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Virtual Design & Construction
Virtual Design & Construction
Digital Transformation for AECO

  • Modelling Future Spaces Effectively with BIM

    Modelling Future Spaces Effectively with BIM

ITC Group

Kolkata, West Bengal

Services

Coordinated BIM Model with Quantity Takeoff

Introduction

ITC Group, one of the largest Indian corporate groups,  recently came up with the idea of having an ITC Campus with  its location in Rajarhat, an upcoming suburb of Kolkata. The  upcoming campus is a mixed-use project with IT and corporate  offices, hotel, convention centre as well as residential towers.  Currently, the project’s superstructure, which consists of 3  main buildings along with lush green landscape, is underway.  The ITC Campus is being envisioned as a physical  manifestation of the city’s rich artisanal culture, with the east and the west stone facades been manifested as vertical  canvasses showcasing art and craft in the Bengal School tradition. The urban space of the campus is developed as a  canvas to host and celebrate the Bengali socio-cultural ethos.

The Preconstruction Challenge

The ITC Central Project Operations team, in most of its past projects, and even the ones in most of the upscale markets relied on 2D design via pre-construction drawings on AutoCAD. This has, in most cases, resulted in varied set of challenges, with the most obvious one being the length of time taken to design on 2D which extended further due to multiple changes at various stages resulting in almost reinventing the design wheel. The most significant aspect though was the lack of visualisation of the final design output as it would stand after construction. The multitude of details that would be missed out often and need to be taken care of during the construction phase was simply too overwhelming. This would often result in a lot of complications during the construction phase and often escalate the costs too due to the various changes that the construction consultants would need to do to capture the details. The multi-stage information capturing too would be scattered across various processes and people in the system. Increased time and budgets, and lack of visualisation thus  became critical challenges in the pre-construction planning and design stages

Driving Efficiency with 3D Modelling and BIM

Building Information Modelling (BIM) for 5D VDC is enabled by the Architecture, Construction and Construction collection of Autodesk. The set of BIM and CAD tools provided in this collection is supported by a cloud-based common data environment that facilitates project delivery from early-stage design through to construction. 5D VDC uses the collection to create high-quality building and infrastructure designs with conceptual and detailed design tools, and visualisation & simulation tools 5D VDC team has been involved construction consultancy providing virtual design and construction workflows to all stages of construction life cycle. i.e. Design, Pre-Construction to Construction, and has thus saved precious time and money. Initially, the ITC team got 5D VDC onboard for the external landscape development modelling work for the ITC Rajarhat Campus. With a huge prospect of potential advantages of 3D Modelling, they involved the team for pre-construction design and planning for the entire project. This brought in the team’s 3D modelling expertise via Autodesk’s collection, and the project got the required rectification.

“We could track exactly what was stuck where and resolve the issues with the person concerned instead of holding multiple meetings to figure the same. The centralised system also helped track and quantify even minor errors in drawings when they moved from one workflow to the other, and thus helped determine the quality of deliverables from engineering consultants."

​– Krishan Saharan | Senior Project Manager, ITC Central Projects Organisation

Centralised Data and Smarter Workflows

Beyond design modelling, 5D VDC implemented Autodesk’s cloud-based BIM 360 Docs to centralise project information, enabling controlled data sharing across design and construction teams. This eliminated fragmented silos of information, reduced rework, and improved transparency in every stage of delivery. With digitised, centralised records, the ITC operations team could generate weekly progress reports, track accountability, and make better-informed decisions. The integrated BIM-driven approach not only streamlined workflows but also strengthened collaboration across teams, ensuring higher project quality and execution control.

Feeling the Impact 

With the numerous advantages from 3D modelling via BIM, the material impact generated seems to be immense. The digitisation and better design workflow management have certainly aided in reducing time and enabling effective communication across the teams which worked towards a common goal with a more targeted approach. With enhanced visualisation, details that could never be captured before could now be captured. All this could positively result in a significantly reduced project timeline and costs. However, due to the COVID-19 situation, the project underwent delays, and hence the exact impact will only be known once the construction is fully completed.

“It looked extremely complicated and overwhelming to begin with. But with 5D VDC’s expertise on the training and use of 3D modelling via BIM, our learning curve has been steep, and we are hopeful that this will result in clash-free models without the need for multiple reiterations across different consultants involved in the project. This project has been like a proof of concept for other ITC projects and tracking of certain goals from this project will set the benchmarks for the other projects."

​– Raghu H Annaiah | Senior Design Manager (Structures), ITC Central Projects Organisation