What awaits us at the construction sites of the future: BIM-kiosks, tablets and large data
BI Group has been working in the construction market of Kazakhstan for more than 22 years. According to our strategic plan, in the coming years the holding should grow by another 25%, go beyond Kazakhstan and enter the top 100 construction companies of the world. The accomplishment of these tasks without new technologies is impossible; therefore in 2016 the company began to intensively introduce Building Information Modelling (BIM). The goal was that in 2017 50% of projects would be implemented with the help of BIM, and in 2018 this figure should be 100%.
To maximize the use of technology, we needed to learn how to use it not only at the design stage, but also at the construction site. In order to understand how this is done, BI Group experts visited the Norwegian branch of Skanska, one of the largest international developers, which is among the top 10 construction companies. But, more importantly, Skanska was one of the first companies in the world to introduce information modeling.
Directly on the construction site Skanska demonstrated how it all works. First of all, there are mobile workstations (BIM-kiosks). They are a workplace with access to a multi-disciplinary model and are needed to workers for better understanding of the project design. Secondly, simple builders necessarily carry an iPad with them, which helps them to see electronic drawings in their current form, as well as have complex views at their hands. Finally, some of the work is done without paper and electronic drawings, but only on a specially prepared model. Can you imagine workers with iPads and mobile workstations on our construction sites? Very soon this will become a reality with the help of BIM!
The trip to Skanska allowed experts of BI Group’s BIM department to outline further steps for the development of our company. We started to study the tools that Norwegian colleagues use and we plan to start implementing them in our company.
BIM has already designed 27 projects of our company, including BI City and "The Seasons. Summer".