McKinstry Wins Hololens AEC Use Case of the Year Award

Augmented reality pilot delivered 40 percent time savings in 840 Spokane project hangar installation

On January 26, McKinstry was awarded the inaugural “AEC Use Case of the Year” award at Microsoft’s annualNorth AmericaHoloLensIndustry Summit for its work applying an augmented reality (AR) solution on theUniversity of Washington – School of Medicine–Gonzaga UniversityRegional Health Partnership’s medical and health education, research and innovation center project in Spokane, Wash.

Working with innovativepartners like Spectar,Emerald InitiativeandBouten Construction Company, McKinstry leveraged a Building Information Model (BIM) to field AR solution to accelerate its pipe-hanger installation at the840 Spokane project.

840 Spokane relies on approximately 10,000 hangers that hold plumbing and mechanical piping in place. With traditional approaches, installers, working from large sets of paper plans, must make countless mathematical calculations in their heads to assess locations and lengths of the hangers that they will measure, cut and place for the project.

In this pilot, installers were equipped with AR systems featuring a Hololens display running Spectar software mounted to their hardhats. The system processes the BIM, calculates hanger length and displays exactly where the hangers should go as contextual information overlaid on the work area — all without the installer having to take their eyes off the task to look down at line drawings. This pilot delivered a time savings of 40 percent for this key task.

“When you think about our Action for Impact plan, this project covers all the bases,” said Dace Campbell, McKinstry’s director of product management in Construction. “By eliminating dependence on paper drawings, we are reducingjobsite waste, supporting sustainability. By increasing the efficiency of the process, we are improvingthe affordability of the project. And by enabling young apprentices to access the model to perform the work, we are making gains for equity on this project.”

“I see great opportunity with the use of this technology. The pilot suggests that we can get significant time savings not only from hanger installation, but also with the installation of the pipes themselves.” – Jeremy Gennett, project superintendent.