Institute for Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University

• Faster Revit-to-analysis data transfer
• Fewer manual entry errors in BIM
• Quicker design change turnaround

WSP's structural engineers selected Ideate BIMLink to connect analysis programs like RAM Structural System directly with Revit, allowing design information to move quickly into the 3D BIM model on the Institute for Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University. On a complex, 250,000-square-foot project combining new construction with a renovated 11-story residence hall, that connection let engineers avoid re-entering the same structural data by hand in multiple places.

By using Ideate BIMLink, WSP frees its employees from tedious manual data entry work, enabling them to focus on more interesting and valuable activities. Joseph Fiorello, Principal Technical Specialist at WSP, says that "by using best-in-class tools such as Ideate BIMLink, our engineers eliminate drudgery and free their time to anticipate trends, propose innovative ideas, look at complex problems from different angles, and find solutions that delight our clients." Together, Revit and Ideate BIMLink help WSP attract the best people and enable them to solve problems that shape the communities of tomorrow.

Before adopting Ideate BIMLink, WSP's biggest challenge on this project was the drudgery and risk of manual data entry. Every time structural engineers ran a new analysis in RAM Structural System, someone had to hand-key member sizes, loads, and other results into the Revit model, a repetitive task that consumed billable engineering time and created opportunities for transcription errors to slip into the BIM documentation.

The scale and complexity of the Institute for Environmental Sustainability, combining new construction with a renovated high-rise residence hall and a technically demanding curved-truss winter garden, meant structural designs went through many rounds of refinement, making this manual back-and-forth between analysis software and Revit a recurring drag on the team's schedule.

Before adopting Ideate BIMLink, WSP's structural engineers moved data between RAM Structural System and Revit largely by hand, manually re-entering member sizes, loads, and other analysis results into the BIM model after each round of structural analysis.

On a large, multi-building project like the Institute for Environmental Sustainability, with its mix of new construction and a renovated high-rise residence hall, this manual re-entry had to be repeated every time the structural design changed, consuming time engineers could otherwise spend on design and analysis.

Ideate BIMLink eliminated the manual, error-prone process of re-entering structural analysis results into Revit by hand, letting WSP's engineers move data between RAM Structural System and the BIM model in a fraction of the time. That efficiency translated directly into faster turnaround on design changes, a meaningful advantage on a project as complex as the Institute for Environmental Sustainability, where new construction, a renovated 11-story residence hall, and a technically demanding curved-truss winter garden all required frequent coordination between structural analysis and the model.

Beyond time savings, removing manual re-entry from the workflow reduced the risk of transcription errors making their way into construction documents. As Joseph Fiorello, Principal Technical Specialist at WSP, put it, tools like Ideate BIMLink free engineers from drudgery so they can spend more time on higher-value work, anticipating design issues and proposing solutions rather than retyping numbers between programs.

The Institute for Environmental Sustainability also includes the new San Francisco Residence Hall, a six-story courtyard building with a three-story north wing, and a three-story podium linking dining, lobby, and recreational spaces. Sustainability features include green roofs, rainwater harvesting, and geothermal wells beneath the complex with a visible central display.