Monitoring construction progress of Children’s Hospital using digital twin

Case Study

Photo from stroi.mos.ru

55 000 m

surface area

invested

$230 M

point clouds

310 M

The Department of Construction in a modern megapolis has chosen NovoBIM to control the reconstruction of the children’s hospital. The hospital is one of the oldest and largest in the city. In 2021, they started the construction of a multifunctional complex that will accommodate an additional 480 beds. It will also have its own laboratories and operating rooms, as well as a helicopter landing site.

Construction work monitoring requires the on-site presence of employees. This way of keeping track of the progress has the following disadvantages:

Implementing a digital monitoring maximizes the efficiency and provides significant cost savings.

The precision equipment only measures certain areas, the rest is done by a rough guess. It is hard to see the current progress on site.

Rare site inspections often result in the late notice of mistakes. It is harder to deal with the mistake at the later stage, and it brings additional expenses.

Site visits are expensive and therefore rare.

The object was difficult for surveying: a lot of supporting structures, scaffolding, and technical floors. The resulting point cloud required significant processing each time, which could only partially be performed using algorithms. Our specialists set up some elements of the object tree manually so that the customer could see the important elements and hide the ones that weren’t important, such as construction equipment, building materials stored on site, and temporary structures. By hiding the number of scaffolding and formwork, it was possible to assess the amount of work performed more accurately.

Rubius connected the customer to its own system, NovoBIM, to keep track of the construction progress remotely. Then, we used drones and laser scanners to survey the entire construction area with an operator partner. The digital survey outcome were point clouds that were imported into the NovoBIM system for further processing. The BIM model helps identify construction errors and delays.

Photo by M. Mishin. Press Service of the Mayor and the Government of Moscow

scanning data processed

79 Gb

Site survey was performed by the local drone operator, Dronoport company. Their solution, Hive, is fully automated with drones performing scheduled flights without human intervention. It was the first time we used a robotic overflight system.

Our specialists connected the client to the NovoBIM web platform, uploaded the BIM model and design files from the project documentation to be displayed in 2D and 3D modes. It took less than a day.

Our specialists created up-to-date digital construction models based on images from drones and laser scanners, cleaned the images using our own algorithms. The obtained point clouds were uploaded into the system. Each time it took less than a day from the moment of surveying.

The team performed measurements of the volumes of concrete structures.

Our experts outlined point clouds to highlight the individual elements of the structure. The elements of the point cloud were paired with the corresponding tasks in the Gantt chart.

Now, the developer can see how the object under construction should look at each stage of construction, and how it looks in reality, considering the actual work performed.

The 4D model was created based on the BIM model and the construction schedule. By adding a dimension of time to the classic 3D model, it was possible to link the geometric model to the construction schedule.

Applying NovoBIM and aerial survey enabled 20% cost reduction on construction monitoring.

Before using the NovoBIM system and aerial monitoring, employees from the Department of Construction had to go to the construction site regularly. The progress of work was monitored by cross-checking the design documents with field surveys. Site visits and documents' checks were time-consuming, and they received information from surveyors with delays. This created the risk of impacting the construction schedule and project completion date.

savings on construction monitoring

20%

Thanks to NovoBIM and aerial survey, remote monitoring of the construction progress is possible without leaving the office. They can identify any type of discrepancy between the planned and actual work progress even before the surveyor visits the site. The BIM model monitors compliance with the deadlines using the built-in Gantt chart, and creates daily progress charts.

The 4D model helped the customer visualize the construction schedule, plan the construction process more accurately and easily, and visually track the status of work on individual elements of the building.

Project analyst

Nikolay Razgulyaev

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