As one of our major refurbishment projects, Senator House, London sits proudly within GRAHAM’s extensive commercial building portfolio.

Valued at £21.8m, the office refurbishment project includes a full transformation to occupied floors, the creation of roof top terraces, external amenity space and over cladding to several elevations - to name a few changes.

Work began in early 2017, with completion expected in late 2018. The refurbishment and extension of Senator will significantly improve the building’s energy performance, with aims for the building to achieve a BREEAM Excellent energy rating.

Digital tools at Senator

Digital tools have played a major role in streamlining work flows throughout the different stages of the project.

Our chosen site based digital tool is BIM 360 Field, a management software that allows for cloud-based collaboration and reporting, with the ability to create site diaries, complete QA/QC and access drawings at your fingertips.

Its flexibility has proved a useful tool for the City of London site.

By introducing BIM 360 Field to the site, savings in both cost and time have been achieved by the Senator site team throughout the duration of the refurbishment, particularly during the snagging phase of the project.

Snagging at Senator

Snagging is a key element of BIM 360 Field that the site team has fully embraced. The site team inspects the work of subcontractors, noting minor defects that must be complete prior to the handover of the building.

With BIM 360 Field, this allows us to complete the snagging phase digitally, attaching photographic evidence and informing the company responsible of any re-work necessary.

Compared to traditional methods, snagging using BIM 360 Field allows for instant uploads, the pin pointing of snags on the most up to date drawings, and improved collaboration with our supply chain through an interlinking subcontractor portal.

With all the information available on one single platform, duplicate documents are eradicated, eliminating confusion and producing information driven results and streamlined workflows.

Snagging through BIM 360 Field has greatly increased collaboration throughout the project between stakeholders. Client and design team collaboration, in particular, has increased from using Field by allowing us to create individual issue types, assisting the client to record snags alongside the project team.

This in turn reduced duplication at the snagging stage and allowed every member of the site team to view the snags before efficiently closing them out when completed.

With quick access to templates on BIM 360 Field, the site team can document recurring snags and issue these in daily/weekly progress reports - again supporting efficient close out.

“BIM 360 aids collaboration not only on site but also off site. Automated updates are sent to the personnel responsible, so everyone involved is constantly updated in real time. Involving multiple team members ensures that everyone has visibility of the issue and supports collective working to resolve them.

"Accurate location plotters, the option to provide a comment at any stage of the snagging/de snagging process and having a simple clean and clear pro-forma helps the subcontractor work through its respective snags without having to constantly request further information.

"Moving to a paperless system keeps everything at hand and can provide important updates for monthly statistics and client progress meetings,” said Peter McNeill, GRAHAM’s Site Manager.

The Senator site team has fully utilised BIM 360 Field and as a result its hard work and implementation of this digital tool has enhanced the project greatly, with over 95% of snags at status closed at final stages of the project.

“As BIM 360 Field is accessible to all parties involved, it means that they can all access the issues without trawling through old emails or paperwork. BIM 360 Field has proved to be extremely effective for issuing snags once they are raised, and then creating reports which can be filtered to suit the issue type.

"We have found that they (the site team) find this easier to find the snag with the use of plans and photos and close these out. As these are logged with photographs for each issue, there is no better way to record the information. It makes it simple to go and find these at a later date which is something that cannot be done effectively when carried out using paperwork.

"As it is so easy to use, it is therefore quicker to close out, saving us valuable time on site,” said Kian Jafari, GRAHAM’s Senior Site Manager.

At GRAHAM, we always want to add value and we fully believe that BIM 360 Field does just that.

With access to dashboards, visual representations of the project data can be quickly and effectively reviewed - allowing site team members to visually analyse the progress of the snagging phase and make information driven decisions.

Commenting on the importance of BIM 360 Field, Rob Harman, GRAHAM’S Project Manager, said:

“It’s great having a ‘one stop shop’ for all parties to record inspections and raise observations. BIM 360 Field is detailed in its summary, identifying issues and accurately pin-pointing locations with photographs - all of which happen in a ‘real time’ basis. Once the system has been embraced it is a simple effective system to operate and manage with a number of reporting and scheduling mechanisms providing different options.”