a.aa MMC M11 52pp Web

Heating, Ventilation & Indoor Air Quality
How Modular Approaches are
Transforming Building Services
2018 felt like a breakthrough year for offsite construction, with developers across the country embracing
modular methods and the government dedicating £420m to the development of new technologies.
A product BIM Object is available for the pipe
insulation, supporting the use of level 2 BIM
and offsite construction methods.
Kingspan Kooltherm Pipe Insulation was installed as
part of the modular service construction of Airedale
International Air Conditioning’s Headquarters.
The building service sector has been
amongst the most successful adopters of
these approaches, achieving significant
reductions in the scale and complexity of onsite
work along, with greatly improved predictability.
BIM
As with other areas of the construction industry,
the rising use of offsite approaches in the service
sector is intimately linked to the adoption of Level
2 Building Information Modelling (BIM).
Building service engineers have traditionally been
required to take a pragmatic approach to their
work. Service specifications are often not finalised
until projects are well progressed and practitioners
typically must work around late changes in the
design and layout of spaces when they arrive on
site. In contrast, the collaborative approach of
modelling, sharing and integration within Level 2
BIM, is now allowing service designs to be
effectively ‘locked in’ before work even begins on
site.
To give a sense of the scale of this change, the
Building Engineering Services Association
estimates that a typical BIM model may comprise
just 70 standard drawing components for the
main structure, compared with over 70,000 for
mechanical and electrical services .
The ability of modelling software to automatically
flag clashes has proven especially beneficial,
allowing issues to be resolved at the design stage.
The accuracy of these models is further aided by
product-specific BIM objects, which are available
from online libraries such as BIMstore. This
certainty in design has been fundamental to the
adoption of offsite approaches.
Offsite
By moving fabrication of services to dedicated
manufacturing facilities, chaotic building sites and
occasional scheduling conflicts are replaced with
a clear, controlled and safe process. Large modular
service units can be fabricated in preassembled
standard configurations to a reliable schedule.
Fabricators are readily able to access all sides of
the sections without restrictions, allowing focused
quality control, particularly on large and complex
service modules. Problems with availability of
skilled labour can also be reduced as staff are
able to operate from a single location.
Once completed, sections can be held in storage
until the site is ready to receive them and larger
modules can be lifted into place with heavy
machinery, often eliminating the need for
scaffolding. In addition, as large, complex sections
can be installed in a single action, the time spent
working on site is cut down and site waste is
greatly reduced.
Several firms have already reported significant
improvements in operating efficiency through the
use of BIM Level 2 and modular construction. For
example, NG Bailey has highlighted typical cost
savings of up to 35% (including labour reduction
costs of 40%) and overall programme time savings
of 90% .
In Practice
One project to benefit from the use of offsite
service approaches is Airedale International Air
Conditioning’s Headquarters. Following a serious
fire, the building needed to be quickly
reconstructed. BAM Construction used BIM at the
design stage, and made the decision to deliver the
industrial development as a turnkey project to help
save time and resources.
Nick Howdle, project manager from BAM
Construction, discussed the project: “Using BIM
has been an invaluable resource for ensuring that
we could accurately estimate the costings and
timings, including effectively overlapping M&E
installations without incident. We would have
struggled to achieve the programme without
offsite methods. BIM helped with clash detection,
and we had zero snags with the pipework. On a
£1.3 million package that is highly unusual, if not
unheard of.”
The use of BIM also helped the project team to
identify solutions which could meet the
demanding performance criteria. For example, all
pipe insulation used on the project was required to
have FM Approval, whilst the pipe insulation fitted
within the research and development test
chamber had to support an extreme temperature
range of between -20 to +50 degrees Celsius. The
product BIM object and accompanying literature
for Kingspan Kooltherm Pipe Insulation showed it
could meet these requirements with a slim
insulation thickness.
Next steps
The rise of modern methods of construction is
only set to continue this year, with five government
departments now committed to making a
‘presumption in favour’ of offsite manufacture for
suitable capital programmes. By utilising modular
building services within this approach, project
teams can help to achieve further savings in
project timescales and costs.
www.kingspanindustrialinsulation.com
28 Feb 2019 M11