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A design-to-fabrication precast project executed completely on Tekla Structures

Established in 1991 at Durgapur, India, Pinnacle Infotech has made a global presence with offices at Kolkata & Jaipur (India), USA, UK, Switzerland, Italy and UAE. As an early adopter of Building Information Modelling (BIM), the company deems that the technology is a key driver of their progress towards better construction and infrastructure engineering and has enabled them to offer the best service to architects, engineers, contractors, sub-contractors and consultants across the world.

The exceptional focus on pre-construction planning and the BIM implementation has facilitated Pinnacle to track project timelines, material costs, conflict resolutions and other elements in advance. Further this has led to an overall savings of about 30% of the actual estimate thus establishing the company as one of the global leaders in MEP designing and detailing services.

Constructing the future Visa global HQ in Mission Rock, San Francisco

The northernmost building in the Mission Rock masterplan, building G, is a 13-storey building, influenced by the Devils Postpile National Monument’s striped basalt columns in eastern California. This tower will take the form of a detailed rock face with a mass of stacked blocks and vertical sheers highlighted by green terraces and textured natural façade at street level. It will rise from a fifth-floor mesa and have wind-sheltered rooftop terraces at the top, offering views of the San Francisco skyline.

The project scope of work included BIM modeling for 300,000 sq. ft. office building, reinforcement modeling for 700+ panels, individual piece ticket, connection & GA drawings, clash co-ordination, report generation (BOM, BBS) 

“Our team benefited in terms of accuracy, data integrity, revision management, quality of detailing and higher productivity by using Tekla Structures. We successfully generated coordinated models and allowed our consultant to check possible interference with building systems, leading to better project planning and reducing delay in construction. Tekla Structures played a vital role in design optimization, coordination and construction management. It was a pleasure to see that our BIM engineers worked in a coordinated manner, completing the project on time.”

-  Mrs. Sapna Patwari, Co-Founder & Director, Pinnacle Infotech

Challenges that could have hindered the progress of the project

  • Large volume of work with aggressive deadlines: The volume of the project work was large with all the precast services including concrete modeling, reinforcement modeling, co-ordination, clash detection, panel drawings, GA drawings, connection drawings, embed shop drawings etc. Moreover, the overall project completion schedule had a deadline of just 10 months.
  • Difficulty in handling structural elements: Interoperability between the design and structural model was a critical challenge for the Pinnacle team. All the precast panels were unique in shape and size. Besides that, the inclined grids and multiple uses of the structure at each level proved to be quite challenging.
  • Complex concrete forms & designs: The accuracy of the concrete rebar reinforcement depends on the accuracy of modeling. In a 2D drawing, bar specifications can be incorrect. Similarly, a simple typo error might cause many inconveniences in a 2D design world.

Tekla’s features that enabled the project team to deliver comfortably

“Tekla proved extremely helpful in many aspects across the whole lifecycle of the project like the auto generation of production drawings, the bar bending schedules related to it, the detailed blowouts, etc. This advanced constructible BIM software upheld the entire project, from conceptual planning of the buildings and infrastructure to fabrication, construction, and maintenance.” Mr. Goutam Das, Project Delivery Head, Pinnacle Infotech. “With its designing, detailing, and information management capabilities, it enabled the team to identify & eliminate the critical issues (clashes) in the entire process much ahead of the on-ground or on-site construction thus saving huge amounts of time and cost by eliminating rework & material wastage.” Mr. Das added.

Last but not the least, various small tools like the floor layout, stair component, etc., were of great help in further enhancing the productivity of the team. Tekla solutions empowered the project team in several other ways:

  • Collaboration through Tekla Model Sharing: Tekla Model Sharing enabled efficient global collaborative modeling within one Tekla Structures model. It gave users and project stakeholders the freedom to work with the same model at the same time in different locations and time zones.
  • Developing geometry & efficiencies with Tekla Structures: Using Tekla Structures, Pinnacle team was able to produce a large number of precast elements, address critical geometries, implement MEP requirements and a lot more, quite easily and well within the specified project timeline. Tekla’s features like system component, custom component were used efficiently & smartly to reduce the project time.
  • 3D rebar detailing in Tekla: With 3D modeling and detailing, Pinnacle project team were able to deliver better drawings than the traditional drawings. There were fewer drawing errors and simple typos, such as wrong bar sizes. Less congestion in the information flow translated into a lot less cutting & bending onsite. The executing team was able to avoid on-site clashes between rebar and, for instance, steel, mechanical and electrical elements.