Temperatures hovered around zero in late November and the blustery too-soon-for-this wind made it feel even colder for construction workers as they finished up as much work as they could before winter would made some of their jobs nearly impossible for a few months. It’s a brutal time of year for most trade workers but not for some of the crew at Moorhead Electric (MEI), who spent the cold snap working on Essentia Health’s south Fargo hospital expansion in the relative balminess of MEI’s heated shop. They were able to do this thanks to technology known as BIM (building information modeling) — 3D modeling software that allows architects and contractors to virtually build a project before any ground is moved, potentially eliminating oversights and enabling portions of a project to be prebuilt and installed when needed.
MEI is one of several contractors working on Essentia’s $95 million expansion project. The Boldt Co., headquartered in Appleton, Wis., is the construction manager/general manager for the project and won the job in part because it pitched BIM as one of its tools, says Bob Bakkum, senior director of administrative services at Essentia Health. “Their techniques just seemed a lot more up to speed,” he says.
According to The Boldt Co., Essentia’s project is considered “fast track,” which meant it needed a highly collaborative design/construction team as well as the use of BIM to accurately coordinate and schedule the project.
Marty Ekren, senior project manager/prefab manager at MEI, says his company had used BIM and prefab techniques on projects prior to the Essentia expansion but they had never prebuilt headwalls for hospital patient rooms, and the Essentia project called for 28 of them. So MEI, along with fellow contractor Fargo-based Grant’s Mechanical Inc., sent representatives to Appleton to see firsthand how headwalls could be pre-fabricated. MEI then used that model to create its own headwall and other aspects of the project.
“The headwalls are just one of the areas that BIM and prefab are being used,” Ekren says. “We also took the model and used it to build our room racks, multi-trade racks, electrical rooms, distribution conduits and all of our room kits.”
Time is Money
The biggest perks to technologies like BIM are the cost and time savings for the project owner. For example, Bakkum says MEI’s prefabricated headwalls can be transported to the construction site and installed in half a day, compared to an estimated three days using traditional methods. Essentia’s expansion includes 28 new patient rooms, so the time saved in installation alone quickly adds up. Given that labor and supply shortages are now well-known budget killers in the region, any method used to keep those costs in check could make a significant difference to a project’s bottom line. While it’s been a challenge, Bakkum says Essentia’s project has so far remained on track not to exceed its budgeted cost of just over $59 million, and BIM may actually drive actual costs even lower, although he hesitates to predict any final numbers quite yet.
“It looks like they’re moving along as we had hoped and that we are going to have some savings because of it,” he says.
Ekren says every project has its challenges, but he believes BIM and prefab are tools that can be used to find creative solutions that also equate to less change orders and bigger savings for project owners. “There are so many advantages with BIM and prefab. It’s only going to get bigger,” he says.
Better Final Product
Essentia has found that modeling and prefab work offers additional benefits in health care settings where equipment hook-ups and room organization can have a noticeable impact on the delivery of services. Before MEI built patient room headwalls, nursing staff had the opportunity to look at a mock-up of the layout and provide input as to the placement of oxygen hookups and other components. Later, after the company built a prototype for the headwall, the nursing staff was again invited to look at the setup and sign off on the design before the project moved ahead. By inviting staff to collaborate on the process, Bakkum hopes to identify any potential issues ahead of time, rather than after the project is finished when it’s either too late or extremely expensive to fix. And so far, so good.
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