Overview
KOPE have supported as an implementation partner over a three year project. This has helped provide benefits to Latimer including; a defined Digital Estate Strategy to support the growth of delivering new houses, a full Building Information Modelling (BIM) suite of documentation for their supply chain, a Digital Estate Strategy to use data long term.
In addition to this, KOPE have researched Generative Design software options and this has led to a bespoke piece of integration software that shortens the delivery times for RIBA stages 1-3 for the design teams. This utilised Latimer's Product Book of apartment designs and integrated the software together, creating a fully developed 3D model.
What we did
KOPE worked with Latimer across multiple digital work streams, these included;
1. Digital Estate Strategy
Latimer's digital process was created by Dave Lee, Director of Digital Design & Offsite Manufacture, to Define, Capture, Validate, Analyse, and Utilise. KOPE were instrumental in bringing this strategic theory to reality with a range of product tools, in particular the areas of Define, Capture and Validate. The aim was to ensure and provide users with a set of tools which will support their workflow requirements at each stage, ensuring efficient workflows, and the connection of the solutions together. As part of the Latimer Digital Estate strategy, initial requirements for quick successes and the support of initial projects needs were identified.
2. BIM Suite
A full review of the Latimer documentation has been performed to update this to current standards and requirements. The ISO 19650 standard is now the basis for the Latimer Building Information Modelling documentation.
3. Revit plugin tool
The Unitizer tool was developed by KOPE to convert basic massing that has been created in Revit into intelligent massing that can then use the Latimer Product Book Revit layouts and create a building from this. The aim behind this tool was to enable project teams to quickly create detailed Revit models from basic massing using the Product Book layouts.
4. Generative Design Research Project
Four existing Generative Design tools were identified by Latimer that could support early-stage feasibility assessment and designs for development sites. KOPE produced a report structured to introduce the software options, explain the assessment methodology, and used a weighted scoring criteria to assess them.
5. Integration Project
Latimer were at a crucial stage in the development of their Digital Estate Strategy progression and had access to a set of software tools that could help to support their progression. KOPE developed a Revit plugin for Latimer that integrated a set of identified software solutions across RIBA Stages 1, 2, and 3. The Revit plugin connects the following solutions together; Vu.City, Site Solve, Latimer Product Book, and Autodesk Revit.
Results
Latimer now have a clear digital strategy, documentation, and tools to support their transformation to a digitally enabled organisation. Their aim was to be able to build twice the number of houses for their tenants by 2025 and the use of modern, innovative digital tools will support their progress.
The digital toolkit developed will be instrumental in supporting their consultant teams to design, collaborate, and deliver high quality buildings. These projects will be consistent in physical design and the underlying digital data for the long term management of these assets can be used easily.
