BACKGROUND OF IJM
IJM began as a daring dream of a group of civil engineers who were ahead of their time. The result of a merger between three medium-sized local construction companies – IGB Construction Sdn Bhd, Jurutama Sdn Bhd and Mudajaya Sdn Bhd, IJM was formed in 1983 to compete as equals with well-capitalised foreign players who had entered the growing Malaysian construction industry. In 2008, IJM acquired the Road Builder Group to augment its position as one of the country's biggest builders. IJM now celebrates 35 years of a winning game, with a footprint that has grown across the world. We have gained recognition as a reputable Malaysian conglomerate delivering the promise of inspired solutions to its business partners and customers every day.
For this award submission, we will focus on one of our on-going projects in the heart of Kuala Lumpur – Bukit Bintang City Centre (BBCC) Retail Mall.
Figure 1: Artist's Impression of BBCC Retail Mall
BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
Bukit Bintang City Centre Retail Mall is a 7-storey shopping mall building located at the busy intersection between Jalan Hang Tuah and Jalan Imbi. It is developed under Mitsui Fudosan (Asia) Pte. Ltd. with a GFA of 129,487 IJM Construction Sdn Bhd is appointed as the main contractor for this project with a construction period of 42 months.
Our Scope of Work in this project includes:
Figure 2: Aerial View of Site Progress
INVOLVEMENT OF BIM IN BBCC
As the main contractor for this project, coordination between all trade will be always our main priority when delivering the project, especially for a shopping mall project with such large scale. To ease the coordination project at site, we have established a BIM team for this project to develop BIM Model for coordination, even though BIM is not part of the contractual requirement or project deliverables for this project.
BBCC Retail Mall is a design and build project and involvement of BIM helps to identify major clashes before the construction especially during the early stage of the project. BIM Design and Coordination meeting is held between consultants and subcontractors every week to resolve clashes and design issues.
However, BIM Uses shall not be just limited to 3D Coordination. As the design and coordination is getting more mature and firmer in the middle of the progress, we decided to push the potential the BIM to another level – exploring the 5D Quantity Take-off Function.
Figure 3: BIM model developed in BBCC (from left to right, top to bottom)
MEP model, Structural Model, Architectural Model and Façade Model
THE JOURNEY OF 5D BIM
The 5D BIM journey is not a straight forward approach in BBCC project. There are a few challenges we need to address before we can fully utilize the 5D process in BIM.
First, we will need to address the compatibility issue between the model authoring software and quantity take-off software. All of our BIM model is done in Autodesk Revit as our initial priority is only 3D modelling. It will not be wise to remodel everything again in the quantity take-off software and we will need to identify which software is best capturing the Revit model.
After having some trial and error and proof of concept between a few software, finally we have chosen Glodon Cubicost as our quantity take-off software as we can directly input our Revit model into their software without any format conversion and minimal loss of information. Our quantity surveyor also constantly giving valuable feedback to Glodon’s product development team as part of the collaboration to improve the user’s experience.
Figure 4: BIM model developed in Autodesk Revit (top left)
can be imported directly into Glodon Cubicost TASC (bottom right)
However, the challenges do not stop here. Next, we will need to solve the modelling issues. As mentioned earlier, the initial focus of the BIM model is for 3D coordination, therefore the model structure and model breakdown will not be suitable for Quantity Surveyor to extract the quantities directly.
In order to tackle this issue so that QS can extract a more accurate results for their final account reference, we need to re-strategize the approach in BIM model so that the same BIM model can serve two functions at the same time – assist in 3D coordination and also extract quantity for cost estimation.
A few modifications have been done in the existing BIM model to connect the dots between BIM team and contract department:
Figure 5: BIM model from the same floor is breakdown to different cast zone to identify concrete quantities from different subcontractors
The elements that we focus in the 5D BIM Quantity Take-off includes:
In order to verify the quantity generated from the software is accurate enough to be used as reference for final quantity, we have done manual calculation for one floor to cross check with the software calculation. We managed to obtain a discrepancy of less than 3% between the manual and software result.
The workflow of the quantity take-off in BIM is being standardized and documented in BIM Execution Plan for further reference.
Figure 6: The execution process from BIM model to quantity take-off is mapped out in our BIM Execution Plan
INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNITY
Other than just focusing in work, we also believe that we shall constantly engage ourselves with all the construction players in the industry to maintain a healthy growth of the team.
One of the perfect examples is we sent out a team from BBCC Retail Mall to participate in the BIM Contest organized by Glodon in 2019 and we won the competition. It was a challenging contest as it not just testing on the quantity take-off skills and also some fundamental BIM principles such as Employer Information Requirements and how to prepare a BIM Execution Plan.
The achievement we obtained from this competition has further strengthen our faith in BIM that we are heading the right direction at the same time giving confidence to other construction players that delivering results in BIM is not a myth but it can be done in the actual practice.
Figure 7: Certificate of Recognition for BIM Contest Malaysia 2019
Summary
In IJM, we constantly believe that adoption in technology is the key to success in this modernization era. We do not just limit the usage of BIM in 3D coordination, but also explore other potential benefits such as 4D (planning and sequence) and 5D (quantity take-off). With the lesson and experience we gained from BBCC retail mall; we can involve QS in our BIM process from the early stage of future project to maximize the benefit of 5D BIM.
We hope that our nomination suits the category “Construction Team of the Year” in for this RICS Awards 2020.
Figure 8: BBCC BIM Team in BIM Contest 2019