Scanning for Value: Utilizing Advanced LiDAR Technology in Aged Healthcare Facilities
General Session resumes in Cochran and Addition.
In the summer of 2025, HDR Architecture and Topographic Survey teams from across the USA deployed to Roseburg, OR with the goal using aerial and ground-based LiDAR scanning technology to capture hyper-accurate interior and exterior point-clouds, from which to build the most accurate “as-built” building information model (BIM) possible.
The facility, a Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, built in the 1930s, was slated to receive significant funding for seismic upgrades, interior renovations, and new construction. It is the VA’s intention to procure these projects using the Design-Build delivery method with the assistance of the USACE. To deliver a successful Design-Build project at a
90 year old facility, one with historic significance and is a fixture of the community within which it sits, the DesignBuild team will need the most accurate as-built information obtainable so as to maximize the designer’s time, the builder’s efficiency, and to ultimately avoid as many “unknowns” as possible. To build this data set and model HDR employed remote-operated aerial LiDAR, GNSS Survey technology over, 100 stationary exterior scans, over 300 stationary interior scans, and over 2500 hours for BIM modeling time across
multiple disciplines. The result is a fully federated model that precisely displays over 90 years of renovation, addition, augmentation, settlement, and degradation that could not be captured through typical 2D as-built documentation or photographic methods. The value of this approach, as compared to the alternative, will be determined as the VA moves
through the Design-Build process. We predict that proposals for the Design-Build projects will be more accurately estimated and bid, with less risk and contingency versus projects without this level of information. By the time this presentation is given we should know with certainty.
Core Competencies: Strategic Planning, Space Planning and Programming, Design, Construction Management, Claims Adjudication Principles, Computer Principles and Applications, Equipment Planning, A-E Selection Process
AIA Course Number: 2026.03.016
AIA LU = 1 LU