Morgan Sindall has carried out an on-site trial of a mixed-reality headset for quality checks.
The group’s construction and infrastructure business and its design arm BakerHicks tested Microsoft’s HoloLens at their Ashmole Primary School site in Southgate, London.
The contractor used the headset to project their live BIM model onto the building services installations on the scheme.
The project team used a customised app, created by Baker Hicks, which allowed them to superimpose the holographic BIM model onto the soffit of the ceiling. They were then able to ‘walk through’ the building wearing the HoloLens to check and audit the actual built asset against the original design.
The headset can record what the wearer is seeing and is interactive, enabling any changes to be communicated to the design team, Morgan Sindall said. The contractor is now investigating how the technology could be used on a wider basis, for example, in project aftercare to inspect any building services issues once the walls and ceilings have been closed up.
The trial demonstrated the role mixed reality technology can play in quickly and easily identifying any potential issues with the build, it added.
Trevor Strahan, head of BIM at Baker Hicks says: “The success of this trial marks an exciting step in our journey in exploring the possibilities HoloLens technology could bring to our industry. We’ve been working on developing augmented reality for a while now and it is really exciting to see all that come to fruition.”
Steffan Speer, Morgan Sindall Construction & Infrastructure’s business improvement director says: “Described as a perfect fusion of the real and virtual world, the benefits mixed reality could bring to our teams and customers are vast – including remote conferencing, construction design and installation reviews along with the presentation of construction models via holograms. I’m looking forward to our subsequent trials as we look to develop these exciting capabilities further.”
