BIM, literally became a magic wand, when Balfour Beatty applied it in the remodelling work of Gateway Church. :-

Senior project manager, Robert Feille at Balfour Beatty Construction was ecstatic with the collaborative effort of the employees at Beck Architecture, Balfour Beatty, the contractors and the clients involved in the whole process.

The process of expansions and remodeling inside the Gateway church is finally over. The procedure of this beautification and expansion took around 2 years. People, for the first time, attended the service in the completely new, spruced up worship center at Southlake in Texas. Recently the doors of the church, with its completely new amenities were opened to the mass through a celebration to mark the completion of the project. The devotees are happy to get a new home for congregation. The new home for congregation can capacitate more than 18,000 people together, while its previous capacity was around 30.

At the planning stage, somebody just came up with the idea of taking up BIM as an important tool for the reconstruction work. Loads of challenges were there to meet. But, again, implementation of BIM modeling could reduce the amount of waste during the process. The construction company along with the engineers faced such a challenge while installing the ceiling features and the catwalk. The ceiling was basically a very wide expanded area without any tangible reference points depicting the features. Feille further pointed out that earlier, the contractors burnt their mid-night oil in laying out chalk lines with different complexities. There used to be room for errors and re-buildings needed to be done. It is needless to say, with implementation of BIM, such errors can be done away with.

The campus is sprawled over an area of around 180 acres. The new building is located on around 205,000 square feet area. The new construction includes top end audio, a worship center, six auditoriums, high definition broadcasting system, etc. So, after a spruce up, with efficient BIM structuring, Gateway church has emerged in its completely new self.

Relevant Link:
http://balfourbeattyus.com