The very best of the Irish BIM community was showcased at the 2018 Irish Construction Excellence Awards, where John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd. collected the prestigious BIM Excellence Award for the Multinational Data Centre Campus. We caught up with Sisk’s BIM Leader Cillian Kelly to find out more.
John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd. certainly had a night to remember at the 2018 Irish Construction Excellence Awards in the Mansion House, Dublin on Friday, March 23rd. Shortlisted in six categories, Sisk came away with four awards in total, including the overall Project of the Year accolade for Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
Sisk also collected the BIM Excellence Award for the Multinational Data Centre Campus project, while Luas Cross City prevailed as Best Project in the Civil Engineering category
This Multinational Data Centre project has been designated by Sisk as the pilot scheme project of BIM best practice for any future data centre projects for this client. Sisk, in conjunction with RKD Architects, have dult demonstrated their BIM Process and Strategy to the client’s design team and general contractors from around the world.
Winning the BIM Excellence Award was a superb accomplishment as the competition in this category was particularly strong, comprising a number of major BIM projects: Mace’s Clonee Data Centre in County Meath; Glan Agua’s Kerry Regional Water Supply Scheme; Designer Group’s Bristol-Myers Squibb LOC building in Blanchardstown; BAM’s Museum of the Future, Dubai; and John Paul Construction’s 1 Windmill Lane.
The development of a large data centre campus was awarded to John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd. as General Contractor by a Multinational Cloud Infrastructure and Operations client. This multinational data centre project will henceforth be used as a benchmark project to record benefits and successful practices resulting in efficiencies in the full lifecycle of the facility.
This project focused on understanding and meeting the client’s end user requirements through a process of “beginning with the end in mind”. The client had an ambitious construction programme with a start date of October, 2015 and handover date of December 2017. Through the collaborative planning and the use of 4D BIM, Sisk were able to deliver this complex project on time. The construction budget was agreed at the start and there was a weekly report on the financial aspects of the project.
The key to the overall success of the project was the close relationship and synergy Sisk had with RKD Architects and their leadership of the design team. RKD Architects were responsible for the coordination of their design and were appointed as the overall AE design lead to ensure commonality in approach.
To successfully implement BIM on the Multinational Data Centre Campus, a BEP was produced, which was developed and coordinated by Sisk and RKD, designed to specifically address obligations, methodology, targets, responsibilities and information exchange procedures.
The client has seen the added value Sisk’s BIM process brings to the project and will use this Irish data centre project as a benchmark for BIM across their data centre campus locations globally going forward. The client has recognised the future benefits they will have when provided a data rich Asset Information Model (AIM) at hand-over.
On this award-wining project, Sisk successfully achieved and met their objectives, namely: to reduce the overall project cost and improve predictability; to reduce the number of RFI’s and Change orders; to minimise construction waste; and to improve and validate constructability.
As the BIM Leader for John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd. in Ireland, Cillian Kelly is responsible for coordinating all BIM projects in Ireland and supporting Sisk’s UK team. He ensures that Sisk meets clients’ expectations and that they remain construction industry leaders in the BIM revolution.
Introduced to BIM while studying Architecture Technology in Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Cillian immediately recognised the major benefits inherent in intelligent 3D model-based Building Information Modelling processes and how they could give architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals the insight and tools to more efficiently plan, design, construct and manage buildings and infrastructure.
From a main contractor family business background, Cillian has been in construction all his life and was responsible for introducing digital construction into John Sisk & Son. He joined the company as a site engineer in 2011 and developed a BIM model for the Monaghan Multiuser Education Campus Project.
In October, 2016, John Sisk & Son, Ireland’s largest construction business, announced that it has achieved BRE BIM Level 2 certification – the first contractor in Ireland to achieve this BRE accreditation. It was confirmed that, going forward, all Sisk projects valued at over €10m would be BIM-generated. As BIM Leader, Cillian is responsible for the delivery of BIM Level 2 processes.
John Sisk & Son have successfully utilised BIM on a range of projects across Ireland and the UK, over many years, including the Aviva Stadium, UCD’s Science Centre, Allergan Biologics Two in Westport, Mayo (a complex 16,000 m² pharmaceutical plant) and Pairc Ui Chaoimh to mention just a few more. In keeping with their status at the forefront of the Irish construction industry, Sisk are recognised as industry leaders in BIM and this was duly acknowledged at the 2018 Irish Construction Excellence Awards.
“We would have always had an objective to be the leading innovator in the industry and BIM is key to that,” Cillian notes. “We used this Multinational Data Centre project as a pilot programme to demonstrate to our client our BIM excellence from start to finish and the ICE Award recognises what we accomplished.
“We have been entering these awards for a number of years now and BIM Excellence is an exemplar category that we were going for. The award means a great to deal to ourselves and our client and I see it as due recognition of a project that we can stand over, one we can use as a template for future work in Ireland, the UK and further afield.
“We maintained very strong relationships with both the client and the design team on this project, which was key to getting it over the line successfully.”
Cillian and his team, who were responsible for the management of the BIM model from start to finish, also used the project as an opportunity to introduce additional elements such as aerial drone footage, laser scanning, QR code and virtual reality into the digital models, broadening their BIM expertise and capabilities, taking things to a new level, so to speak.
And there’s certainly a lot more to come!
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, August 2018, Vol 4 No 7
