Entrant details
Role or Job Title on the Project
co-director
Employer
Superior Council of Architects of Spain. Official Association of Architects of Galicia
Employer Role
Public Sector Owner/Client
Are you or your employer a member of buildingSMART?
No
Submission details
Submitting Party Company Name
Association of Architects of Galicia
Submitting Party Company Location
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Submitting Party Role on Project
Organiser
Submitting Party Company Website
Full Project Name
Belesar reservoir electrical substation digitalization
Project Location (Country)
Spain
Project Objectives
The initiative aimed to make the participating architects understand the foundations, processes and strategies of the BIM methodology, and see how all these concepts are put into practice. Thus, during the course the processes involved in the application of the BIM methodology will be developed in a real work undertaking the complete digitalization of an existing building, the electrical substation of Belesar's reservoir. In addition, students will have the opportunity to actively collaborate in small tasks that are integrated into the formalization of the model.
openBIM Achievements
The objective of this course was to understand the fundamentals, processes and strategies of the BIM methodology and the possibilities of sharing OPENBIM information. The conditions and strategies to be used were previously established in the BEP.
The work of formalising the digital model has been approached using three of the most widely used modelers in our country. In the workshop, students solved two practical problems: the first one consisted of composing a federated coordination model and the second one consisted of composing a deliverable. The use of the OPENBIM format has proved vital to achieve the predefined objectives.
openBIM used
IFC 2x3, IFC4
Software used
ARCHICAD, Grasshopper, Navisworks, Revit, Allplan, Edificius, BIM Collab Zoom, CloudCompare, Recap, BIMMATE Apps, Lumion, Slic3r, Dynamo, Visual Studio, C#, Vcarve, Slack, Trello, Gotowebinar, Gotomeeting, Sonicwall VPN, Total Commander, Moodle.
Strategic Alignment
Not focusing on a single modeling tool but showing the 'big picture' of BIM methodology to all students taking the course could be the slogan for this project. Indeed, different software authoring tools had to be used for each task, but the main goal had to remain clear: BIM is not about software but methodology and collaboration. Without open BIM standars, and specially IFC schema, the collaboration among all tools used couldn't have been possible, so it is fair to say that it was precisely due to the use of BIM standards that we could aim the strategic objectives.
Highlights
More than 200 architects have taken the course
The initiative brings together Official Associations of Architects from all over the country. Students from the School of Architecture of the University of A Coruña are invited to participate in the course.
It has been ten intense days of work with both online and face-to-face sessions
Practices were oriented towards the formalization of federated models, learning for the georeferencing of models and the creation of deliverables from IFC files
There was a daily video summary of the activities carried out Full availability of all material produced by teachers available on the Google Drive platform.
Project and Stakeholder Logos (compiled into one .ppt/pptx file for upload)
Project Address
Belesar, Chantada, Lugo
42°37′44″N 7°42′45″O
The engineer Yordi Carricarte and the architect Castañón de Mena, achieve a remarkable piece of engineering and architecture, the dam together with the administrative building as well as the valve building, located in the middle of the waters in such a way that when the reservoir is full it seems that the building floats and makes its condition of transparency clear, achieved by the presence of glass and metallic carpentry in a rigorous compositional order; when the reservoir is empty, it reminds us of the constructions of Italian futurism. Celestino García Braña Iberian Docomomo president.
Project Type
Civil
Size of Project
Two buildings
One dam
Niine models of one square kilometer each organized in a 3x3 grid****
Detailed description of the project
DIGITALIZATION OF THE BELESAR RESERVOIR SUBSTATION
Among the publications on BIM there are few references to real experiences of digitalization where the work done is debriefed exposing the problems found and the solutions adopted, where in addition several modelling platforms are used and the theoretical concepts on BIM methodology are applied; that is to say, few success stories share the procedure followed step by step and each of the documents generated, which is equivalent to delivering the know-how acquired during years of practice.
This is precisely what was developed at the workshop on the digitalization of the Belesar reservoir in Lugo organized by the Associations of Architects of the Northern Spain under the auspices of a subsidy from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda managed by the CSCAE, an opportunity to transmit to other professionals the knowledge that a team of 9 professionals has acquired over more than a decade of applying the BIM methodology, from planning the work and drafting the key documents, to preparing the deliverables.
There is currently a large number of theoretical documents on BIM: guides, software user manuals, blogs and videos on solving specific problems, templates, etc., and a serious lack of: practical application of the BIM methodology to a specific asset, perhaps because this involves exposing and sharing the know-how of a company or a team of professionals that has been treasured over years of working in the profession.
As a result of the agreement between the Superior Council of the Associations of Architects of Spain and the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, the different Associations of Architects of Spain have received subsidies for the development of training activities and the dissemination of the BIM methodology among architects. Some of these associations have joined to develop a common initiative that transcends traditional regional segregation and allows for the exchange of knowledge and experiences between territories. This is the case of the Official College of Architects of Galicia, which, together with its counterparts in Asturias, Aragon, Castile and Leon East, Autonomous City of Ceuta, La Rioja, Autonomous City of Melilla, Leon, Murcia and Basque-Navarre, has led the proposal to carry out a workshop for the digitalization of a representative building integrated into the register of the Iberian DOCOMOMO, which also stands out for the physical characteristics of its environment, which has allowed the work developed to extend the modeling of the terrain and the dam.
This is a collaborative work where a team of nine professionals with more than ten years of experience has digitized the substation of Belesar reservoir in Chantada (Lugo, Spain), using BIM methodology, from the planning and data collection phase to the modeling of installations, emphasizing the value of collaboration between teams and systems. With the aim of sharing all the work done with the students participating in the workshop.
The team has developed its tasks from the Superior Technical School of Architecture of the University of A Coruña and from the headquarters of the Official School of Architects of Murcia, from 10/02/2020 to 21/02/2020, being the whole process properly documented and transmitted its daily evolution by means of online sessions to the students who have followed the workshop through the training platform provided for that purpose.
The communication reflects the activity carried out by a team of nine professionals over ten intense days of work for the digitization of an existing asset. As it was planned from the beginning of the work, all the documentation integrated in the CDE has been shared with the students participating in the workshop. In addition to the daily summaries and practices proposed to the students, once the workshop was finished, a daily online session was held to explain its content and extension in order to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and strategies to the more than 200 students participating in the initiative.
Although the workshop ended in February 2020, the team continues to face challenges. Firstly, a script for filling and emptying the reservoir is being developed; secondly, work is being done on the LUMION scenarios incorporating various improvements and updates; and finally, the scale model is being manufactured with the numerical control machinery available at the Digital Manufacturing Laboratory of the School of Architecture in A Coruña.
We would like to thank the collaborating companies, Naturgy, Geomati-K, MydroneFactory, BiMMate, Lumion, as well as all the developers of the modeling and visualization tools used by the team. To the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, to the Superior Council of Architects of Spain and to the Official College of Architects of Galicia for the opportunity and support for the development of the activity. Finally, to the Superior Technical School of Architecture of the University of A Coruña and to the Official College of Architects of Murcia for the facilities to carry out the work of the team in their headquarters.
Detailed description of openBIM on the project
When working on AEC projects where several teams are involved among different disciplines, defining a good and crystal-clear collaborative workflow is the key of success.
One of the first decisions that the project manager must take is to define the software toolset to be used on each task (normally from one single authoring ecosystem), or to relay, instead, on the freedom of each team to take that decision by itself depending on the type and/or complexity of the task assigned and the team experience on that software. It is in this second situation where openBIM standards become the milestone of the collaborative workflows.
In the digitalization of the Belesar reservoir electrical substation in Lugo (Spain), that decision did not even exist. The whole project was conceived as an educational research of collaborative workflows, so being collaborative and push collaborative workflows to the limit was the goal, not a decision to take. This is why several authoring software BIM modelling tools were selected, not because we needed them for the job, but because putting them altogether to work was the challenge to achieve: Autodesk® Revit™, Graphisoft® Archicad™, Nemetschek® Allplan™, Acca software® Edificius™, Autodesk® Navisworks™, Kubus® BIMcollab zoom™, Autodesk® Dynamo™, Robert McNeel&associates® Rhinoceros™&Grasshopper, Microsoft® VisualStudio™, Lumion™…
The initial 9 members team was split in five sub-teams: three for 3D modelling, one for AR/VR and another one for coordination, supervision, and quality control. Needless to say, that not all members were working together in the same location and the Common Data Environment could be accessed elsewhere through a Secure Virtual Private Network:
- All three modelling teams needed, for its own coordination, the job done by the rest of the teams. To achieve the goal, the classic openBIM collaboration diagram was implemented, obviously throughout IFC schema (2x3 in the case): Every team was consuming the IFC files generated by the rest inside its own authoring modelling tool and, in exchange, new IFC files were generated periodically for the other teams. All IFC files were placed in the corresponding folder of the Common Data Environment, so updates were automatic. Additionally to the daily programmed updates, critical updates were notified to the rest of the teams through the Slack™ messaging tool, so reloading updated IFC files was never a problem.
- The only team in charge of the coordination, supervision and quality control was focused on an IFC-based software revision tool: BIM collab zoom™. This tool was used to create BCF alerts on issues, mistakes, or lack of information on BIM elements, that could be used back in the authoring software modelling tools to identify the issue and fix the problem. Messaging software tool Slack was as well a magnificent ally on communication of incidents.
Software ecosystem map
openBIM Supporting Evidence
Benefits from using openBIM
In this academic BIM project, openBIM implementation was never a benefit, but the goal to achieve.
The whole purpose of the project was to show to all participants following the program how to effectively work in a collaborative environment using BIM, therefore, the most popular BIM modelling tools where selected to illustrate the process. Every authoring software tool had to inter-operate with the results provided by the rest, so IFC schema was the foundation over which all the project was built upon.
"We were able to innovate using openBIM."
There are so many advantages with advanced workflows through IFC, as the ability of getting federated models with the exports of every propertary software: the conjuction of all parts of the project can be checked through IFC based review aplications. In this case, BIMCollabZOOM was used to ensure all the project could melt together, and each part matched the others correctly.
Although there are some dysfunctionalities on the process, depending on the propietary software used for each export, the use of IFC files allows the workfolw to take care of goereferencing if it has been considered on the modeling platform.
A carefull process of iterations made this workflow the better way for interoperability between software platforms, enabling a feasible pipeline for geometry and information exchanges.
"We were able to identify where we need openBIM to develop further."
IFC schemas are still underdeveloped for geometry exchanges feasable for infographic needs: the lack of use of geometry primitives and forms in the way the propietary modeling aplications use them generates ugly meshes, especially with complex shapes.
BIM Uses were defined on the project
I agree to be contacted about the project BIM uses outside of this awards program.
Stakeholders
Official Association of Architects of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain,
https://portal.coag.es/, Course Organiser, Mrs. Rocío Lamas Pérez-Cepeda
Higher Council of the Associations of Architects of Spain, Madrid, Spain.,
http://www.cscae.com/, Sponsor, Mr. Laureano Matas Trenas
School of Architecture. University of A Coruña, A Coruña. Spain,
http://etsa.udc.es/, Contributor, Mr. Placido Lizancos Mora
LUMION SPAIN, Valencia, Spain,
https://www.lumion.es/, Contributor, Mr. Eugenio Donado Megía
GEOMATI-K Engineering, Pontevedra, Spain,
https://geomati-k.com/, Contributor, Mr. Rubén Cifrián Touriño
Jose Antonio Vázquez Rodríguez, School of Architecture. University of A Coruña,
https://pdi.udc.es/en/File/Pdi/NW69E, Co-director of the work team, Jose Antonio Vázquez Rodríguez
Rogelio Carballo Solla, Pontevedra, Spain, Team member, Rogelio Carballo Solla
José María Abellán Alemán, Yecla, Murcia, Spain,
https://m1.bimmate.com/magento1/, Co-director of the work team, José María Abellán Alemán
Juan Ignacio Buendía Peláez, Caceres, Spain,
https://m1.bimmate.com/magento1/, Team member, Juan Ignacio Buendía Peláez
Amparo Cano Alderete, Murcia, Spain,
https://m1.bimmate.com/magento1/, Team member, Amparo Cano Alderete
Pedro Antonio Martínez García, Murcia, Spain,
https://m1.bimmate.com/magento1/, Team member, Pedro Antonio Martínez García
José Carlos Miquel López, Murcia, Spain.,
https://m1.bimmate.com/magento1/, Team member, José Carlos Miquel López
Germán Perales Portillo, Murcia, Spain, Team member, Germán Perales Portillo
Evelio Sánchez Juncal, Pontevedra, Spain, Team member, Evelio Sánchez Juncal
