As the industry continues to overcome last year’s obstacles, leaders are beginning to see it become a booming field again. With new projects popping up every day, the need for a sustainable process is top of mind for many industry leaders. It’s important for contractors to seek out resources and technologies that will help offset the challenges of their workforce. One process that helps support this notion is virtual design and construction.

VDC takes a modernized approach to project management and is a service that uses digital resources to create virtual replicas of buildings prior to them being constructed. It allows companies to make more accurate estimates for materials and other costs when completing a project, therefore, eliminating the issue of overordering and wasting materials.

From start to finish, VDC offers transparency and promotes sustainable tactics that are not necessarily implemented in today’s projects. With VDC, timelines and building constructs are easier to lay out and manage than ever before.

Transparency

VDC enables leaders to foresee issues before their projects break ground and provides an overview of what materials and products will be needed for each project. Additionally, it allows for communication and collaboration to be clear amongst team members since everyone can see the same project outline.

This level of transparency can be highly valuable during the various phases of a project’s process, especially during the design and construction phases. In the design phase, all parties involved in the project can see, in real-time, the materials and tools that are needed throughout the building schedule. Through the 3D view of every angle of the building, inside and out, contractors, engineers, designers and other associates can collaborate effectively, give input and insight into what they foresee as being the best practices and procedures moving forward, long before the project even breaks ground. This helps to ensure that the most appropriate and cost-effective (including eco-friendly) materials are being procured for each phase of the process, and significantly reduce the amount of time and resources spent on a project.

Sustainability

In the construction industry, waste of materials is one of the leading issues. Reworking jobs is an example of missed productivity—in fact, experts say that 30% of construction costs are related to reworks, but VDC significantly reduces this percentage. The technology can help ensure that sustainable and energy-efficient materials are being integrated from the ground up, and an increase in collaboration and communication helps eliminate the potential risk of having to restart projects or fix any issues that may occur down the road due to oversights during the planning phases.

Real-Time Collaboration

By eliminating waste and lack of productivity, companies have the opportunity to stay efficient internally with their team and externally with vendors and clients. VDC allows for real-time collaboration to ensure all key players can find and integrate the most cost and energy-efficient products from start to finish. Cross collaboration between teams is increased as everyone stays updated on all phases of the project. With VDC, everything is modeled and integrated together, therefore allowing all parties to collaborate and communicate together in real-time.

Cost Efficiency

VDC technology allows project managers to budget effectively. As it details everything they need for a project, it keeps production on schedule, which is one of the top performance objectives managers seek to achieve. Typically, when there are delays there is added cost, too, so VDC helps eliminate the possibility of schedule disruption.

Additionally, VDC can provide post-construction benefits, by providing building managers with valuable insights and information that helps them run their structure sustainably and at its peak performance. Thanks to VDC’s in-depth and detailed 3D models, building managers receive a vault of knowledge and information that enables them to better maintain it, ensuring that it runs as efficiently as possible and the need for updates or repairs down the road can be pushed out farther into the future.

For construction industry leaders that want to pave the way for sustainability, utilizing VDC throughout the design and construction phases of the project is necessary in order to provide the most cost-effective and eco-friendly solutions at each step of the way. VDC’s benefits go beyond the initial groundbreaking and will give the best ROI for contractors, designers and building operators alike—creating the guidebook for a more sustainable construction industry and future as a whole.