Large-scale developments require intricately coordinated efforts to reach efficient completion dates. Tools that allow a large group of construction and development professionals to work in unison help to make that task a reality.

Enter Building Information Modeling, a process that creates digital models of buildings and their systems and allows the user to simulate managing the physical and functional characteristics of the final product in a 3D, virtual environment.

It’s a tool that Cannistraro has been using for decades that still proves useful today. Representatives from the company’s project team at Boston’s Seaport Square chatted with Bisnow about their experience with BIM.

“I would say that the scope of BIM really depends on the scope of the project,” project manager Phil Gagnon tells Bisnow. “We would consider a full BIM project as a full 3D coordination effort."

HVAC field foreman Matt Lees tells us that since he started with the company, BIM has been a very useful practice. “I had worked for a couple of different contractors and I've seen in the last 10 to 12 years how BIM's evolving. I can tell you that with the larger project sizes, BIM is just about standard. Cannistraro is extremely educated on the technology and we know the value that 3D has.”

A large part of that value is realized through the ability to prefabricate directly from the model.

At Cannistraro, all coordination is performed in-house. The company has a full-time BIM/VDC group that works as the gatekeepers of the various models for its projects, which is an added layer of quality control during the pre-construction process.

Once fully coordinated and approved, completed models are used to spool individual prefabricated components at the company’s fab shops. The end results are high-quality piping assemblies and modular building systems that get delivered to the job site just in time for installation.

Stay tuned to future issues for more on how prefabrication and modular construction is making an impact on the industry. To learn more about this Bisnow content partner and how it deploys BIM, click here.