AECOM’s technical leadership has adopted the Building Information Modeling method as the global standard for technical delivery and is developing processes that will significantly increase its usage in delivering services to its clients. “BIM-based design and project implementation results in higher quality work, greater efficiency and lower costs to the client,” said Jim Walsh, AECOM chief technology officer. In addition, BIM yields a tremendous amount of data that can be used over the lifetime of a project, which provides the owner/operator analytics-based information to monitor performance, perform preventive maintenance, detect critical variances and improve operational efficiencies.
One of AECOM’s marquee projects for which BIM was used is the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California. The $US20.6-million Sustainability Base was designed with William McDonough + Partners acting as design architect and AECOM acting as architect of record, to achieve LEED Platinum™ sustainable design certification and to approach net-zero energy consumption. The project presented several challenges including managing the communication of AECOM team members based in San Francisco, Moffett Field and Orange County, Calif.; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Phoenix, Ariz.; as well as meeting strict budgetary restrictions from NASA that accelerated the project timeline. www.aecom.com
