction is in the US (the Empire State Building), US contractors do not have the same familiarity with LBMS. The prevalent scheduling method is CPM, and production control is practiced informally in the field by experienced superintendents, who each have their own systems of tracking data. In 2007 and 2008, the GCs have started to experiment with production control but most of the projects are only now entering construction. Because typical large scale construction projects take years, we do not have case studies which have been carried out from beginning to end using LBMS. Many projects are now getting close to production, but it will be years before the first case studies will be completed.
Similar results to those in Finland - 10-20% duration compression and productivity improvement - can be achieved in US projects. The most innovative contractors are already doing this. Definitive bottom-line end results will not be known until the first projects are finished, but all the contractors already appreciate the better quality of information for decision making. It is best to start now - we have the experience required to make it work for you.
References:
Soini, M., Leskelä, I. & Seppänen, O. (2004) Implementation of Line-of-Balance based scheduling and project control system in a large construction company. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, Helsingør, Denmark
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