High Concrete Group Wins Precast Category Tekla BIM Award for Statue of Liberty Museum

Tasked with creating a new museum on Liberty Island to house the valuable artifacts from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island is an honor in and of itself. High Concrete Group, LLC, a family-owned company that has delivered precast concrete structures for nearly 50 years, was named Precast Winner for the Statue of Liberty Museum for the Tekla BIM Awards.

The company provides structure and enclosure systems, components and accessories for virtually every kind of project from residential to warehouse and retail structures and sports stadiums, including several exceptionally complex buildings.

One of the goals of the Statue of Liberty Museum is to provide more educational experiences to all visitors. The National Park Service asked the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation to build a new freestanding museum on Liberty Island. The new museum will feature universal access, as well as hurricane resistant and environmentally conscious construction. It is scheduled to open in 2019.

High Concrete Group has been a Trimble customer and Tekla Structures user for well over a decade. High Concrete creates constructible models for 95 percent of its projects to LOD 400 (Level of Development), employing Trimble’s BIM software, Tekla Structures, to achieve this.

On Liberty Island, the Statue of Liberty Museum features precast concrete panels around the perimeter, with the exception of a glass facade that faces Lady Liberty and gives patrons of the museum a view of the statue from every angle. The structure also features a large staircase that leads to a green roof for a unique vantage point of Lady Liberty.

High Concrete was responsible for the large insulated precast concrete panels around the outside. The panels have a very distinct vertical rib pattern and the concrete mix and finish were created to give the appearance that the panels rose up out of the stone around the island. The precast panels were designed to withstand flood waters and also interface with the steel structure. The precast concrete was modeled in Tekla Structures to a Level of Detail (LOD) 400, which means the concrete parts are modeled accurately and in their correct location, all hardware including lifting devices are modeled and all reinforcing were added to the pieces.

There were many challenges to this project. For example, it was on an island and required special shipping parameters. High Concrete had to ensure all panels were able to be shipped on a barge to the site. The project also has a lot of steel interface, so they relied heavily on reference models from the steel supplier to ensure the steel structure and precast panels aligned perfectly. The complex shape and design elements of the project made it difficult to visualize the final project, so they created rendered augmented reality models of the project and offered the customer a unique experience to visualize the project using the Microsoft HoloLens.

One benefit they gained from the use of Tekla Structures is the fact that it is a database of information that can then be used to feed other systems such as their ERP system, SAP. They populate the cast unit information, bill of materials and other data from the data from the model. For this project, coordination was very important with the interface of concrete panels and the steel structure so they used Tekla’s ability to bring in the steel vendor’s model as a reference model, as well as creating IFC files of their model to share with the customer. Finally, they used Tekla’s ability to create layout points that could be exported and loaded into a total station that the layout team used to layout the panels, as well as check location of site cast hardware.

They also used Trimble’s Sketchup to create a textured rendered model. They exported the Tekla model into Sketchup where they added photo-realistic textures and inserted into a model of Liberty Island found in Sketchup’s 3D warehouse, and then put that Sketchup model onto the Microsoft HoloLens using the Sketchup Viewer app.

High Concrete answered some questions about the project for AECCafe Voice:

1. What problems were you hoping to overcome with your approach to the structure of the building or project?

We hoped to overcome the problems that arise in all projects when there are different trades interfacing with each other. For this project, the design is a steel roof and interior structure and our precast walls support the steel beams. This allows the building to have more of an open feel as there is no need for steel columns around the perimeter. With our precast panels carrying the steel beams, we needed to communicate and coordinate the design to the steel supplier to ensure that the connections we cast into our panels would be adequate for the loads and in the correct location so that all parts would install correctly and without delay.

Also, because the job site is on Liberty Island, it needed to remain open to the public, which made space a premium for construction. Coordinating with the other trades on site ensured  smooth erection of our panels so as to not hinder other trades on site any more than necessary.

2. How did Tekla Structures meet the needs of the project?

Trimble’s Tekla Structures allowed us to easily and accurately coordinate designs with other trades. The steel supplier gave us up-to-date IFC exports of its steel from the software they use for design and we imported that into our model as a reference. This allowed us to visualize the exact location and size of each beam without waiting for drawings to be created by the steel supplier, interpreting those drawings, then remodeling the steel into our model. It saved us time and we avoided potential mistakes from interpreting and modeling.

Tekla Structures also allowed us to clearly communicate our intent and needs to the GC when erecting the wall panels onsite.

3. Were you using it in conjunction with a BIM solution and if so, how did that work?

Trimble’s Tekla Structures is our BIM solution and prefer it because it is geared to meet the needs of manufacturing, like for steel in steel structures or precast concrete pieces for concrete structures. We do, however, have to communicate with other BIM solutions when they are used by other stakeholders, such as architects. Tekla Structures allows us to easily communicate with these programs using IFC or other formats.

4. What types of challenges did you run across while designing and then implementing the solution?

The design of the building created a potential issue with attempting to lay out embeds in the CIP foundation, which would be necessary to connect our panels to the foundation and layout where to set the panels. The building walls are not square to each other which would make it difficult to layout using traditional methods of transit and measuring devices.

5. How did Tekla Structures help to address challenges?

We used Tekla Structures to create and easily export layout points that we provided to our surveyor, who imported that data into a Total Station. This allowed him to accurately, and in a timely manner, layout all the necessary points for the project.

6. How did Tekla Structures integrate with other products in use on the project?

We prefer to model all the parts and other trades that interface or may interfere with our precast. This project has a steel interior structure that we carried on the perimeter. This made it necessary to get the model created by the steel detailer and importing it into our model as a reference model. The whole process made it very easy to update any changes that were made to the steel structure.

7. What types of ROI did you achieve with the project by using Tekla products?

Using the ability to bring in steel models into our model as a reference saved us time because we didn’t have to decipher structural drawings and model the steel ourselves. It also saved us in potential field remedials that might have occurred had we not properly placed the connections required for the steel structure. Also, being able to use layout points generated directly in Tekla and then transferred digitally, saved time by eliminating the need to create detailed site layout drawings and decreased the time the crew member was onsite doing the layout. It also resulted in more accurate layout.

Tags: 3D, AEC, architects, building information modeling, construction, design, engineers, infrastructure, SketchUp, Trimble, visualization

Categories: 2D, 3D, AEC, architecture, BIM, building information modeling, construction, engineering, infrastructure, SketchUp, sustainable design, Tekla, Trimble

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