Case studies of BIM practices within mechanical contractors

Mechanical contractors play a vital role during construction of a building project, which could affect the overall project success significantly. Traditional 2D paper-based solutions for design and fabrication of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) components has proven to be an inefficient and fractured method to communicate the project design. Moreover, if a problem arises during construction, such as clashes between MEP systems and structural components, the problem often has to be solved onsite, which is not cost efficient, because it often requires rework. Therefore, most mechanical contractors today are switching from traditional paper-based workflows to adopting Building Information Modeling (BIM) processes into their practices. One of the greatest benefits of BIM is that it facilitates exploring clashes and coordination issues within a virtual environment instead of in the field, consequently reducing requests for information and change orders along with the associated health and safety risks. This paper presents a case study based on content analysis results of the interviews conducted with two leading Midwest mechanical contractor companies. It explores current BIM applications, such as clash detection and fabrication, benefits and challenges of implementing BIM within both companies. The first major finding of this research is that BIM standards and manuals are helpful tools for the development and implementation of BIM models. Also found is that contractors need to make adjustments to their workflows to achieve better results with their BIM implementations. Finally, there is a need to investigate how to use BIM models for facility management in an effective manner and possibly fuse them with building automation systems.