Background
Werfau Medical Engineering is a Russian company specialising in the integrated design of medical facilities. In addition to design services, the company also provides turnkey cleanroom solutions for creating controlled environments with minimum airborne pollutants and other foreign particles. The company employs over 150 professionals in Saint Petersburg.
Business need
Werfau is well-known as an active proponent of Building Information Modelling in Russia, promoting the benefits of BIM methods within the Russian design and construction industry, as well as in the public sector, with the federal and regional officials and the government.
“Building Information Modelling increases project efficiency tremendously, saving money and time for all project participants. However, as long as all the project parties are not employing BIM methods to the fullest, no company can achieve all the potential benefits from the transport of accurate technical data via the project model from one project stage to the next. As more and more companies begin utilising BIM methods, we as a company will also be able to take our own BIM implementation further. This is why we want to push the entire industry forward”, says Head of BIM Department Petr Manin from Werfau Medical Engineering. Petr holds a PhD in Computer Science and an MSc in Economics, and has been awarded as the BIM Leader of the Year Russia 2014 by Autodesk.
The Solution
Werfau started using MagiCAD for AutoCAD in the end of 2014. Today, MagiCAD is the company’s preferred software for MEP BIM and Werfau performs practically all of their building services design using MagiCAD Heating & Piping, MagiCAD Ventilation, MagiCAD Electrical and MagiCAD Sprinkler Designer on AutoCAD and Revit technologies.
Pilot projects for Russia’s first National BIM Standard
Werfau is currently working on a 150,000-square-meter flagship project with the Krasnoyarsk Regional Clinical Hospital in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. The project is one of the pilot projects used by the Russian Ministry of Construction as a basis for drafting and preparing the first National Standard for BIM implementation in design projects. The flagship project includes dismantling, renovation, construction of new buildings and structures, as well as the construction of an entirely new engineering and transport infrastructure. Werfau has also two other BIM pilot projects underway, a 5200-square-meter Centre for Palliative Care in Kolpino and a 5790-square-meter emergency care unit for the Alexander City Hospital in Saint Petersburg. All heating, piping, ventilation, sprinkler and electrical systems in the three BIM pilot projects by Werfau have been designed and modelled using MagiCAD
“The standardisation process includes a total of 23 BIM pilot projects in the whole of Russia. We have managed to get three projects among them and few of the other companies involved have projects in the medical sphere. The standardisation process focuses especially on reducing the time required when checking and analysing the projects, with BIM increasing the overall project quality through automated check-up processes and the BIM model replacing much of the current documentation, lists and drawings”, comments Petr.
“For example, in the Krasnoyarsk project, there are around 100 different check-ups which must be carried out to verify, for example, the minimum room sizes and other requirements as stipulated by Russian National Building Standards. There are 700 different kinds of rooms and 4000 rooms in total in the project. Needless to say, when all of the check-up processes can be automated and run using a single button whenever needed, the amount of work hours saved in a single project is astronomical”, Petr continues.
“MagiCAD reduces the number of required routine operations and provides us with automated check-up processes and calculations according to Russian standards. With MagiCAD, we can visualise the systems in 3D and check for collisions. MagiCAD comes with comprehensive MEP device and component libraries, and integrates automatically all the relevant parameter data. This makes it easier and faster to perform the necessary calculations and make decisions related to potential changes in the design. All of this improves the quality of our building services design immensely, and at the same time, saves our time by approximately 20% per project”, tells Petr.
“All in all, the use of BIM methods enables many important benefits. For example, automated collision control has in the pilot projects made the validation stage over six times faster compared to finding errors manually. In the pilot projects, automation enabled all errors to be found and fixed in approximately half a day, when finding and fixing 85 percent of errors manually would have required approximately 3 days”, Petr says.
MagiCAD’s intelligent product databases enable future-proof project models
Designing everything in 3D is becoming one of the fundamental, basic requirements in the industry. For Werfau, however, 3D is not enough. To provide customers with a future-proof solution, Werfau produces all models with full information content, to support all stages of the BIM lifecycle. Even though not many customers are yet capable of using BIM in the facility management stages, Werfau’s modelling methodology always presumes that the customer will use the MEP model in the future also for facility management.
“MagiCAD provides us with extensive databases of real products which contain full technical properties. The product properties enable us to perform quick calculations and recalculations when necessary. The MagiCAD databases are comprehensive and enable us to start working instantly without first preparing our own product libraries. This saves us considerable amounts of time”, tells Petr.
“We have found that MagiCAD suits very well the demanding design needs of hospital projects, for example coordinating a large number of MEP systems. Medical projects often require specialist solutions for medical gas and similar systems. Because of this, it is often necessary for us to create custom equipment and also to add some additional parameters to existing ones”, Petr continues.
“MagiCAD is a powerful 3D tool: easy to use, intuitive, and it provides exceptional capabilities for vertical, multi-floor modelling also on AutoCAD technology. Of course, when we do the building services design using MagiCAD for AutoCAD and the structural side comes from Revit, it is necessary for us to use 3D substrates to combine the models. However, MagiCAD’s IFC export features support the creation of combined models well”, concludes Petr.
Benefits
- Time savings of 20% per project
- Over 6 times faster validation time
- Automation enables all errors to be found and fixed in record time – half a day versus 3 days previously
- Extensive databases of real products which contain full technical properties enable to start working instantly without first preparing product libraries.
- Easy to customise intelligent and data-rich devices and components for use with specialist systems, such as medical gas
WERFAU Medical Engineering is one of the Russian leaders in creating comfortable and efficient medical facilities and environments for both patients and medical staff. Werfau is well-known within the industry for implementing and advocating the use of Building Information Modelling methods in MEP and structural design and intelligent construction. The use of BIM methods enables design and engineering decisions to be made more efficiently, reliably and based on facts. This is why Werfau wants to push BIM and the benefits of BIM-based simulations forward within the industry.