Madinat Khalifa Health Center
About the Project
Madinat Khalifa Health Center, as part of an integrated healthcare system, will provide general and specialized primary healthcare services in Doha, Qatar. The Project consists of a four-story main building, ancillary building, substation guard houses and parking area. The main components include primary walk-in services, Phlebotomy Laboratory, Diagnostic Imaging, Specialized Clinics, Dental Clinics, Maternal – Child Health Clinic, Family Medicine Clinics and Administration Offices.
PWA has implemented collaborative BIM approach on the project since early stages following the industry best practices and international standards.
Business Case & Challenges
The state of Qatar has provided the country with a metro network to connect communities within Doha to suburbs and to connect Doha with other cities to support the country’s growth. Some sections of the metro are underground. At the same time the State of Qatar is developing the health sector and facilitating it by providing additional hospitals and health centers. Madinat Khalifa Health Center is one of the health centers being developed within the healthcare program.
One of the underground metro tunnels is passing beneath the plot dedicated for Madinat Khalifa Health Center and this was one of the main challenges faced during the development of design for Madinat Khalifa Health Center.
The analysis of the impact of foundation and building construction on the adjacent tunnel is critical. One of the main concerns during the design stage was to avoid causing any deformation or change in the earth pressure surrounding the existing tunnel resulting from the building load.
The nature of the plot being narrow led to having very congested setbacks which required intensive coordination to accommodate the utilities and services within the limits.
Overcoming the Challenges
At the early stages of the project, the project Architects have liaised with Qatar Rail Authority to obtain the necessary information of the existing rail tunnel. Having this information, designers were able to superimpose it with the health center models to make sure that the foundations of health center is located outside the tunnel’s influence zone. BIM tools for model authoring Revit and coordination tool Navisworks were key factors to resolve conflicts and to assure that there are no clashes between the existing rail structures and project design. This has greatly helped in obtaining the statutory approval from Qatar Rail Authority.
The project team has utilised BIM solutions throughout the design process to achieve high quality of design documentation. The review of information thus generated was simpler as it was spatially coordinated. Autodesk softwares Revit, Civil 3D & Navisworks Manage used in the project provided improvements in decision making and increased efficiency by allowing designers to rapidly sketch layouts of the project or make changes to the standard set of work. 3D design views and massing tools have given designers the opportunity to quickly try out different design options specially at the congested setback area where all external networks were overlapping thus allowing to detect and correct problems early in the design process and that equals big savings on time.
Improved Collaboration
Benefit was realised in terms of bringing the different discipline design teams to a common level of understanding and the time reduction associated in reviewing and interpreting design information with the help of intelligent models. The visualisations generated from models improved client engagement, facilitating discussions regarding the design ensuring the client’s requirements were met.
The interactive visualization models ensured suggestions can be taken quicker than conventional design review process. PWA used Autodesk’s tools such as Navisworks, Design Review and Autodesk Online Viewer to review the design models where providing feedback was much easier and it also helped to communicate the ideas in a better way.
Achieving Sustainability Goals with BIM
Sustainability aspects were considered at early design stages to achieve sustainability goals through incorporating accurate building materials information within the models. All the submissions required for validation of sustainability requirements were extracted from the BIM models created by the design team.
Conclusions
PWA has implemented a systematic approach towards management and production of information using BIM on the project. The process improvements using BIM are initiated at early design stages of the project and will be carried out till project completion and operation stages. These process improvement using BIM solutions aim at delivering beneficial business outcomes to asset owner and the supply chain with reduction of risk and cost through use of project information.
The project has deployed BIM tools at various levels which facilitate paradigm shift towards model-based project delivery which is need of the hour considering the inefficiencies of conventional processes.
