On Middle school #3 the site utilities were modeled for coordination. In the field there is always a debate about who makes the final connection. In the BIM world we ran into the same situation...two trades with connecting models but neither taking the time to create the connection.
The focus of our BIM site utility coordination was to check for clashes between systems that crossed each other and not necessarily focused on the connections. Besides, this connection looks ok in the model, right?
Wrong. As was discovered in the field and as you can see in an elevation view of the model below, this connection would require the sewer line to run uphill.
The root cause was an error in the Civil drawings that showed the connection elevation lower than the rest of the sewer system:
Once this issue was identified the BIM model was very helpful in looking at and testing other options in a virtual environment; however, had this connection been modeled in the 1st place, the issue would have been discovered before the pipe was in the ground. Lesson learned.
