CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 March 2008
Implementation Investments
Autodesk Honors Rutherford & Chekene for Integrated Project Delivery with Revit BIM Experience Award
Autodesk, Inc. announced that Rutherford & Chekene (R&C), a San Francisco-based structural and geotechnical engineering firm, has been awarded a Revit BIM Experience Award for its use of building information modeling (BIM) to promote integration and collaboration across the extended building team. For more than two years, R&C has used Revit Structure software for design and collaborate on large technical institutional projects. Through its use of BIM, R&C is coordinating designs and improving visualization, analysis and documentation. This close collaboration helps the team identify issues early in the design phase.
"The use of the Revit platform for BIM has become a strong differentiator for Rutherford & Chekene in the marketplace," said David Bleiman, S.E., principal at Rutherford & Chekene. "By using Revit Structure, we are now recognized as the 'go to' structural engineering firm for BIM in Northern California with current BIM projects totaling over $3 billion dollars."
While collaborating with EHDD Architects to design a new $65 million biomedical life sciences building for the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), R&C was able leverage interoperable Revit Structure and Revit Architecture models to coordinate all design elements early in the design process. Sharing their Revit-based models for design coordination and clash detection resulted in a design process that worked to control building costs, schedules, and ultimately, outcomes. During the conceptual design of the project, R&C used Revit Structure to create four design options and used the link between Revit and ETABS, a structural analysis module, to analyze them. Once the analysis was completed, the Revit model was updated accordingly and allowed R&C and UCSC to make informed decisions at a very early stage in the project, reducing material waste and improving design quality and building performance.
R&C also utilized the Revit platform to work closely with architectural firm Sasaki Associates on the design of a student activity center for California State University, Chico. The ability to reference both the Revit Architecture and Revit Structure models allowed all project stakeholders to visualize the complicated building. During a review of the facility's gymnasium, R&C used the 3D visualization features within Revit and the dynamic walkthrough feature of Autodesk NavisWorks to communicate the particular design approach, saving weeks of review time. The design team was also able to provide the Revit and NavisWorks models to the University's construction management department to incorporate into their BIM curriculum for students.
"Rutherford & Chekene shares Autodesk's vision for BIM as the process to enable integrated project delivery," said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, Autodesk AEC Solutions. "We look forward to further innovation from this industry-leading firm and their continued use of BIM to collaborate across their extended building team."
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