On more and more occasions we are being asked to provide indicative m2 rate analysis for our Clients or Financiers at the early design stage of a new construction project (either before or during the development application has been submitted). Many factors such as site specific conditions, construction methods, level of finish and timing will greatly affect a standard cost per m2 approach.

At feasibility stage, generally, most building costs are formulated on a cost per m2 basis that has been derived from either an industry recognised costing book (such as Rawlinsons or Cordells), a previous project / benchmarking or simply industry æhear say’. This approach can be very dangerous if you don’t understand exactly what the rate is based upon (ie: GFA, FECA or NLA) does it include for the basement and the balcony areas, deductions for voids or openings?) which can lead to significant impacts on your projects feasibility. Remember that a variance of a couple of hundred $/m2 could result in your project not making it past feasibility stage, or worse, costing you time and money to develop the design only to find out that it just doesn’t stack up!

This lack of understanding can also have a significant impact on specialised or smaller scale projects because they are more cost sensitive. For example, when you look at Social Housing projects, there is usually a higher density of units within a smaller building area. Although the cost per unit may be less than that of more conventional housing or residential projects, the cost per m2 can be significantly higher due to the inclusion of additional dividing walls, kitchens, more fittings etc. These factors need to be considered at the feasibility stage to avoid cost blow-outs. Likewise, a small æhigh end’ residential renovation based in and around CBD suburbs will have a significantly higher cost per m2 rate than a new residential dwelling away from the CBD.

Quantity Surveyors are construction cost experts and it’s important to get them involved in the early stages of your project so a more detailed cost estimate can be obtained. The cost per m2 approach has a place in our industry but should only be used to give a æballpark’ cost figure at the early design stages.

For more information on risks associated with a cost per m2 approach contact myself, Andrew Opperman, Mitchell Brandtman, 02 9525 8000.

Shaun Miller manages a boutique drafting and BIM technical resourcing partner, The Bowman Bureau, who gives it’s clients access to cutting edge skills and capabilities.The Bowman Bureau’s clients leverage these capabilities to offer additional service and deliverables to their clients. BIM being one such service.

Shaun also runs BIM Day Out – the only conference dedicated to BIM in Australia. The BIM Day Out is a unique Building Information Modeling (BIM) Expo and Conference Event. It is based around the idea that BIM is a collaborative endeavour requiring different tools, skills and professions. All with the same common goal of data and information reuse and sharing.

David Mitchell presented at the BIM Day Out on ‘5D’s of Digital Design, Documentation and Delivery’. Check out what Shaun had to say about David’s presentation in the YouTube clip below. You can also view David’s presentation PDF here. 

View Video Here:

Following on from my recent talk at UDIA Brisbane I want to share with you some of my findings from the research that I have recently carried out.

American based engineering company Trimble has been using robotics for a few years now to help contractors layout tasks on site using lasers driven by modeling information. This technology has unparalleled accuracy is designed specifically for concrete, MEP and general construction contractors. The Trimble RTS Series Robotic Total Stations ensure maximum flexibility and cost savings by performing all site layout and measurement tasks through single person operation. This is bringing the need for robust data within the model map to the forefront of the design process so that we can all benefit from the efficiencies that it brings.

ETH Zurich & ROB Technologies are also bringing robotics on site with pinpoint accuracy. Check out this robot brick layer in the short video below which is driven by parametric information to introduce different levels of quality to our design and build processes. This robot lays each individual brick at a different angle to the others – it’s not that this robot can do tasks efficiently, it’s that it can perform these tasks to a level of accuracy that we’ve never seen before. When we apply this technology it allows us to introduce elements of design that we never thought were possible – superior levels of quality.

Video Here: https://vimeo.com/52955424

A really good example of technology improving construction design is on a recent project I worked on with Arkhefield and their Principle, Andrew Gutteridge. When you consider the structural steel on this project, specifically the 18 meter cantilever seen below, it would have never been achieved without the technology that was used.

You can see that there is a clear relation between the model and actual build.

Similarly, Behrokh Khoshnevis of Contour Crafting is combining two technologies; 3D printing and robotics, to achieve design and construction projects that were previously thought of as impossible. In the past 3D printing for construction has mainly been done for components, now Behrokh is asking the question “why can’t I print a whole building?”. View his presentation below

(Tip: skip to 4 minutes 30 seconds to see it in action).

Video Here: http://youtu.be/JdbJP8Gxqog?t=4m30s&w=512&h=308

The key point is that all of these technologies need the input of 3D information for them to work. There are dozens of examples like these and each one relies on the input of a model in the first instance. When you stay in a 2D space you’re limiting your opportunities for the future.

Video here: https://youtu.be/TGG5qo5Nam0

Partner and 5D Quantity Surveyor, David Mitchell, presented at the 2013 UDIA Brisbane breakfast seminar on the 22nd May on “Keeping Property Projects Profitable – Understanding the Trends and Costs”.

David’s seminar extended his knowledge of the current climate regarding Construction Costs, provided insight into Emerging Technologies (Including 3D printing and robotics) that can change the future of construction as we know it and took a look at up-to-date Facts and Figures.

• PDF of the presentation: http://bit.ly/12etiNy
• SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube page for more webinars like this in the future: http://bit.ly/16Ixp8u

The LOD Specification from the BIMForum is a very worthy guide to consider. Released in March this year it defines model use, usability and limitations for downstream users. It also looks at the detail of what it is that you’re designing and what it can be used for.

Check it out at this link…

http://bimforum.org/lod/

Everyone is aware that they need to insure their homes and business premises, but many people could be inadvertently paying too much, or perhaps worse, not enough. It’s not just a question of finding the lowest premiums, but of ensuring that the policy correctly covers the replacement cost of a building. You might know the value of your property, including the land, but how much would it cost to replace the buildings in the case of a serious incident?

Over the last ten years the Consumer Price Index (the annual average costs of consumer goods) has outstripped the Building Price Index (current construction costs), leaving some policy holders unaware that they were paying too much and others not enough.

Most insurers will seek to pay the minimum amount possible on a claim for damage and will base a payout on the current cost of construction and renovation. However, a lot of people forget about the demolition costs, re-design and inflation that affects a buildings replacement cost.

Also, if your premium has been rising with the CPI you could be over insured, protecting your property with an unnecessary level of cover. On the other hand, if you have not reviewed your policy for a few years you could find that the replacement costs have now overtaken the amount your policy covers.

Mitchell Brandtman Quantity Surveyors have recently undertaken Replacement Costs Estimates for several major businesses and have found worrying disparities in their clients’ level of cover. In one case a Body Corporate discovered that because they had increased their premiums with the CPI rises, they were over-insured by $500,000.

In another more alarming case, a Brisbane commercial property owner discovered that they were under insured by 60% – the rising costs of building and construction having outstripped the value of their policy. Unfortunately they found this out too late and the client had big problems with their insurer on top of another big problem of losing their tenant.

It’s wise to seek out the best value insurance, but you have to make sure that the policy matches the current replacement costs. If you have been increasing your cover every year by CPI or BPI, then it’s time that you had your property replacement cost re-done.

Regularly assessing the cost of replacing a building could save you a lot of money in premiums or could save you from having to face a massive shortfall. Mitchell Brandtman will provide you with certainty and peace of mind with the knowledge that you are adequately covered.

Mitchell Brandtman has been established for over 40 years, and specialises in providing construction cost advice to home owners, investors and developers. To discuss a Replacement Cost Estimate for your property or business premises, contact Luke Anthony, Asset Services Manager on (07) 3327 5000

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The technique of 3D printing has been around since the first days of inkjet printers. Architects in Amsterdam are planning to have the world’s first 3D-printed house completed before the end of the year! Check out how quickly this technology is developing.

The technology can now print in over 26 different materials including concrete, glass and even human skin cells (watch this astonishing TED talk
on how surgeons ‘printed’ a working human bladder!) . Designs and
modeling are changing and the 3D information at the front end is
critical to their success.

This post follows on from my recent presentation at the UDIA Brisbane conference – you can watch the full length webinar video HERE. 3D printing has two applications for construction; on site and off site. In this presentation I not only explored the concept of on site and off site 3D printing for prefabrication and construction, but also robotics. Could agile swarming robots be the future for construction projects? As explained in the video, parametric models and algorithms are used by the robots to then build structures autonomously. However, construction is not the only application for these small agile swarming robots. A flying robot can enter an unknown building to collect information and populate a 3D model from that information.

Again, this is not new technology – the camera that is used on these flying robots is based on technology created for Microsoft’s Kinect computer gaming experience. The interesting thing is how these technologies are being applied, especially in the construction industry and what it will mean for construction costs.

Mitchell Brandtman are proud to sponsor the Property Council October Division Lunch on Friday 11^th October at the Westin Hotel Grand Ballroom in Sydney.

The æPost-Election Resurrection’ û A roadmap to economic recovery for the new Government, luncheon includes speakers Bill Evans, Global Head of Economics from Westpac Institutional Bank, Saul Eslake, Chief Economist (Australia and New Zealand) from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Paul Bloxham, Chief Economist (Australia and New Zealand) from HSBC Bank and moderated by Michael Pascoe, Finance Journalist.

For more information and to book your place now please visit the Property Council website here or view the event flyer at the link below.

NSW PCA Lunch flyer, 11th Oct Sydney

Scott Beazley discusses current initiatives on defining 5D technology workflows and guidelines to support BIM.

There is no denying that the construction industry is rapidly advancing in the area of BIM and integrated project delivery. We see progression of the technology in the space at a pace that far exceeds our ability to adapt our more traditional approach to design and construction. Change is happening within weeks and months and everyone within the industry faces the challenge of bringing technology best practice together to benchmark standards in project delivery for leaner, better buildings.

My belief in the current capabilities of the technology stems firstly from my QUT research and development of the ôNational Digital Modelling Guidelinesö in 2008. Seconded to the then, CRC Construction Innovation, now the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc), I was tasked to investigate the multi-disciplinary use and collaboration issues in the construction of integrated models, under the leadership of Tom Fussell and Robin Drogemuller.

My research reviewed current overseas initiatives and projects along-side six major Australian projects where BIM technologies had been applied. In addition to the project analysis the research was supported by consultations with project partners and industry forums in five capital cities to help formulate a document that provides a ground breaking understanding of the implications of these new technologies.

What’s important to note here is that more than four years ago the research pointed to the applicability of digital modelling to the whole lifecycle of buildings and the greatest possibility to integrate data at the earliest stages of design and development through to off-site fabrications and finally the operation and management of the building.

Game Changers:

It is certainly clear that governments have a critical role as the game changer in the take up of BIM. We have already seen examples of this in Norway, Finland, Denmark, USA and now in the UK, where the Government’s intention to require collaborative 3D BIM has resulted in significant progress being made in a very short time.

As governments own assets and invest in buildings over much longer periods, the motivation to extract greater value and longevity is of far greater importance. In order to move an initiative forward the business case for industry needs to be very clear. Governments can make the case for change and industry will listen. In addition we can also see the shift coming from other building custodians, such as superannuation funds who want assets within their portfolios that perform better and cost less to maintain. The evidence of lifecycle costing for the better maintenance and management over the full life of the asset equates to a strong business case to invest in the BIM process.

The Federal Government and buildingSMART released the National Building Information Modelling Initiative (NBI) Report late in 2012, which champions the ôstrategy for the focussed adoption of building information modelling, and related digital technologies and processes, for the Australian built environment sector.”

As the Queensland Department of Public Works representative and visiting lecturer for QUT over the last 12 months I have been able to work as a domain expert on the research team developing a National Object Library (NOL) for the SBEnrc. The main objective of the development of the NOL is to bridge a significant gap in BIM adoption in Australia, as identified by the NBI Report, by providing high quality, reliable, data rich product information from manufacturers to industry.

The work in this area has ensured that property set definitions and object classifications, IFC Schema compatibility, local metadata requirements and the creation of BIM objects in a non-proprietary format, can be loaded directly into authoring BIM software. This means we don’t need multiple versions of every object to accommodate different software formats or versions. This will result in significant cost reductions for manufacturers when creating library objects and reduces the on-going maintenance of these objects. The NOL is also able to support the upgrading of the properties and the values of existing BIM objects to suit project requirements and ensure consistent quality data for downstream use ie. they apply throughout the building’s design, construction, operation and management.

NOL addresses the two elements û the geometry of the object and the properties of the object. Connecting both into a single source file within the NOL will save manufacturers as well as the supply chain throughout the entire life of a building and not just at design and development phase. The difficulty at present is that object properties are not well defined in Australia, requiring local customisation to varying standards. The NOL project is to address this lack of standards.

Stage 2 of the QUT project is about to commence with the aim to install local implementations of the NOL interface for project partners, and develop the content to include both the geometry and data properties of the objects. Product manufacturers will be involved in the engagement of their information to generate the geometry and populate the data parameters.

Validation and Round-Tripping

Joining Mitchell Brandtman allows me the opportunity to work from within and focus on streamlining the process of coding and making the concept of ôround-trippingö data a daily routine.

Currently, software limitations and disparate workflow processes across different project partners often form barriers to sharing common data. To overcome this Mitchell Brandtman has developed model validation techniques within its 5D workflow that allows data to become an integrated part of the designer’s model and is round-tripped to the native files and added to the BIM. This is achieved by working with incomplete models in the early phase of design û the round-tripping continually improves the BIM. This unique methodology also alleviates the need for the designer to input codes like QSID. In my role I am automating and strengthening these systems so that as the model reliance increases during design the 5DQS is confident of the completeness and correctness of each model.

For Mitchell Brandtman’s clients and project partners this will create more robust efficiencies when running models through functional benchmarking, continual revisioning and quantity take-off at tender and for subcontractor pricing.

Greater integration and transparency of the data as a model develops can be achieved through collaborative workflows and preservation of the coding. Initially it will depend on the scale and type of project and the stage of development of the model. Ultimately it should be the objective at the outset if the goal is to build better and save costs throughout the project as well as the life of the asset.

Fast Forward

Collaboration across government and private sector construction will ensure a fast forward and efficient approach to lean construction and effective lifecycle costing. The objectives continue to focus on clarity around project delivery. The development of national standards and guidelines, effective workflows for defined technologies and processes will greatly contribute to the success of BIM adoption and advancement.

All stakeholders in the industry need to invest in the development of the technologies that support our services and how they can be improved to generate greater savings and efficiencies in design and construction. My work with Mitchell Brandtman and continuing research with government and university sectors will focus keenly on these opportunities and delivering greater confidence and better outcomes within the digital context.

For more information contact Scott Beazley, Mitchell Brandtman, 07 3327 5000.

BIM promises and it is mostly accepted that it delivers significant costs savings even though it’s not understood how these savings will eventuate, who owns these cost savings today and who will benefit in the future.

In order to create certainty and generate cost savings through collaboration we need to understand who has the most to gain and involve them at the right stage of design and Virtual Design and Construction (VDC).

For different types of projects the people you need to engage, changes. We need to acknowledge that the savings arising out of a building project differs significantly to those of a civil or resource project.

There also needs to be an appreciation of when a construction contract or subcontract is formed as well as the type of construction contract that has been entered into. These aspects need to be kept in mind when considering the supply chain from owner, to head contractor, to subcontractor, to plant hire and materials suppliers. Prior to entering into a construction contract all savings that eventuate from lean and efficient design will return to the owner. After formation of the head contract; and then the various subcontracts, it is the terms of those contracts that will determine who owns time and cost efficiencies.

If we take a commercial scale building project; the indirect costs of preliminaries, head office overheads and margin amounts to about 17% of the construction cost with the remaining 83% being formed by subcontract prices. So, on a building project that is made more efficient by VDC it is the subcontractors that have most to gain particularly when you also recognise that subcontract margins are up to seven times that of a head contractor. It makes sense really because it is the subcontractor that is actually doing the construction work.

By comparison, a civil project like a subdivision is the opposite with only about 17% of the cost being controlled by subcontractors. So the benefit here lies largely with the head contractor.

In the resource sector the type of project also plays a large part in determining who has the most to gain from efficiencies. If we take a pipeline project, for example, the relationship between direct and indirect costs is much higher than any other construction type. The head contractor’s indirect costs are about 45% of the project. Additionally the head contractor owns the plant and employs the labour that will construct approximately 83% of the remaining 55% of direct costs. If a pipeline project is made more efficient after award of the EPC contract he stands to gain significantly in terms of profitability on delivery.

Processing plants within the resources sector typically contain a similar level of indirect costs (45%) but the bulk of the direct costs (88%) are constructed by subcontractors. So it becomes very evident that the head contractor and subcontractors need to be engaged equally in providing advice on the construction of a plant to determine the savings that can be achieved.

In applying BIM in order to quantify savings it is therefore critical to understand who directly owns the costs of the project at each stage as they are the people who must be involved in the early stages of design to realise the efficiencies.

Who Benefits from the Savings Generated?

It’s not necessarily the owner who directly benefits monetarily from improved construction efficiency. By way of example the cost per square metre of a partition wall will not change until that subcontract market learns that construction projects as a whole have become more reliable. Owners will ultimately benefit from the efficiencies that come out of BIM but the value of these efficiencies won’t be realised until the market adjusts and we see reductions in allowances by subcontractors for delay, disruption and rework currently due to poor documentation and site management.

While it will be some years, perhaps five to ten, before market prices show downward pressure there are still a number of savings strategies that can be put into action.

Savings ownership generated through BIM

Additionally there is an expectation that designers need to be able to produce designs that can actually be built in order to generate efficiencies. This belief is deep ceded in our industry history but in modern, specialised times perhaps we should question whether this belief is properly founded. It’s important to recognise that designers aren’t builders and also that different builders have different preferences on construction methodologies. Realistically the building design should be produced, coordinated from a design perspective and then handed to the builder or key subcontractors to be improved while still maintaining the designer’s oversight.

Evolving Our Industry Methodology

Historically, the way construction projects are priced is to allow high contingencies at the outset and to expect redesign, delays, disruption, rework and variation claims. BIM is about being able to reduce the need for contingencies as the gap between project development, modeling and the build narrows.

If we can create a standard methodology that ensures project teams are involved in the BIM at the right stages of design and development, we can bring about leaner building design and construction that will ensure subcontractor costs are more predictable, negotiations are transparent and variations and extension of time are reduced. Ultimately markets will adjust and we will realise reductions in contingencies and savings at the outset of projects and collectively achieve greater savings and cost certainty for the industry as whole.

For more information contact David Mitchell, Mitchell Brandtman, 07 3327 5000.