Vico Office R3 Released for Virtual Construction

General Contractors around the world have used Vico Office to improve the dynamics of their business from time consuming, drawing-based calculations to automated, model-based analysis. These progressive builders are successfully differentiating themselves from their competition by delivering a valuable and transparent Owner experience.

Vico Office leverages its integration between the 3D model, the 4D schedule, and the 5D estimate. From the 3D model geometry, we derive the construction-caliber quantities. These takeoff items each have a special assembly of material, labor, and equipment. These costed takeoff items and resources are then organized by location for an optimal schedule. The result is a cost- and resource-loaded schedule. And because of the tight integration, a design change in the model is immediately evaluated with a new schedule and new estimate.

Finland-based Hartela Corporation has embraced Vico Office as the standard construction management solution for their company. Heikki Hartela, President and CEO at Hartela, stated, “Vico Office is powerful solution from Vico Software that we will use in all of our construction planning and management. The Vico Office workflow allows us to automate the task of generating location based quantities both for our estimates and for the powerful Flowline schedules. We have been using Vico’s Flowline-based software successfully for years with great results, but typically generated our quantities manually. Now with the full 5D solution, Vico Office is THE solution for our construction planning and management.”

Clay Freeman, Chief Product Officer at Vico Software, cites “leveraged integration” as the key to the Vico Office Suite. “Like many industries, construction is divided into silos: business development, preconstruction teams, estimators, schedulers, operations teams, and the field teams. We wanted to combine the visual nature of 3D BIM with the construction means and methods knowledge contained throughout the GC firm. To achieve this, each component of the Vico Office Suite feeds information to the next planning task in a 5D Virtual Construction workflow. A coordinated project model feeds quantities to the team. Those detailed quantities feed cost estimates, and the line items in an estimate feed the project schedule. Subcontractors are brought into the process to assess and plan proper crew and resource sizing to produce a complete project plan where all stakeholders own the plan and are committed to a consistent set of outcomes. Everything from material and labor cost to precise task durations are derived from this information model and kept up to date as inevitable changes occur.”

The Turner Corporation, ranked #5 on ENR’s Top 400, is a leading construction management firm that deploys Vico’s solutions. Viktor Bullain, VDC Manager at Turner Anaheim commented, “The Vico scheduling solution, with Flowline technology that fully-utilizes location-based management principles in addition to traditional CPM, is working well on our field projects. The result is a better schedule with up to 10% compression and no added risk. This affords us a unique advantage that we offer to Owners – the ability to deliver a project faster without risk to budget or safety. And our experience with the solution in the field in the hands of our knowledgeable operations personnel has been phenomenal. Our teams are enjoying tremendous success with it. Now we can turn our attention to model-based estimating and tying the two processes together to continue to utilize the advances in Vico Office.”

Many in the AEC Community are embracing BIM and are familiar with the dimensions of BIM. Vico Office is the first purpose-built construction solution that allows users to “plug in” the BIM authoring application of choice and then perform constructability analysis, quantity takeoff by location, model-based scheduling, model-based cost estimating, and on-site production control.

3D BIM for Visualization

Vico Office works out-of-the-box with popular BIM authoring tools such as Graphisoft ArchiCAD, Autodesk Revit, and Tekla Structures. Release 3 includes additional importers for Google SketchUp, CAD Duct, 3D DWG, and IFC files.

3D BIM for Clash Detection

Vico Constructability Manager provides an integrated solution for clash detection and coordination resolution so that your team can identify constructability issues in the planning stage before they occur in the field.

3D BIM for Quantity Takeoff

Vico Takeoff Manager derives construction-caliber quantities by location from BIM models; these quantities by location power more accurate schedules and estimates.

4D BIM for Scheduling and Production Control

Vico LBS Manager is an organized approach to dividing the project into work locations. Location-based planning and management ensures that trade crews flow smoothly from prerequisite to successor tasks without interference. Locations defined in LBS Manager also yield quantities by location for use in scheduling and procurement.

Vico Schedule Planner creates construction schedules by using BIM model elements and associating them with tasks and the corresponding materials, resources, and labor; all of which are optimized by location.

Vico Production Controller is used in the build phase. Planning the schedule is only half the battle - the other half is managing on-site production. Near real-time production updates from the site using Vico Production Controller enable forward-looking schedule forecasts so problems are flagged with ample time for remedial action.

Vico 4D Manager is a 4D simulation presentation tool that provides rich 3D visualization of the project timeline to the extended construction team.

5D BIM for Estimating

Vico Cost Planner is a powerful model-based cost estimating solution. Based on the concept of Target Cost Planning, Vico Cost Planner provides an environment for an evolving cost estimate that readily compares one version to another and any version to the original Target Cost Plan.

Vico Cost Explorer is the first model-based budgeting application that allows the extended project team to visually understand which aspects of the project are contributing to changes in cost. Pouring over rows and rows of spreadsheet data is a thing of the past.

Construction Management Reporting

Vico Office Client is the cornerstone of the Vico Office Suite. Here model versions are managed, information is shared across the team, and an inline reporting engine pulls information from all departments to deliver constructability reports, cost- and resource-loaded schedules, proposed design changes, cost estimates, cash flow reports, and other customizable reports.

According to Mark Sawyer, CEO and President of Vico Software, “This release of the Vico Office Suite is the result of years of development and millions of dollars of investment by Vico. Along the way our customers have reaped the benefits of virtual construction, literally picking the jobs they wanted to win in a highly competitive building construction market. Thanks to their input, R3 represents the most complete, most efficient, and most field-tested approach to 5D Virtual Construction available. R3 is not just another release for us. It combines our vision and our customers’ real-world experience in one integrated solution that interoperates with the world’s most popular 3D BIM applications. This is the one we’ve all been working toward.”

For more information, please read What’s New in Vico Office Release 3 and review the new movie, 5D BIM for Dummies. Read how the 5D Virtual Construction Workflow extends BIM to the enterprise or watch the 5D Workflow Webinar, archived for convenience.

About Vico Software

Vico Software, Inc. provides software and services to the commercial construction industry. Building owners, general contractors, and construction managers use our software and our services to reduce risk, manage costs, and optimize schedules on complex building projects. Vico’s 5D Virtual Construction solutions pioneered the category of BIM for Construction, and they remain the industry’s most integrated approach to coordination, quantity takeoff, cost estimation, project scheduling, and production control. The new Vico Office product suite continues this tradition making it possible to leverage many important BIM file formats such as ArchiCAD, Revit, Tekla, CAD-Duct, IFC, 3D DWG, and even SketchUp. The benefits of our solutions and services have been proven on hundreds of building projects to date totaling more than $72 billion in construction worldwide. 

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See also

Vico Software website
Construction Software - list of products and companies by TenLinks.com

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