Way to go, does not only help Politicians and non technical people but even the users. It will be easier to see how things progress and possibly identify problems before you get to construction stage.

I agree with Gary
Make it simple so the people can grasp what you are saying.

I have had on numerous occasions the task of explaining projects to councillors, politicians and MPs. They dont want science they want to know what is to be done and how its going to affect the people who they represent.

Modelling in 3D or power point on drawings can bring reality to a Project. It has certainly made the job easier to sell both externally and internally.

I wonder how many of our planners have done any concept or tender planning, here modelling and indeed any method of getting the message across as quickly as possible is essential

Kind regards
Oscar

I agree with Paul and I am afraid I don’t agree with Ron on this one. The visualisation of what your project will look like in the future has almost limitless benefits. The most obvious is improving the communication that we as planners and schedulers do as an everyday part of our jobs.

I recently gave a lecture about planning and one of the themes I used was that planners not only need to be good at setting out how and when a project will be constructed, but we must be good at communicating this. Part of our job is to communicate, for without that our work will not be understood. In my view, anything that helps improve this communication is a good thing. I know it might be difficult for some to understand, but a lot of people just don’t understand critical path networks or even barcharts – they just cannot visualise what will be happening in the future from the plans that planners produce. There is no better communication tool than a picture.

I will give you some examples about real projects that we in Mace have used graphical visualisations of our programmes….

1.     The London Eye – an observation wheel erected over the River Thames in central London – we had to explain to contractors, the City authorities, funders, the client and the press how this enormous structure would be constructed horizontally over the river and then lifted to its vertical position.
2.     Airports – demonstrating when and how to construct new aircraft stands in an operating airport environment.
3.     London winning the 2012 Olympics – to explain how the infrastructure and venues would be constructed and when to the International Olympic Committee as part of London’s bid to host the Games. This had to be done in 20 minutes.
4.     City centre projects – on numerous occasions we need to explain to the police and City Authorities how and when complex projects in congested city centre environments will be constructed. We add to these the logistics that will be used to construct the project.
5.     Straightforward office developments. A newer development for us to use graphical visualisations to work out with the specialist trades exactly how a project as simple as an office development will come together. This goes right down to individual components.
6.     Building over railway stations – we use graphical visualisations of the programme to show when the interfaces between construction and the public will be undertaken.

On all of the above projects we used 3D visualisations of the programme. These not only helped the non technical people to understand what would happen and when, but also the contractors, engineers, architects etc.

In the past, this sort of visualisation was produce in 3D manually – which took a great deal of time. Now, we link these 3D visualisations to the programme, so that if the timing of the activities changes (which at concept stage it invariably does), the 3D models are updated automatically. This is a fantastic development and saves considerable time.

There is an enormous market out there for using this type of 4D communication software and the simpler the products become, the more wide spread will their use be.

Gary France
Mace

I saw some introductions before about 4D-design. It is to link design drawings to P3/MSP schedule. The products is from Bentley working with microstation V8

you can visit Bentley’s website for more info.

Sorry, wrong link. It should be:

http://www.commompointinc.com

[moderator - I fixed the original links. You need to use double quotes in the html.]

In my opinion, 3-D modeling of schedules sounds ‘neat’ but has absolutely no benefit in the real world. What purpose is there in knowing what the structure will look like after 6 months? There has to be a purpose and a reason to develop features and frankly, I can’t imagine one. That is why 3-D schedule modeling is not being used.

First have a need; then develop a product. It does not always work the other way around.