BIM to field: Robotic total station and BIM for quality control

One of the reasons why some construction professionals are excited about BIM is because of its ability to visualize the installation of prefabricated building modules. As far as using BIM for facilitating the prefabrication process, we expect that all building components are installed correctly as indicated in the model. However, in many cases, building components such as cast-in-place concrete beams and columns are installed a little bit inaccurately because the formworks can be sagged or twisted while fresh concrete is being placed. Our research tested how effectively BIM and Robotic Total Station technology would facilitate to advance the quality control practices on field. For this investigation, we invited three Robotic Total Station technology venders to a 107,000-square-foot academic building construction project jobsite. Our test confirmed that the use Robotic Total Stations expedited the process of marking the layout points on the jobsite or collecting point data from existing facilities. Along with the results of our test, this paper also presents some lessons we learned from the field test.