3D-scanning for Quality Control During the Production Phase

Not very often BIM people visit construction sites. Last Monday, however, it was time for an on-site meeting with two representatives from the 3D-scanning firm, Exact, and discuss yet another area where laser scanning could enhance the quality of construction projects. 

At SISAB, we have now started documenting our facilities using our Matterport scanner within an experimental project titled as "Facility Information Modelling" (FIM). The primary focus of the project is creating web based navigable models of the interiors of our school facilities that would enable FM personal, tenants, education authorities and other stakeholders to remotely visit our schools. Further applications such as creating updated drawings, extracting surface areas and maintenance planning will also be examined within the FIM project.

Our Monday visit to Enskedefältets School aimed, however, to plan a different type of experiment: 3D-scanning building structures during the production phase, verifying the resulting point cloud against design-intent BIM models in IFC format and visualizing the potential deviations using 3D-PDF reports including sequential color schemes. More rigorous verification methods as such will eventually compel more accuracy, fewer reworks and increased efficiency in building industry.

Towards Facility Information Modelling (FIM)

Over recent decades, building information experts have repeatedly faced an aggravating question: How can BIM benefits be attained retrospectively for existing facilities?

3D-scanning of legacy facilities and enriching the resulted models with the required information is one of the most viable solutions.

In 2015, SISAB adopted 3D-scanning as a modern alternative for traditional point-to-point measurement methods. Our legacy facilities are often scanned prior to reconstruction and extension projects when existing documentation is not of the desired quality. Examples of such insufficient documentations are TIFF drawings retrieved from paper sheets or DWG drawings that do not reflect the latest alterations.

Our common routine for 3D-scanning is placing a stationary lidar scanner containing laser triangulation sensors at several spots inside and outside the building. The resulting point clouds are then integrated into one using reference points. The captured point clouds could be alternatively draped by an RGB texture map for adding a realistic touch for virtual navigation and investigation purposes.

Point cloud of a sports hall located in
Bäckehagen school in Stockholm

Initially, we also procured BIM models (often in Revit) produced out of the captured point clouds. The BIM-modelling and objectifying work was done through manual and semi-automatic methods by scanning firms. Later on, however, based on the feedback from our architectural firms, we concluded that the BIM models produced by the scanning firms were often not fully appropriate for design workflows. Architects would rather import the raw point cloud (often in RCP format) directly into their BIM applications as a background framework and model old and new components as they wish and with their preferred level of detail.

Earlier this year in January, I presented a brief account of our 3D-scanning praxis as clarified above for our experts committee at SISAB. I concluded my presentation with few slides on further potentials envisioned by 3D-scanning in production (namely QC/QA) and FM as well as new scanning techniques such as mobile scanning equipment and airborne laser scanners (drones). The committee representatives from our FM department found it interesting and I was thereupon given the opportunity to run another presentation this time for all employees at the FM department. The latter talk covered the broader topic of BIM in FM with a highlighted focus on the potential benefits of the 3D-scanned building models for increasing efficiency in FM.

Emil Nielsen from BIMobject runs the Matterport scanner

At the next stage, the internationally-reputed digital content management firm, BIMobject helped us taking a tangible step and scanning one of our day care centers in Stockholm using the recently-developed fast and economic Matterport equipment. I published a brief account of the experiment at my LinkedIn feed a while ago. 

Last week, we held a second workshop on 3D-scanning of existing buildings. In addition to the participants in the first workshop, our FM and operation division managers, Mari Lindén, Rolf Amble and Lars Johansson, our authorities coordinator, Johanna Erlandsson and our BIM experts, Madeleine Lilja and Victor Cabezas were present and indulged in some hands-on experiments including attaching information points to the scanned model and sketching model-aided workflows. The session was rounded up by a quick exchange of reflections and thoughts. 

The second workshop on 3D-scanning
held on 22nd August at SISAB

The participants unanimously believed that our current FM and operation processes could be made more efficient using scanned models of facilities enriched with the required information and linked documents. The case scenarios addressed by the participants ranged from reducing the time for reporting the location and nature of the occurring failures to more accurate area retrieval and more gratifying tasks for employees. The findings could form the ground for further introduction of more efficient FM and operation practises using scanned models at a larger scale at SISAB. Such attempts may turn to be a prelude to the plausible transition from BIM (Building Information Modeling) to FIM (Facility Information Modeling) in the FM sector.

P.S. You can check out and navigate through the scanned model of the daycare center through the link below (no information is attached here):

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=ZFwKVmp6uzq 

Workshop on Information Management in FM Organizations

It's been slightly more than a year since I took my position as BIM-specialist at SISAB. It was a year full of excitement, joy, genuine insights and intriguing challenges. Taking part in a dozen of projects and receiving loads of daily inquiries and feedback from people involved in creating and using building models and information handover was a an invaluable experience.

Progressing from the clear-cut policy side of BIM to the more arbitrary field of BIM processes revealed a whole new host of both possibilities and problems associated with BIM-implementation. I was though not totally detached from the policy field, rather had a smooth transit from academia to national BIM-networks such as BIM Alliance Sweden. During the last year, I have been involved in a number of working groups of BIM Alliance namely Facility Management, Building Materials, Project Management and Environment & Energy. Parallel to this, I have been participating in a number of R&D Projects within the national strategic program Smart Built Environment. My involvement in networks and projects as such is intended as a contribution to the overall vision of maintaining a seamless flow of information across the entire lifecycle of buildings and infrastructural facilities. At the same time, I strive to bring the collaboratively-formed knowledge in the field back to SISAB and improve our own information modelling and management practice. The ambition level at SISAB for this endeavor is amply high and we have a number of articulate initiatives in progress to realize this.

In February 2018, a one-day workshop preliminarily titled as Information Management in FM Organizations will be held by SISAB. Nationally-renowned experts in the field will gather and contribute to a concentrated brainstorming event in the form of a mix of short talks and round table discussions. The event will be opened by SISAB's CEO, Claes Magnusson, and moderated by the FM business developer and BIM strategist, Lars Lidén from Meta consultants. Senior consultants from such pioneer construction, FM and IT companies as Tyréns, IBM, Sweco and Vasakronan will join in. People from different managerial and technical positions at SISAB and Stockholm Municipality will also be participating. The initial idea for the workshop was conceived by our project and personal coach and my mentor, Stig-Erik Öström.

The talks and discussions will cover both construction and operation phases and span various relevant topics namely BIM and IoT. Narratives of exemplary projects provide substance for discussions around future systems, work flows and organizational setups for an efficient procurement, management and retrieval of facility information as a treasured asset for supporting and optimizing the core businesses of organizations. A number of students from relevant programs will also be present, document round table discussions and contribute with their fresh and innovative ideas.

SISAB's primary mission is producing and maintaining facilities where school kids learn and nurture. At the same time, we genuinely aspire to create forums and platforms where knowledge is created, shared and exploited for the good of the society as a whole.

Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/nintchdbpict000337897903.jpg?strip=all&w=960&quality=100

The age of facility managers' paper boxes is yet far from over

The first time I saw the top left image was July 2012 during a keynote speech by Dr. Bill East as part of the ECPPM in Reykjavik. I had then just started my doctoral studies and roughly outlined my research area as lifecycle-support building information management. Through literary sources such as the BIM Handbook, I had already noticed the urge for extending the use of high-end information technologies to the operation phase; but I still had an avid hunger for more insights and indications for finalizing my research topic.

The image at the top left shows a room where FM documents are stored - in a hospital if I remember correctly. The image conveys an uncomfortable reality about the status quo in the facility management sector: the information required for operating buildings and planning and executing maintenance tasks often needs to be dug out of piles of blueprints, brochures, manuals and contractual documents stacked in some shabby obscure room. The gist of Dr. East's talk was to unravel how inefficient, error-pone, sluggish and counterproductive this prevailing practice of information management is and a suggested approach to turn the tide.

In my first paper, 'Is the age of facility manager's paper boxes over?', the problem was addressed in detail, an alternative solution (FM:BIM) was disclosed through literature, and the major categories of obstacles to be lifted to truly leverage BIM for a more efficient FM&O sector were designated.

Since then, I have been constantly monitoring the subject area to ascertain the relevance of my research goal and gauge the possible need for updating or modifying the overall set up. Through hours of talks and discussions with professionals of different positions in both fields of FM&O and construction IT, attending seminars and observing practitioners, I can confidently conclude that the problem still prevails - even in such an IT-friendly country as Sweden.

The picture in the middle shows the construction drawings and operation documents of the condominium where I live, freshly handed over from the construction company to the facility management firm! All documents are, of course, accompanied with their counterparts in digital format; but these are the paper versions that are legally binding and will be used for daily operation activities. Moreover, the digital hand-over documents are, in the best case, PDF files and no original model or drawing in either proprietary or neutral format has been included; apparently because no such requirement exists in contractual documents which, in turn, is a result of lack of national legislations on digital hand-over requirements.

The strategic document 'BIM i staten' which has been procured by five Swedish public organizations and provides guidelines for open-standard information management in the AECO industry and other initiatives from BIM Alliance Sweden gradually paves the ground for filling the legal gaps mentioned above.

I took the picture to the top right the other day upon entering the pool where I usually swim. One of the staff was carrying a number of maintenance folders to the storage room in the basement. Apparently, the handover documents in paper format were still in use as the primary source of information for running the facility! In fact, FM&O information is currently stored in a broad range of formats as depicted in the diagram below ranging from blueprints and paper folders to cloud-based object-oriented repositories. The majority of FM&O firms are, nonetheless, still using the rudimentary formats that are demonstrated towards the left end of the diagram below.

Spectrum of forms and formats of FM&O information (Parsanezhad, 2014)

Technologies such as 3D-scanning could help speeding up the process of creating BIMs for older buildings or upgrading old-format legacy documents to more semantically-rich building drawings, models and databases. My third paper is, in fact, a critical reflection on one of such efforts (though not using 3D-scanning) for creating BIMs for pre-BIM facilities. The co-author was Johannes Dimyadi who I was lucky to bump into during WBC2013 in Brisbane. We described and analyzed the case of developing BIMs of 191 campus buildings in Auckland over 4 years. The models had then been coupled with a centralized database in an SQL DBMS and a number of APIs through a portal solution and deployed for optimizing their FM&O activities. I presented the work at CIB-W070 in Copenhagen last year.

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Keeping to my recent blogging tradition, below comes some anecdotes of the events I have lately attended:

23rd September - During our last departmental lunch seminar, Professor Hans Lind presented his recent paper on merits of vertical integration in the real estate sector. The term 'vertical integration' originates from the literature in industrial organization and refers to integrating complementary services into the core business activities of firms. The other alternative is outsourcing or buying in such services when necessary. Through this research, a number of theoretical propositions had been tested within four real estate firms in Sweden. Construction, acquisition, selling and operating facilities were the core and complementary business fields of the selected cases.

According to the literature, some examples of the rationales for vertical integration are: preserving the quality of services and products, entering the retail market, enacting more control over input resources and protecting corporational information. As an example, facility owners who also operate their buildings possess more bargaining power when renting out their properties and are less prone to making incorrect decisions such as selling their assets at the wrong time or at a low price. All in all, vertical integration provides firms with additional options. One common feature is that vertical integration increases bargaining power in markets with limited competition.

22nd September - An exhibition of the works by the students of architecture in Master Studio 4 at KTH was held at the new School of Architecture building designed by Tham & Videgård architects. The title for the exhibition was 'Another Earth' connoting temporary architecture for our future society. For me, it was also a good opportunity to take a look inside the new building which vividly stands out in the campus with its curvy façade comprising pre-oxidized rust-red corten plates and huge glass panes.

20th September - The Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) had organized a public visit to their railroad bridge project as part of the new commuter train line in Stockholm. Citybanan is 6 kilometers long and stretches north-south, passing through the city center. The project will be completed by 2017. In construction of the Älvsjö bridge, modern techniques such as movable scaffolding system (MSC) have been implemented.

16th-17th September - Stockholm Business Arena was held at Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre. The event includes tens of lectures and debate sessions on construction and regional and urban planning. Off to the side of the event, major actors in the field present their services at the venue. Due to other occupations at school, I only managed to be there half a day. Yet, I had intriguing discussions with representatives of architectural, construction, FM and real estate companies and attended a few sessions on smart cities, infrastructure and residential architecture.

	Right to left: Fredrik Brunes, Inga-Lill Söderberg and me

9th September , morning - As part of the breakfast seminar series organized by the Swedish Association of Architects, Michael Kazarnowiczs gave a speech on how social media could be deployed efficiently and professionally by architectural firms. 'Contents', 'algorithms' and 'people' were emphasized as the pillars of social media platforms where content is the fuel, algorithms are the catalysts and people are the engine. Different media employ different algorithms for customizing the contents. That of Facebook, for instance, customizes each individual user's interface according to her/his interests, previous posts, interest in the creator of the content, content type and recency of the post i.e. News Feed Visibility=IxPxCxTxR.

In Sweden, people at the age of 16 to 25 use the Internet the most. The highest number of Swedish Facebook users belong to the same age interval of 16-25; while the majority of Instagram users through the country are 12 to 15 years old.

9th September, evening - The seminar on virtual design and construction (VDC) was held at KTH. The organizer was the construction firm, Veidekke, and the main speaker of the event was professor Marin Fischer from Stanford University. He presented the basic principles of the Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) method as part of the Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) methodology. A number of case studies were presented where implementing ICE had resulted in significant reduction of work orders and RFIs (request for information) and budget and time efficiencies.

Advocates of the VDC methodology regard BIM as just one single component of their more comprehensive solution which is formulated and practiced at a higher strategic level than BIM. This battle of terms reminds me of how researchers and practitioners in the field of 'adaptation' consider those affiliated with the domain of 'resilience' lacking strategic insight. While BIM is more tangible for designers and engineers, VDC sounds more intriguing and relevant for project managers. Both concepts could be developed further to also embrace the needs of the actors in the operation phase; whereas the term VDC needs to be rephrased to VDCO (virtual design, construction and operation) for this purpose.

P.s. I just discovered that an adept Florida-based team has already started using the updated term, VDCO! I got to know Birgitta Foster firstly through a former student of her, Francisco Forns‐Samso, whom I met at ECPPM 2012 in Reykjavik. Since I found Francisco's thesis an interesting piece of work, I reached Birgitta via a Skype interview in 2012. I also got the opportunity to meet and talk to her during the international BIM conference by BIM Alliance Sweden in 2014. She is a very passionate, charming, energetic and accommodating person with great ideas!

3rd September - Petra Blaisse, the textile designer and landscape architect, presented some of the works designed in their office ranging from interior projects to park designs in Qatar, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, etc. 'Two eventful years' had been organized by the Swedish Association of Architects and held at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Elaborate use of forms and materials characterizes their work being surrounded by either an individual fully-designed structure or a large-scale urban district.

20th-21st August - Our departmental research and education seminar was held in a conference venue located to the west of Stockholm. Coordination of educational programs at our department, gender equality and pedagogic concerns were the central themes for the event. The corporational vision of the Department of Real Estate and Construction Management at KTH comprises research for a sustainable society, excellent engineering education, and collaboration with industry and society. Research at our department is linked to both policy and practice and covers a wide range of subject areas, namely, urban development, property/facility management, production and logistics.