CASE STUDY
Bowen Engineering
Situation
Bowen Engineering is a national contractor headquartered in Indianapolis,
Indiana with a focus on industrial and municipal markets including water/
wastewater plants and power plants.
Challenge
A majority of Bowen Engineering's work takes place in existing facilities
that are already packed with infrastructure, which makes it challenging to
find a viable route to install new utilities. The work is often installed in very
tight spaces and it can be difficult to accurately verify tie-in points and avoid
clashes with existing elements in the facility.
Result
Bowen's use of mixed reality technology has paid dividends almost
immediately.
For example, on a recent power plant project in Missouri, Bowen Engineering
had to run new piping and add structural steel supports to an existing
building. Walking the site with the Trimble XR10 and accompanying Trimble
Connect software, project engineers found a clash between the existing
structural steel in the facility and a valve in the model. Since the clash was
caught before construction had begun, they were able to adjust the model,
validate that the environment was 100% accurate, and avoid the entire
expense and hassle of correcting the clash during construction.
Bowen Engineering estimates that the piping issue discovered in the Missouri
power plant would have impacted the project with an additional 16–24 hours
of crew time between delays and rework. This would have translated into over
$4,000 in labor costs alone.
"It has always been difficult to truly visualize construction work until it's
actually complete," said Jared Redelman, Manager of Corporate Controls
at Bowen Engineering. "Now that there is technology available to view
construction concepts in 3D, the use cases seem limitless."
Solution
Bowen Engineering is primarily using Trimble Connect and the
Trimble XR10 with HoloLens 2 as a visualization tool to walk jobsites
and see the designs and drawings in real time so they can identify any
clashes or constructability issues. This capability is especially helpful
in pipe detailing because it gives their project teams the detail and
the perspective possible only when they are on site and before they
actually start the work.
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