The UCSF Minnesota Street Graduate Student & Trainee Housing is a new affordable housing facility aiming to accommodate over 800 residents — medical students and trainees who study at the University of California (UCSF). Because of the high living cost in San Francisco and the university’s ability to offer campus housing only to 14% of students, it decided to construct two new buildings. Their program spaces include various types of rooms for purposes like studying, community meetings, fitness, games, laundry, and even a corner market. For VEC, this 390,000-square-foot project consisted of five stories. When working on it, our team faced two critical challenges. The first was not to exceed the project budget and previously defined time constraints. And the second was to cooperate with other multiple trades efficiently.
VEC specialists worked on the UCSF Minnesota Street Graduate Student & Trainee Housing from 2018 to 2020. As a BIM & VDC partner, our company provided lighting and fire alarm (FA) modeling services for this housing facility. Utilizing BIM technology allowed for better cooperation and communication on the project with Skanska USA Building Inc. as a general contractor and other trades involved. That collaborative environment promoted the creation of 3D models using Revit and facilitated the construction process. Besides, the VEC Team could automatically meet all the necessary standards and requirements, which meant no extra testing and rework.
