New London, NH – Eckman Construction has been completing improvements to the Ware Campus Center on the New London campus of Colby Sawyer College since May. The building houses the student
dining facility, mailroom, offices, and meeting rooms. The building is being transformed into
a Student Center with multiple services provided all under one roof and promoting student
involvement at a social hub. The project includes a 15,000 square-foot addition, as well as
renovations to most of the 47,000 square-foot Student Center.
The campus dining and kitchen facilities have continued to remain open throughout construction,
with work proceeding in phases through various area of the building. The core of the kitchen will
remain with the addition and an upgrade of a new dishwasher area and servery, which have been
completed. As renovation continued through this past summer a considerable cooperative effort
allowed the kitchen staff to prepare and serve meals on an uninterrupted summer schedule.
When students returned to campus in September, they were greeted with huge changes. By Labor
Day, most of the renovations to the existing building were complete, and students are using
portions of the new 750-seat dining room. Before any of this took shape on campus in reality, a
computer-modeling program was utilized to generate the space virtually.
Utilizing Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) allowed the Eckman team to inspect the building
and all of its components in detailed three-dimensional views on their computer screens before
building materials and systems were fabricated. The Ware Center was completely modeled using
Autodesk Revit software, incorporating everything from foundations and slabs to insulation
and rooftop mechanical units. Eckman’s VDC coordinator “built” the student center from the
foundation up, on his computer, months before the work was actually performed on the job site.
The model was created using information from the architect’s drawings and details combined
with framing diagrams, foundation plans, and steel fabrication drawings. Accurate and detailed
models of mechanical units, provided by manufacturers such as Trane, were also incorporated
into the model.
As the Revit model was being built, some areas were identified where more information was
needed. For instance, the locations of two windows were not dimensioned on the plans. Stopping
the virtual building process to ask the architect for clarification was a lot simpler than it would
have been to stop construction work to ask for that clarification. By the time the model was
complete mny of these issues, both large and small, were identified and resolved.
The Eckman team is using Autodesk NavisWorks to automatically check for any conflicts with
the location of mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection systems. Our team has worked
with subcontractor to correct and revise locations of equipment where revisions were needed.
They then made the changes, supplied a new model of their systems, and the Eckman team
incorporated that new information into the overall project model. This iterative process has been
quick and efficient, helping to avoid delays and change orders during construction.
When the project is complete, Eckman will turn over a high-quality student center to the college
along with a complete as-built model of their new facility. The project, designed by S/L/A/M
Collaborative of Glastonbury, CT, and civil engineering by Jesseman Associates of New London,
NH is scheduled for completion in January.
