The Virtual Design + Construction (VDC) team is exploring innovative software and ideas to enhance Tocci’s constantly expanding VDC skillset.

This effort has mostly focused on modeling geometries from a point cloud (scan to BIM) and verifying as-built conditions against a design model (construction verification). Both innovations look very promising and will undoubtedly deliver higher quality products to our clients and project teams.

Scan to BIM

We’re very impressed by the highly accurate and visually stimulating point cloud deliverable from laser scanning. But oftentimes, architects, engineers, and building owners may want a BIM model delivered as well. Tocci’s VDC team has established a workflow to serve this need and is taking our current situation to dedicate a lot of time to innovation. One of our most recent initiatives is to implement a new software that will help better trace the point cloud and automate a portion of the work. These improvements can be summarized as:

• Improved cost efficiency – less overall time when modeling large scale and repetitive geometries
• Increased capabilities – more uncommon objects (i.e. half round windows) can be precisely modeled

We used the new workflow to model our office building, which has a great deal of unique windows and brick work. It took less time than anticipated to finish, and proves its efficiency.

This being said, Scan to BIM has the potential to consolidate our workflows and empower us to better serve our client with a cost effective and high-quality product.

Construction Verification

Laser scanning is a powerful quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) tool used to monitor projects and avoid expansive re-work. Comparing as-built scans against design models could quickly detect errors that may appear during construction. We have been exploring an additional new software and implementing it into our existing workflow to achieve the following objectives:

• Increased cost efficiency – bypass some of the time-consuming steps in current workflow
• Enhanced visualization – hide unrelated scan points
• Improved communication – professionals with diverse backgrounds can easily understand the verification results

When we did a sample study analyzing the placement of structural steel, a clean visualization was generated as the end deliverable. The project team could easily tell which deviation was above tolerance, with red indicating “bad” while green meant “good”.

Thus, Construction Verification has great potential to improve Tocci’s QA/QC capabilities and ensure high quality products delivered to our client.

Members of our team have used this time working remotely to research and test new software that will make VDC deliverables more efficient and value-adding going forward. Our department thrives on exploring innovative ideas and implementing them into our workflow, and we are always on the lookout for new technology that will benefit our team and Tocci as a whole. We are very excited that these innovations (Scan to BIM and Construction Verification) are now being implemented on our projects.