| dc.description.abstract | Construction involves complex integration of people, materials, machine, and managerial procedures. These elements of construction are manifested by design drawings and related plans. Although construction tasks are to be undertaken in a 3-dimentional paradigm, construction professionals nonetheless must present their ideas in a traditional2-dimension manner. Traditionally, this has been due to technological constraints and limitations. The advancement of computing power and relevant software technologies however have pushed forward and through the impossible in the past. Particularly, the concept of Building Information Modeling (BIM), as a complete platform to integrate virtually all construction related information, has introduced a true 3-D revolution.
Under the BIM paradigm, construction design and planning takes place in a 3-D environment. Such a 3-D model allows all construction professional perform their tasks under a 3-D approach. This study will take advantage the BIM potential, and specifically investigate the possibility to perform the checking of quantity of work under the BIM environment. The aim of this work is to reduce the effort required to validate/verify the quantity of work introduced by design professionals, so that subsequent contractors will have much less hassles and difficulties to execute their bidding. This also eliminates potential contract disputes concerning discrepancy between the actual quantities of work and those presented in the bidding documents.
As a demonstrative purpose, this study examines how the quantity of structural rebar is determined by traditional method of cost estimate, which as discussed is performed in a 2-D environment. As found in this study, numerous details regarding structural rebar are not included in routine 2-D design practice. This makes the estimate of the quantity of structural rebar a mere guess work, if precision is taken into account. This study contemplates the general design practice of structural rebar, as well as all relevant technical specifications, and introduces the details into a BIM model.
It is concluded that a BIM model mitigates the allowance of the quantity of structural rebar. In an actual case, as presented in this study, a total of 5.3 tons of rebar were found unspecified in the original design, this amounts to a 9% allowance. Therefore, this study is able to summarize a hopeful proclaim that BIM platform can show benefit to contractor, in that they can rely on a BIM model to reduce the need to conduct quantity of work checking.
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