The use of BIM in the ‘Death Star’ would have changed the story

After the most successful premiere in history, the seventh installment of Star Wars, ‘ The Last Jedi ‘, has inspired  Lee Mullin  to develop on the bim360.com blog , from the great Autodesk, a BIM case study for the most important engineering project of Star Wars, taking into account different parameters related to this work methodology.

Collaborative Work

With collaborative work during the development of the project, General Tarkin could have accessed the project in 3D and, with a few quick notes, sent it to the entire team. Darth Vader , meanwhile, could have reviewed the designs in advance and detected weaknesses in terms of defense, even before construction.

Security and Surveillance of the Site

With the use of CCTV to monitor areas such as the detention block, the tractor beam or the cargo bay – and for the more paranoid – the trash compactor, the presence of hidden rebels could have been detected. The technology is so simple that it would allow non-technical people to be involved in security and surveillance tasks , even if they did not know R2D2 or C3PO .

Reporting and Monitoring of the Project

With a Darth Vader eager to strangle any project manager who caused a delay, it’s surprising that he didn’t implement a reporting and monitoring protocol during construction. If the Project Managers had used it, they would have been able to identify which areas needed immediate attention, resolve the causes of the main problems, and carry out advance planning that would have allowed them to correctly select the various subcontractors. They might even have been able to prevent the construction of a new Death Star a few years later. If it had been done correctly from the beginning, the rebels would have known in advance that an attack would have been a futile gesture, even if they had been able to obtain any technical data.

Document Control

For a military project of this magnitude and vital importance, there was a surprising amount of security documents. So many that this set of plans eventually fell into the hands of a 19-year-old princess! Instead of emailing PDF files back and forth, scrambling to find the latest versions and ultimately allowing the plans to be acquired by the rebels, the Death Star team could have simply implemented a document management system that granted secure permissions for information sharing and collaboration. Those with access could have viewed all relevant 2D drawings and 3D models, gaining insight into the models and enabling better decision- making .

Operations and Maintenance

Imagine if a proactive maintenance task had been dispatched to a maintenance droid ’s mobile communications device as soon as a wireless sensor detected a loss of tractor beam power. It could have analyzed schematics, drawings, and the 3D model for vital commissioning information and allowed the problem to be resolved right then and there. After all, they wouldn’t want anyone to fall through the cracks!

Clearly, if the Death Star team had digitized all their efforts and used Building Information Modeling , they could have operated smarter, created better data transfer between project phases, and produced the aforementioned intelligent reports , leading to earlier, higher-quality delivery. The Battle of Yavin would likely never have happened, as the Rebellion would have been destroyed long before then.

Source: http://bim360.com/blog/2015/12/death-star-used-construction-apps