Mixed Reality for Onsite Construction at Trimble

Jordan Lawver, Portfolio Manager, Mixed Reality for Trimble conducted a webinar for the Trimble Buildings Basecamp on the topic, “Mixed Reality Use Cases for Onsite Construction – ROI Overview and Customer Interview.”

His webinar was very timely in that perhaps now more than ever before, the building industry looks to ways to transform construction and connect constructible data between office and field sites.

Mixed Reality Use Cases for Onsite Construction – ROI Overview and Customer Interview

“We have a bunch of people on a construction site working together, and we need clear visibility into what each other are doing,” said Lawver. “Trimble has acquired a lot of companies to fill gaps all the way from the facility management of that building, sharing constructible data. Not everyone is using Trimble products, so it doesn’t matter what point solution you’re using for any given task, and all that information flows into one hub, Trimble Connect, our construction platform. Everyone lives in that ecosystem – they communicate and collaborate within Trimble Connect.”

In connecting the physical and digital worlds, Lawver says XR tools bridge the physical gap, connecting constructible data between office and field. You can add one more layer – mixed and augmented reality to make office data actionable on the site and provide ongoing insight back to the office.

SketchUp with the Microsoft Hololens demo

“Mixed reality is a two way flow,” said Lawver. “It’s all about capturing data as well, making insights about what’s going on site, feeding that information about what’s going back into the office. This is an idea that has been around Trimble for decades. Last year we announced the 2019 XR10 with HoloLens and Trimble Connect for HoloLens 3.0.”

The Trimble XR10 with HoloLens 2 snaps onto your hardhat, and is put through testing the body in the world to make sure it is safe. You can still use hearing protection, as you want mixed reality hardware to fit in with your work process. You can merge this tool right into your day-to-day process without sacrificing safety  measures. Trimble teamed up with Mobius, a bone conduction system that enables workers in very loud construction sites, to hear a remote assistance phone call. It works in the back of your skull in conjunction with your earphones.

“Trimble Connect is a kind of glue that holds this whole system together,” said Lawver. “When you’re collaborating in Connect you can access it from a number of Edge devices, can get into VR, Android, etc. HoloLens is a consumption piece from Trimble Connect. It allows you to go onsite and overlay it within the context of a 3D environment. The overarching goal is reduce downstream clash and rework.”

GA Smart Building using Trimble Connect to train people to use complex assemblies, and used mixed reality out on the construction site, to validate their installs. They’re using HoloLens and Trimble Connect in prefab which saved them almost 20,000 euros. You can take the same design file out to the construction site, considerably reducing rework on structural steel columns which is another 20,000 euros savings.

Remi Visere of GA Smart Building, based in Toulouse, France, joined the company in 2012 and has headed the department for almost four years. Lawver interviewed him about the company’s use of Trimble Connect.

The Trimble Connect journey for GA Smart Building involved Gehry Technologies in 2014 with a tool that they presented to Tekla to apply the industrial approach of GA Smart Building on some components they were already being precasted and fabricated for HVAC equipment.

“We already had a single approach for products, we had the opportunity to build this big project, a full BIM approach to take advantage of every single BIM 3D model and establish a full collaboration process to work on every single model process we had there,” said Visere.

“We were able to find a tool that was easy to use, easier than Dropbox but way more efficient than any tool we had to collaborate. We began to work with Gehry Technologies, entered into close relationship with Gehry and then the Trimble team around Trimble Connect, we tested every stage. At the moment in 2020, six years later, every single project we have is driven by Trimble Connect partners and also connected to it. It is very easy to push Connect as a really good way to work with a BIM model and use HoloLens out in the field.”

Lawver noted that GA Smart Building has applied mixed reality many different ways, for design review, prefab, training and assembly and onsite, QA/QC and clash detections.

“What value do you find it brings to the construction process?” Lawver asked.

“It has global value through different use cases,” said Visere. “This technology allows us to educate people to technology and give people a new way to think about using the BIM model, direct access to the BIM model, and all the processes we use with the BIM model. Even if they were not working digitally already, it helped them to go through this and jump on this simple technology with their smartphone, and helped us to push through the terrain at the last stage. Just two years ago you had forty people in the group. We are now 700 people, using the BIM  model then.  Today it’s more than half of the company on a daily basis, people in the office, architects, in the field, everyone jumped on it in two years. We were able to push all the technology around the HoloLens very fast.”

“When you were rolling it out to new people, was it easy to get them to embrace the technology?” asked Lawver.

“People were skeptical at the beginning, but we encouraged them to learn, try and integrate, put a helmet on someone’s head, let him see what he could see, imagine what the potential was, then remove the helmet,” said Visere. ‘When people tried the helmet they understood the potential and they also got it with the other technology, BIM tools, etc. They got it instantaneously, they helped us develop the use cases, so involving the people was not really difficult. We don’t have many helmets, and maybe we’ll invest in more equipment, but at the moment we are at a high level testing stage.”

“What hurdles did you find to scaling the use of technology, areas you will target as instant wins in the business where you want to expand technology?” asked Lawver.

“We’re talking with you and your team about two use cases 1)  expand the use of the helmet inside factories for companion assistance and the simple use case to use helmets to sequence the rebar assembly cage mounting for people,” said Visere. “At the moment they are using a 3D model on the computer to help them understand big assemblies they have on paper. With the helmet they can work on contextual models with sequencing. They can then focus their energy on welding and other important parts. They have tools that leave them free to do this. With some adaptation of the helmet, especially resistance against welding, people inside the factory said it’s very efficient. It’s not a big additional value in the factory, but for big complex parts it can help very much and ease the process between office and worker.

The other use case 2) is quality check onsite. We already tested it many ways, comparing HVAC control. Everything that is design is compatible with existing things and there are no discrepancies. Worksite directors are interested because they saw the potential to ease decision making and the ability with connectivity to not have to know how to use the helmet. They can anticipate problems and solve them before they occur onsite. They can solve problems virtually. The next step is we hope to have between five or ten helmets in five years. And also, because of Covid-19, we don’t know when we will go back to a normal rhythm of working.”

Tags: 3D, AEC, architects, BIM, building design, building information modeling, collaboration, construction, covid-19, design, engineering, engineers, infrastructure, laser scanning, mobile, reality capture, SketchUp, Tekla, Trimble, visualization

Categories: 2D, 3D, AEC, AECCafe, apps, architecture, BIM, building information modeling, civil information modeling, Cloud, collaboration, construction, construction project management, engineering, field, field solutions, file sharing, holograms, IES, IFC, infrastructure, IoT, mobile, point clouds, project management, reality capture, site planning, sustainable design, Tekla, terrain, Trimble, virtual reality, visualization, wearable devices

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