Martino and Luth, Inc. Structural Engineers is a Colorado-based consulting firm that offers BIM-based structural engineering, detailing and constructability services across the united States.
Martino and Luth
was founded by Russel Martino and Gregory P Luth in 2004. As founders of the Renaissance Design Group, Russ and Greg believe that integrating engineering, art, science and craftsmanship into their design results in a better product for their clients.
As a structural engineering firm, they use Tekla Structures exclusively to produce their structural design contract documents. In addition to their structural engineering offerings, the Renaissance Design Group, including Martino and Luth and GPLA, offer wide array of Construction BIM services including rebar, structural steel, steel decking and light gauge detailing. They provide these services to nationally renowned Contractors like Mortenson Construction, DPR Construction and many more. The Denver Health Pavilion M project is another example of how they drive value downstream by sharing their data-rich Tekla models with the construction team for the structural steel, rebar and light gauge structural systems.
Webinar: Denver Health Pavilion M construction project: A story of contractors successfully developing BIM processes driven by Tekla software
“The key on this project is that we didn’t receive a 3D Design model,
we received a Construction model.”
– Dean Towl, Mortenson Construction
Discover how Tekla’s software for Building Information Modelling (BIM) processes was used on the Denver Health Pavilion M project. Listen to Dean Towl of Mortenson Construction and Russel Martino of Martino & Luth; describe how detailed building information data, created with Tekla software, was shared with all project stakeholders to drive better work processes and productivity.
Join our webinar to learn how Tekla software can improve collaboration & coordination:
- To eliminate nearly all detailing errors from a construction project
- Significantly reduce construction administration costs
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The Project and its Challenges
Denver Health is the Rocky Mountain Region’s Level 1 academic trauma center, and the safety net hospital for the Denver area. The Pavilion M facility is a four-story, 78,000 SF facility that includes an outpatient dialysis center, outpatient procedure center, administrative offices, and inpatient and outpatient adolescent psychiatry floor. The design started in early 2009 with construction completed in November of 2011. Mortenson Construction out of Denver, CO was selected as the design-build contractor with Heery International as the design-build architect and Martino & Luth as the structural engineer. The project team faced several challenges that would impact cost and schedule of the project, so they needed to find some innovative ways of delivering the project to overcome these challenges.
One area that the project team focused on was finding a better way to design and deliver the structural packages. The structural system consists of three elevated floors of composite steel framing and steel columns, steel framing for the roof and a conventionally reinforced concrete slab and beam system with concrete columns at the ground level. The building is founded on drilled concrete piers. With a diverse range of building systems, coordination between them would also be important. To help overcome these challenges, Martino & Luth used Tekla Structures software to produce accurate deliverables during the design stage and then various downstream deliverables used for fabrication and on-site construction.
Using Tekla BIM during Design
Martino & Luth used Tekla software during the design stage of the project to deliver their traditional contract documents. However, their Tekla model aided the design process in other ways. For example, the project team faced the challenge to control the outflow of water into the storm sewers, and the roof was designed to retain water for a certain amount of time. Martino & Luth used the Tekla model early on in the design phase to actually model water on the roof to determine the volume of water that could be retained based on the varying roof slopes and crickets. They iterated through different roof pitch geometries, inquiring the water volume that was automatically calculated with the software. They were able to assist the civil engineer in their water volume calculations while at the same time designing an efficient roof framing system to carry the water loads.
Also during the design stage, Martino & Luth generated advanced bill of materials of the structural steel frame and various cast-in-place quantities, including rebar, to help Mortenson Construction accurately estimate the project.
Martino & Luth shared exported 3D DWG models with the architect who referenced them into Bentley Architecture for coordination purposes and drawing backgrounds. The architect shared their Bentley architectural models as 3D DWG formats which were referenced into the Tekla structural model as backgrounds.
Integrating the Design with Detailing
Martino & Luth saw an opportunity to help the project by producing the rebar and light gauge steel shop deliverables. Though the general contractor was hesitant at first, they agreed to this in efforts to reduce costs and speed up the schedule. In the end, this approach was a success. Because Martino & Luth already developed the design concepts, it was efficient for them to evolve the design deliverables into construction deliverables. Martino & Luth’s project team consists of only structural engineers that do the structural design, documentation and shop detailing. In fact, the same person manages the complete design to construction process for the structures they design. This makes shop drawing review redundant in this sense so there was a big time savings in the turnaround of producing the shop drawing deliverables for the fabrication and construction site.
Martino & Luth also provided a Tekla model of the structural steel to the project steel fabricator Zimmerman Metals, Inc. out of Denver, CO. Zimmerman used the model to generate a more accurate quantity takeoff and to start the detailing process where they then utilized the connection types best fit for their shop and the project.
“The model provided by Martino & Luth allowed us to generate an accurate advance bill of material in minutes as opposed to spending hours reviewing the drawings. Zimmerman Metals has found that ordering material based on models results in more precise material lengths for columns as well as for beams at areas of complex framing. A major benefit is that no members are ordered too short. The model also allowed us to quickly sequence the project and order the material based on the schedule requirements. Martino & Luth’s model was also utilized by the steel detailer to get a jump start on the shop drawing process as it cut down the time they needed to spend generating their own Tekla model.”
David Weaver, P.E. – Project Manager, Zimmerman Metals, Inc.
Using the concrete model in construction
Because Martino & Luth already developed an accurate, data-rich Tekla model for their design documents and other shop deliverables, it was a logical step to share their Tekla model with the project participants to produce their cast-in-place lift drawings and embed placement drawings. Martino & Luth exported IFC models and converted them to Revit in-house using Revit Structure. Project team members were then able to open the models in Revit to produce their drawing deliverables.
“Once they realized the quality of our model it made no sense to create their own model from scratch based off of the 2D drawings. They were also able to use the embedments that we had already modeled instead of trying to coordinate that with the steel shops (which were also created from our model). So really everything was already coordinated - they just needed to create elevations from our model and put some dimensions on them for field layout.”
Russ Martino - President of Martino & Luth, Inc.
In addition, the general contractor utilized the concrete reinforcement model provided by Martino & Luth. They were able to verify the concrete openings (doors, mechanical, etc.) on their lift drawings with the reinforcing bar layouts in 3D.
A Master-Builder approach to Structural Engineering
The success of this project was enabled with an innovative use of technology but more importantly a unique integration of people, process and technology. Martino & Luth’s integrated, Master-Builder approach to structural engineering reaches back to the Renaissance period. Having the same engineering staff take a project from concept to construction proves to reduce time, costs and more importantly errors on the project.
This approach is not unique only to Martino & Luth. In Nordic countries this is quite common. Before Minna Arola came to Tekla, she served as the structural department manager with a large structural consultancy firm in Helsinki Finland. She explains it this way:
I see a structural engineer as a junction between design and construction, balancing between the architect's vision and a buildable solution. In Finland a structural engineer usually takes their design through detailing. In my work I tend to think about detailing and deliveries already in the design phase. The actual detailing process is then very straight forward phase since everything is already thought through. (to read more about her experiences click here).
Researchers have taken notice here in the U.S. as well. Colorado State University did a research project for Mortenson Construction comparing the metrics from the Denver Health project to that of similar project where the structural engineer provided rebar shop drawings using different teams to produce the structural design and detailing deliverables. In that study, it was evident that the Denver Health project displayed greater benefits using an integrated approach of people, process and technology as implemented by Martino & Luth.
Summary of Benefits
The Denver Health Pavilion M project showcased several benefits of utilizing the Tekla structural model not only in design but in construction. These benefits include:
- Provided faster and more accurate analysis of the roof’s water retention design.
- Generated accurate bill of material for contractor estimating during the design phase of structural steel, concrete piers, foundation walls, core walls, columns, beams and slabs.
- Shared structural models with the general contractor for MEP and architectural coordination; creation of concrete placement drawings, including the placement of embedded plates which were modeled by Martino & Luth.
- Created rebar shop drawings directly from the model which resulted in significant savings in cost and schedule, less than 3% waste in material, and nearly eliminated detailing errors.
- Created light gauge steel shop drawings directly from the model which resulted in significant savings in cost and schedule, and nearly eliminating detailing errors.
- Shared a Tekla model to the steel fabricator which was utilized for more accurate estimating, a jump start on the detailing process and more accurate 3D coordination of the steel frame with other building systems earlier in the project.
The success of this delivery method is summed up best by the general contractor:
“Martino & Luth did a fantastic job on the structural BIM using Tekla. On this design-build project, Martino & Luth provided structural engineering services as well as construction phase rebar and exterior metal stud framing detailing services. The detailing capabilities in Tekla allowed the project team to increase efficiency and minimize waste. Their structural model played a key role in our construction planning and VDC services.”
Rick Khan - Director of Integrated Construction, Mortenson Construction
References and Links:
DenverHealth Tekla BIM Awards entry
MortensonConstruct