Penn State Completes Its First BIM Project
-- Building Design & Construction, 8/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
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| The undulating glass structure of the 114,000-sf Lewis Katz Building provides space for the education of 450 students at Penn State Dickinson School of Law in University Park, Pa. |
In 2000, Pennsylvania State University's law school merged with Dickinson Law School, a 170-year-old independent law school in Carlisle, Pa., about 85 miles southeast of Penn State's University Park campus. Both schools saw the merger as providing strength in unity.
Three years later, officials at Penn State proposed moving the entire Dickinson facility to University Park. Needless to say, Dickinson alumni were hardly enthusiastic about that idea.
Months of negotiations followed to reach a compromise plan: renovate and expand Dickinson's historic location in Carlisle, build a new law building on the main campus, and link them via state-of-the-art online technology.
This plan was realized in January, when the Lewis Katz Building at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law opened its doors to 450 future barristers. The school is operating as a pilot project of the American Bar Association under a variance from the ABA's distance learning rules. Every teaching space has the ability to broadcast to either campus. The law school is the first to be accredited by the ABA to offer a single degree while operating on two campuses.
The $65.6 million, 114,000-sf tubular structure, designed by Polshek Partnership, is distinct for its undulating glass exterior, consisting of eight different glazing types. The original design called for zinc cladding, but the university board wanted a more transparent feel for the school. The Building Team, led by construction manager Gilbane Building Company, convinced the university to procure the façade as a design-build effort, bidding the documents at the schematic phase and bringing the curtain wall contractor on six months before the rest of the drawings were ready.
Working with Polshek and Penn State officials over a five-day value engineering exercise, Gilbane was able to identify 381 cost-savings items; 139 were accepted, yielding $4 million in savings. Instead of using slate imported from Norway for flooring in the cafeteria, Gilbane found a quarry in Virginia that could supply virtually the same material at much lower cost. Another $1.2 million was saved by realigning campus utilities on either side of a main campus access road. By reusing excavation spoils from the law school site to fill an adjacent site for the university's arboretum, the Building Team was able to save Penn State another $750,000.
What most impressed the Building Team Awards judges was the use of modeling in the project. Penn State had never used a BIM or 3D design deliverable in any building project. Given the complexity of the law school project, Gilbane proposed developing such a model in conjunction with the university's Virtual Construction Lab. With the aid of a state grant, the parties created a full construction phase BIM model, which was used to identify clashes and help with MEP coordination. The effort will enable the university to establish standards for BIM and integrated construction in future building projects. —Robert Cassidy, Editor-in-Chief
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