What is BIM technology? It refers to “Visualization” through 3D digital modeling. In the 21st century, research and applications of BIM have made significant breakthroughs. The construction industry is increasingly adopting this innovative technology. For example, in the Changsha Meixi Lake International Cultural and Art Center project, led by Beijing Urban Construction Group, BIM has been applied from the very start. It supports everything from early-stage design clash detection, technical control, quality and schedule management during construction, to post-completion operational management. This clearly demonstrates the substantial impact BIM technology has had on engineering construction.
BIM Technology: Essential for Complex Projects
In China today, many large public buildings feature complex designs that often involve foreign designers for conceptual phases, domestic firms for detailed design, and specialized construction companies for execution. This multi-party collaboration can lead to fragmented designs and clashes between different disciplines, creating challenges and hidden risks for subsequent construction stages. Therefore, it is crucial for general contractors to actively implement BIM technology from the project’s outset to address these issues effectively.
The Changsha Meixi Lake International Cultural and Art Center, undertaken by Beijing Urban Construction Group, is located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Lei Feng West Avenue and Meixi Lake Road in Plot 101, Meixi Lake area, Dahexi, Changsha. The project consists of four main parts: a large theater, a small theater, an art gallery, and an underground parking lot. The Grand Theater reaches an elevation of 59.90 meters, the Art Museum 42.50 meters, and the Small Theater 22.50 meters. The site covers approximately 88,080 square meters, with a total construction area of 125,936 square meters. The structure is highly complex, including civil engineering, steel, and curtain wall components, among others. Multiple disciplines, sub-projects, and construction teams are involved. As the general contractor, Beijing Urban Construction Group recognized these complexities and challenges early on and adopted BIM technology to address issues and control construction. This approach enabled thorough joint review of engineering drawings, minimizing wasted resources, reducing delays caused by clashes between trades, and improving overall project efficiency.
Comprehensive Application of BIM Technology in the Changsha Meixi Lake Project
The primary goal was to leverage BIM technology throughout the construction lifecycle. Given the project’s complex structure, interdisciplinary coordination and effective management were essential to minimizing problems and ensuring smooth progress. BIM was applied across multiple stages:
Civil Construction Phase: The civil structure posed significant challenges, including a large steel-concrete composite structure in the Grand Theater’s front hall, an irregularly shaped audience hall seating area, wide-span stage beams, and ultra-high single-piece shear walls in elevator shafts. No mature construction methods existed for these, so BIM was used for safety planning, coordination across trades, and ensuring structural stability. BIM simulations were conducted before construction, guided the construction process, and verified accuracy upon completion. Key BIM applications included clash detection between support and civil structures, construction plan simulation, optimization of steel reinforcement and stirrups at complex rigid structure nodes, spatial positioning of seating, reserved opening placement in shear walls, safe construction of ultra-high shear walls, and quality and safety defect management.
Secondary Structure Construction: Covering approximately 9,000 square meters, the secondary structure involved diverse masonry materials, tall building heights, and complex mechanical and electrical pipeline layouts. BIM replaced traditional construction methods to ease these challenges, primarily by enabling clash detection between civil structures and MEP systems during detailed design, accurately positioning reserved openings in secondary walls, and optimizing the placement of structural columns and ring beams.
Curtain Wall Design Deepening: The external curtain wall spans 90,000 square meters, including 70,000 square meters of GRC panels with unique shapes and complex structures. The largest GRC panels measure 6 meters by 2.5 meters and form a spatial hyperbolic surface, complicating production, transport, and installation. Since no two panels are identical, traditional 2D drawings could not convey necessary details. Instead, the curtain wall and detailed design were fully modeled in 3D, enabling all stakeholders to review and collaborate based on the 3D model. BIM was used for visual progress reporting and decision-making, coordinating structural layers within the narrow gap between steel structure and curtain wall, detecting clashes between the skin and steel models, and managing the arrangement and clearance of drainage gutters, smoke exhaust pipes, main equipment, MEP pipelines, floodlight troughs, and their interaction with the steel framework.
Steel Structure Design and Construction: This project’s steel structure is an exceptionally complex irregular space, ranking among China’s most challenging large-scale projects. With a total steel volume of about 22,000 tons, the steel frame includes stage structures, audience hall roof beams, elevator shafts, entrance honeycomb beams, arch walls made of circular and radially inclined steel pipes, roof columns, and floor beams. The spatial relationships are intricate, featuring numerous bent, twisted, and curved components, making fabrication and installation difficult. The honeycomb entrance structure is a twisted box-shaped element with large dimensions and weight, while the arch wall forms an irregular curved grid. Two-dimensional drawings cannot adequately represent these features, so BIM was used to guide construction. BIM applications included clash detection between steel and civil structures, lifting procedure planning, construction simulations, spatial positioning of complex steel components, design and fabrication of large cast steel nodes, arrangement of tire support systems, and planning for heavy lifting machinery placement.
Currently, the project is in the midst of large-scale steel structure construction. Future phases will involve curtain wall installation, detailed design and construction of MEP systems, interior finishing, and post-completion operations. Throughout, BIM technology will serve as a crucial backbone, enhancing its value and dynamic application.
Case Study: BIM Application in Meixi Lake Project
One notable example is the reinforcement arrangement at complex nodes within the rigid structure of the Grand Theater’s front hall ring beam. This beam is a massive U-shaped concrete ring, measuring 95 meters in length, 1.2 meters in height, 2.95 meters in width, and 60 meters in diameter. It features a large-section H-shaped steel-reinforced concrete rigid structure that supports nearly 1,000 tons of honeycomb-shaped cantilever steel components.
The beam-column nodes have densely packed reinforcement bars, with up to 101 steel bars and connecting plates tightly spaced, making anchoring control difficult. BIM technology was used to create precise 3D models of these nodes, accurately representing the positions of steel bars and connecting plates. This enabled the design of embedded anchor bars and shear keys that avoided conflicts with steel bars and plates on site. Additionally, all anchor bars and shear keys utilized perforated plug welding. BIM effectively resolved the complex steel bar layout challenges, guided on-site construction, prevented collisions and embedded part placement issues, minimized rework, and ensured structural safety.
Li Fangyi and Zhang Xianda
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