Dunham Associates, Inc.

Revit BIM Experience Award Winner

Founded in 1960, Minnesota-based Dunham Associates is a mechanical and electrical consulting firm, providing engineering services to its clients across the country in aviation, commercial, education, healthcare, hospitality and retail sectors. With nearly 50 LEED™ accredited professionals on staff, the firm offers extensive knowledge and experience in the sustainable design of all types of facilities, including the mechanical and electrical design of the LEED Platinum Great River Energy Headquarters in Minnesota. Other notable projects include: the Wilder Center, St. Paul, MN, targeted for LEED Gold certification; and Dunham’s own LEED Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI) Silver headquarters.

Dunham adopted Revit® MEP software for BIM in 2007 to better coordinate its mechanical and electrical designs and to enhance project collaboration with its architectural and structural partners. Since then, Dunham has used Revit MEP to complete five projects through design and documentation, and the firm’s 30 users are currently working on five other Revit-based projects in various stages of design. In addition to Revit MEP, the firm also uses AutoCAD®, AutoCAD® MEP and Autodesk® Buzzsaw® software.

Honored for:

• The use of building information modeling (BIM) for sustainable building systems engineering design.
• Successful collaboration and coordination with multiple disciplines, including architecture and structure, using BIM.
• The comprehensive use of Revit MEP software for the design and documentation of large building projects.

Reseller: CAD Technology Center, Inc., Golden Valley, Minnesota

Notable Revit BIM Projects

Maple Grove Hospital
Maple Grove, Minnesota
300,000 square feet

Architect: BWBR Architects
Mechanical, Electrical and Low Voltage Consulting Engineers:  Dunham Associates

Project: The Maple Grove Hospital is a new full service hospital currently under construction and scheduled for opening in December 2009. The 96-bed facility includes a lower level and five above-grade levels. The lower level contains the mechanical and electrical spaces as well as hospital shops, offices, a laboratory and a cafeteria. The first floor contains the emergency department, imaging and both inpatient and outpatient surgery. The second and third floors each contain 48 patient rooms as well as an ICU, a birthing unit, a pharmacy, a rehab gym and three medical/surgical wings. The facility is being built to expand as the community grows—with the fourth floor currently set aside as space for 48 future inpatient rooms. The fifth floor is a mechanical penthouse where a majority of the facility’s air handlers reside.

A unique feature of this particular hospital is a large equipment yard that houses the three electrical service transformers, two emergency generators, the chiller system cooling towers and the bulk oxygen tank.  In addition, like most hospital projects, the building systems of the facility are extremely complex and must provide both flexibility and expandability for future changes or additions.

BIM Experience: This large hospital project was Dunham’s first experience with Revit MEP. The firm used the software to design and document the mechanical and electrical systems for the facility, as well as all of the equipment and associated piping from the building to the mechanical yard. The software’s 3D modeling environment enabled Dunham’s engineers to better visualize the emerging design and fit piping, ductwork, and equipment into tight spaces—optimizing space usage within the facility.

Using Revit MEP, Dunham coordinated its design across disciplines by linking the plumbing and electrical systems models to the HVAC model, and also by leveraging models from the architect using Revit® Architecture and the structural engineer using Revit® Structure software. By sharing Revit-based models, the entire design team was better able to identify and resolve interferences and other issues early in the design phase—issues that normally might not have been found until construction.

Dunham also used the architect’s design model as a basis for performing its energy calculations. Dunham engineers extracted space and room information from the architect’s model within Revit MEP and then exported that information via gbXML, from Revit MEP and into Trane’s TRACE software for load calculations. In addition, airflow and load calculations for each room were posted back to the Revit MEP model as room attributes—to begin equipment and ductwork sizing.

University of Minnesota Duluth, Civil Engineering Building
Duluth, Minnesota
33,000 square feet

Principal Architect:  SJA Architects
Design Architect: Ross Barney Architects
Mechanical, Electrical and Low Voltage Consulting Engineers:  Dunham Associates

Project: This mixed-use classroom/lab facility is a state-of-the-art teaching and business research facility. The building is currently under construction and includes work labs, classrooms, support offices, conference rooms, and facility support areas. Built with a sustainable mindset for the benefit of the occupants and the University, the building is targeted for a LEED Gold rating. Sustainable design elements include a displacement ventilation heating and cooling system, rain water capture, low consumption toilets with manual dual flush valves, automatic urinal flush valves, lighting control systems, and high efficiency motors to reduce energy use.

The two major features of the facility are the Hydraulic and Structural Labs, which will be used for both research and testing. The Hydraulics lab contains a 60-foot-long flume that will utilize rainwater captured from the building’s French drain system and will be visible via glass curtain walls separating the second level lobby and the lab. The Structural lab is designed with a “strong” wall and floor, which allows for pressure testing via large hydraulic pumps located within the space on structural elements that attach to the strong wall/floor systems.

BIM Experience: On this project, Revit MEP was particularly beneficial for interdisciplinary coordination, plumbing isometric generation and change management. Its 3D modeling environment and design visualization capabilities gave Dunham’s engineers—as well as the structural engineer and architect—the ability to visualize the interaction between all building components. This enabled Dunham to carefully coordinate the equipment with the structure and architecture of the building and maximize space utilization. The software’s ability to automatically model water and waste risers and its built-in 3D isometric views increased the efficiency of the design team during the plumbing design process and for drawing creation. Design visualizations such as 3D views and rendered images were also utilized in the construction documents—to further clarify the engineering design for the installing contractors and owner.

The parametric change management at the heart of Revit MEP enabled Dunham’s designers to make rapid design changes without having to worry about manually updating the related documentation. When using Revit MEP, a change made to a specific design element is automatically propagated to all the affected views, sections, drawings, and schedules. This feature was particularly useful during the early stages of the project when Dunham’s designers were evaluating different design approaches.