St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital (Brisbane)

In a collaborative effort with major Queensland health care provider, Uniting HealthCare, ActiveFacility’s services have been used in a pilot project at St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital to store and manage data about F-wing, the hospital’s most recently constructed building.

F-wing is a technologically sophisticated building, with eight storeys above ground and three underground levels, that houses wards, operating theatres and a car park.

Around 200 as-built paper drawings and associated documents contained information about the building, with a total of around 5000 separate pieces of information or ‘building entities’.

The pilot project carried out by Cameron Stephenson and his ActiveFacility team began with converting all the existing paper-based information into digital files. This involved scanning each of the building-related documents (including as-built drawings, specifications and operating manuals) to PDFs.

During this process the data was converted to the ISO-endorsed Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard.

The result was the creation of a Building Information Model (BIM) – a three dimensional model that describes the building, its entities, their characteristics and behaviour.

The BIM data was then loaded into the ActiveFacility model server to provide on-line storage and management of the data with accessibility 24/7 via a standard Internet connection and standard browsers.

At any time, designated users can move around the complex data in the building information model using a simplified navigation menu. They also can communicate with the system in natural language words and sentences that ActiveFacility tailored for United HealthCare’s own particular way of describing entities within the building.

The pilot at St Andrew’s Hospital took 18 months and was completed in December 2004.

Outcomes

ActiveFacility has proven to be a useful solution for storing and managing data within the hospital in compliance with Industry Foundation Classes (IFC).