Virtual Design & Construction

Whether it is building information modeling (BIM), laser scanning, or drones flying; technology can benefit every phase of a project.

Realizing these benefits, LKCo. has fully embraced the investment in technology and made it a part of our workflows from preconstruction through project handover. Our in-house Virtual Design and Construction team evaluates each project individually and uses the best available tools to maximize efficiencies, reduce schedule and, most importantly, reduce costs.

This is all made possible through constant research and development to ensure new technologies and software are put to the best use and adding value to our projects.

Our VDC Services Include:

Laser Scanning

Nothing gets a project started on the wrong foot more than having inaccurate or missing information. That is why LKCO uses a top of the line Leica P30 to capture accurate existing and as-built conditions. We use laser scans to plan activities, conduct floor flatness analysis, create 3D models, confirm design documents are accurate, and to compare project progress to design intent.

2D/3D Logistics

LKCO uses a combination of 2D CAD files, Revit models and laser scans to create a project’s logistic plans. These resources provide an environment to analyze project conditions, identify potential challenges early on, and quickly test multiple scenarios. The end result is a well coordinated plan for success that is easy for all project team members to visualize and execute.

4D Simulations

Viewing static 3D views at various phases of a project provides a ton of value, but adding the entire schedule to a 3D model and having the ability view an animation of the entire construction process takes it to a whole other level. LKCO combines a project’s BIM with a project’s P6 schedule using Synchro Pro. This allows the project team to play, pause, rewind, zoom in/out, and orbit around the 3D construction animation to easily identify conflicts between tasks and adjust the schedule as needed.

Open Space

Taking progress photos of a project is generally easy. The challenge is what happens to those photos after they’re taken. With tens of thousands of photos taken over the course of a project it can be a very time-consuming effort to organize them in a way that makes it easy to find the right photo at the right time. And even if a team does a great job taking hundreds of photos in every room it always turns out the one photo that’s needed was either not taken or can’t be found. For these reasons we were quick to jump on board with OpenSpace to become their first enterprise customer. OpenSpace allows us to quickly capture full 360 images while automatically mapping them on the plans making the images easily accessible and easy to find. And the best part is it adds no extra time to our workflow, the process to capture a complete 360 walkthrough of a project’s progress is no different than walking the site as we already do on a daily basis. The results allow us to simply tap the location we want to look at on the plan to open a complete 360 view of the space, time travel to a previous date to see what’s behind walls and above ceilings, and do side by side comparisons between project progress and our 3D coordination models. And since all this lives in the cloud team members who can’t visit and walk the site on a regular basis can walk the project and see progress virtually through OpenSpace.

Virtual Reality

One of the biggest benefits of BIM is the visualization of a project in 3D instead of 2D. Virtual reality takes that to another level by putting people within the virtual world allowing them to experience a project before a shovel is even put in the ground. Lee Kennedy uses VR with internal staff, subcontractors, clients, and the community as a tool to communicate and make decisions. Every project now has a Revit model that can be brought into the virtual world, allowing team members to experience the building to gain a better understanding of design intent, identify challenges that may arise throughout the course of construction, make design decisions, and communicate logistic plans to the community. Even with all these tools in place LKCO realizes the world of BIM and construction technology is changing rapidly. We understand the best solutions used today may not be the best for tomorrow, so we are continually evaluating new tools to improve and add to our current services.

Matterport

OpenSpace is a great tool for weekly or daily progress updates, but sometimes we want a tool that has a few more features and captures higher resolution images. That’s where Matterport comes in. Matterport works similar to our laser scanner in that the capturing process involves multiple setups to capture a space and it will capture everything within line of site. The difference is instead of doing this with a laser it’s capturing information with high-resolution cameras and uses photogrammetry to process the information. The result is a high-resolution walkthrough of a project similar to Google street view, but within a building. The results can be viewed, measured, notated and even viewed in VR. It’s a useful tool at the start of a project to review and notate existing conditions. And at the end of a completed project we can provide a handover for facility management that has equipment tagged with O&M materials and another version as nice finished product to post to a website for marketing purposes.

Drone Mapping and Site Analysis

LKCO’s in-house Certified Remote Pilots use a Phantom 4 Pro and an Inspire 2 equipped with clash avoidance sensors for safety and a 4K camera to capture aerial images/videos of project progress. These images/videos can be used to track progress on their own, but we also import the images into Pix4D and Drone Deploy to create high resolution maps, 3D point clouds, and 3D meshes that are used for project analysis, planning, measuring, and tracking.