Sondotécnica Uses Solibri in the Analysis of BIM Models for SEHAB/SP Social Interest Housing

Sondotécnica has carried out this work in project management services for SEHAB, the Municipal Housing Department of São Paulo, Brazil. Sondotécnica involved 11 BIM models for Social Interest Housing under the contracts of the Joint Urban Operation “Água Espraiada”, Lots A, B and C, and checked those models using Solibri Office.

The BIM models of the projects contracted by SEHAB are delivered to Sondotécnica in IFC format for auditing and validation, which are then loaded into Solibri for quality validation, compatibility and even Code Checking, which consists of checking the models adherence to applicable legislation and regulations.

“Right from the start of using Solibri in the audit of SEHAB models, it was already possible to notice the gains we obtained. When carrying out analysis of projects in BIM in a manual and investigative approach, it was necessary to dedicate an enormous amount of time, mainly considering the complexity of the information of a BIM model for budgeting. We noticed greater agility and greater reliability in the analysis”, comments the architect Mônica Pinheiro from Sondotécnica.

SEHAB's BIM models are also used as a basis for quantities take off, which will enable the subsequent quotation of involved labour costs. In order to standardise the codification and technical specification of the elements, thus guaranteeing the continuity of the information, SEHAB developed, based on official national classifications (SIURB and SINAPI), a SEHAB Elements spreadsheet, which indicates the model information requirements, such as code, name, technical specification, in addition to the IFC classification for each building component (doors, masonry, piping, landscaping items, etc.) from different disciplines.

In order to control and guarantee the quality of the BIM models, Sondotécnica performs an audit of the BIM models, also verifying that all the information requested by SEHAB has been met.

Sondotécnica, in partnership with CADTEC (partner of Solibri in Brazil), developed checking rules for use in the Solibri Office, focusing on auditing and model quality, thus enabling part of the analysis to be carried out in an automated way. At first, rules were created to verify whether the requirements indicated by SEHAB had been met. Therefore, modelled elements with incomplete or divergent requirements could be quickly identified in the project as a whole in a fully automated way.

After ensuring the quality of the model in relation to the SEHAB requirements, indicated in the Elements Spreadsheet, a second step was the creation of rules for validating complementary parameters. According to the SEHAB contract with the designers, the data that can be extracted from the BIM model, and which are necessary for budgeting, must be delivered in a pre-established standard, called “Calculation Memory Map”. This standard considers the necessary requirements for budgeting in official spreadsheets used by SEHAB, such as the SIURB and SINAPI spreadsheets. The contractor must, therefore, extract, from the native software used for modelling, the necessary data to fill in this Calculation Memory Map.

Sondotécnica must audit the material delivered by the designer, verifying all data related to budgeting through IFC analysis. In addition to the textual data, checks against the model geometry were then automated, by extracting information directly from the IFC data schema. In this way, it was possible to ensure that the relevant information for the extraction of quantities was duly present in the modelling and appropriate for forwarding to budgeting.

“Ensuring model quality using automated processes greatly optimised our analysis time, since the manual approach would require checking the components one by one, which elements are not classified properly and which information is missing. The partnership with Cadtec allowed the generation of rules for Solibri that ensured not only agility, but, above all, quality in the analysis of the BIM model”, comments the architect Aline Costa from Sondotécnica.

Additionally, Solibri Office also allowed the creation of ITOs (Information Takeoffs), a software resource that provided the use of IFC to extract the same data requested in the Calculation Memory Maps, enabling the crosscheck and validation of information in relation to those delivered by the designers, which were generated directly from the modelling platforms. In this way, the model audit service, using automation, has become a more productive process, in addition to ensuring greater credibility in the results, when compared to processes performed manually.

“Using Solibri's technology, we were also able to secure our workflow. After identifying the non-conformities of the models, we produce the reports either in BCF or in customised PDF formats, generating complete reports shared in the CDE. Providing the designers with comments in BCF format, generated in Solibri, made it possible to view the comments in the native model with greater precision”, comments architect Stefania Dimitrov, BIM and Innovation manager at Sondotécnica.

For more information about this Sondotecnica SEHAB use case, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

For more information about the Solibri Office platform in Brazil, please contact [email protected]
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