Saving $10,000 Per Project Using Architectural VR Collaboration

BSA LifeStructures, an Indianapolis-based architecture and engineering firm, is adopting VR collaboration with The Wild to future-proof their services and design smarter. They're looking to use VR to answer spatial questions, reduce RFIs, and catch design issues from their 3D models.

Using The Wild can save BSA 150+ RFI Hours per project.

Project

‍26,000 sq. ft. medical office building addition in Nebraska Hospital

Timeline‍

1 year design,

18 months construction

Team‍

Design phase

• Architect Owner
• Engineer

Construction Phase

• Architect Owner
• Contractor
• Engineers

"We're trying to make ourselves more lean, and sometimes being more lean means you have to invest upfront for headsets and software."
—Luke Abkes, Architectural Designer, BSA

To pilot their adoption of VR, BSA invested in two Oculus Quests and six HTC Vive headsets for their team.

BSA is using The Wild for VR collaboration to bring their stakeholders together to visualize and make changes in their designs remotely.

Reducing RFIs with VR

Luke Abkes, an Architectural Designer at BSA, tracked every RFI for the Nebraska Hospital project that could have been mitigated through better construction management and design visualization.

Using an average billing rate of $100/hr (often much higher in other regions), Luke was able to prorate savings for almost 70 RFIs based on estimated hours saved through VR.

By tracking the team involved (Owner, Architecture, Contractor, Engineering) and estimated hours saved for each RFI, it became apparent that there was a need to get VR headsets for the entire team as early in the process as possible.‍

Total estimated hours saved: 150.5 ‍

‍‍Total estimated prorated savings: $9521.25

Over a six-month period it was identified that conservatively, on a single project, The Wild could help reduce 150 hours of RFI time, equating to $9,521.25 in cost savings.

If this was to be accomplished on 1 project a quarter, this would equate to 600 hours in time saved and $38,085 in costs saved.‍

Other VR collaboration workflow benefits:

• Design charrettes: Utilizing The Wild, Revit, and Matterport simultaneously allows BSA to decide on design details that have been a sticking point.
• Spatial interaction: The hands-on approach to interacting with spaces can make even better design and client interactions.

Creating Trust with VR

"Familiarity offers peace of mind."
—Luke Abkes, Architectural Designer, BSA

In addition to the better owner cost savings and construction management, Luke has discovered that one of the most important intangible benefits of using VR collaboration is the peace of mind stakeholders gain through experiencing projects at human scale.

When considering work on projects that affect large communities such as hospitals, schools, and other facilities, having this peace of mind helps to build trust for BSA as forward-thinking and human-centric in its approach.

VR is guiding the future of collaboration at BSA for building our next generation's spaces for Healing, Learning, Discovering, and Leading.

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Ready to use VR Collaboration to save money, answer spatial questions, reduce RFIs, and catch design issues on your projects?

‍Click here to get started with The Wild.