Call it Civil Integrated Management. Call it Building Information Modeling for horizontal construction. Call it 4D modeling for infrastructure projects. Call it "BIM Leaves the Building and Hits the Road." Whatever you want to call it, you will want to see this Autodesk video about Mortenson Construction that highlights the advantages of BIM for road construction and other infrastructure projects.
In the video, Rich Khan, Director of Integrated Construction, and Roberta Oldenburg, Integrated Construction Coordinator, both of Mortensen Construction, share their company’s experience over the last 12 years using BIM and how to use those lesson’s learned for new industries, including renewable energy and infrastructure projects.
What are some of the best practices and benefits that can be applied to highway construction and infrastructure projects? According to Khan and Oldenburg, these include:
- Reduction in budgets
- Fast-track schedules
- Increased collaboration through the 3-D environment
- Disruption avoidance
- Early identification of utility conflicts
- Improve efficiency and reduce waste
For Mortenson, use of BIM is a "value-add to the customer" because it provides benefit not only to the design side, but also to the construction side. "And now the 3-D model allows us to greatly improve the decision-making process," says Khan.
The video highlights some of the same themes from from a presentation that I gave last week at the ARTBA National Convention in Memphis called Civil Integrated Management: New Technologies and Legal Risks, which you can download here.