Digital and BIM
MEP coordination workshops
Chaired workshops that resolve MEP clashes against the architectural and structural models, with every decision recorded, assigned and closed out.
- Discipline
- Digital and BIM
- Typical timescale
- Recurring through Stages 3 and 4, typically fortnightly during peak coordination
WHAT IT IS
A coordination workshop is a working session, not a review meeting. The federated model is open, the disciplines are in the room, and the clashes are worked through and resolved while the people who can agree the resolution are present.
Clash detection software produces a list. It does not decide which service moves, whether a beam can be penetrated, or whether the ceiling void is deep enough to take a duct over a drainage run at the fall it needs. Those are engineering decisions with cost and buildability consequences, and they are made faster and better by people looking at the same model at the same time than by a fortnight of comments passed between offices.
The other half of the job is what happens after the session: every resolution is recorded against the clash it settles, assigned to whoever has to change their model, and checked at the next run. A clash report with no closing-out mechanism produces the same list next month.
WHEN YOU NEED IT
On any project where services are tight against structure — plant rooms, ceiling voids under downstand beams, risers, basement car parks and refurbishments of existing buildings, where the structure is already there and cannot move.
Also where the design is being produced by more than one party. A single consultant coordinating their own disciplines can do much of this internally; a project with a separate architect, structural engineer, specialist installers and a contractor's design portion cannot, because no one holds the whole model.
The stages that benefit most are the end of Stage 3 and through Stage 4, when the design is developed enough for a clash to be real and not yet so fixed that resolving it is expensive.
OUR PROCESS
The models are federated and a clash test set is agreed before the session, with tolerances that reflect what actually matters — a 10 mm overlap between a pipe and a ceiling zone is noise, a duct through a beam is not. Running every discipline against every other at zero tolerance produces thousands of results and hides the twenty that would stop the job.
Sessions are chaired and time-boxed, working through clashes grouped by area rather than by number, so decisions about one plant room are made together instead of scattered across a list.
Every resolution is recorded with the clash reference, the decision, the party responsible for the model change, and the date it is due. The next run reports on closure as well as on new clashes, which is what makes the trend visible.
Where a clash cannot be resolved within the current design — insufficient ceiling void, a riser too small for the risers it has to carry — it is escalated as a design issue with the options and their consequences, rather than left open in a report.
DELIVERABLES
What you receive
- Federated model and agreed clash test set
- Chaired workshop sessions at the agreed intervals
- Clash resolution register with owner and due date against each item
- Closure tracking reported at each subsequent run
- Design issues escalated with options and consequences
- Marked-up sections through the resolved congested areas
STANDARDS
Standards applied
The editions in force at the time of design. Where a standard is amended mid-project we confirm which edition the appointment is based on.
- BS EN ISO 19650-2:2018Delivery phase of the assetsBSI
- BSRIA BG 6/2018A Design Framework for Building Services — design responsibility matrixBSRIA
- BS 8313:1997Code of practice for accommodation of building services in ductsBSI
- CIBSE Guide MMaintenance engineering and management — access and maintainabilityCIBSE
- RIBA Plan of Work 2020Stage definitions and information exchangesRIBA
QUESTIONS
Common questions
What is the difference between clash detection and coordination?
Clash detection is software finding geometric conflicts between models and producing a list. Coordination is deciding which service moves, agreeing it with the parties affected, and getting the models changed. Detection is automated and takes minutes; coordination is an engineering judgement about cost, buildability and maintenance access, and it is the part that determines whether the building can actually be installed as drawn.
Who should attend an MEP coordination workshop?
The MEP designer, the architect and the structural engineer as a minimum, because most services clashes are resolved by one of the three moving. On projects with a contractor appointed, the installing subcontractors for the congested services — usually ductwork, sprinklers and drainage — because they hold the installation constraints that do not appear in the design model.
How often should coordination workshops be held?
Frequently enough that no participant models more than one cycle of work on an assumption that turns out to be wrong. Through the peak of Stage 4 that is usually fortnightly. Monthly is often enough in Stage 3, when the design is still moving in larger increments.
Can coordination be done without a model?
In two dimensions it can be done on simple projects using coordinated sections through the congested areas, and for small schemes that is proportionate. It becomes unreliable wherever services cross at different levels in a shallow void, because a plan cannot show whether two runs at the same point are at the same height.