Hospital MEP Coordination and Clash Detection

Hospital MEP coordination: project overview

Federated Revit MEP model covering mechanical (HVAC and medical gases), electrical (normal, essential and UPS), hydraulic, fire protection and BMS services across two refurbished hospital wings.

The challenge

Tight ceiling voids, existing services to retain, and life-safety services that could not be relocated. The client needed a clash-free model before construction commenced to avoid costly on-site rework in a live-hospital environment.

Our approach

Built a fully coordinated MEP model from architectural and structural Revit links. Ran Navisworks clash detection in 3 rounds: hard clashes, soft clashes and clearance violations. Held weekly coordination workshops with engineers to resolve clashes by design rather than redirection.

Outcome

200+ clashes identified and resolved before site mobilisation. Constructor reported zero services rework during installation, saving an estimated 3 weeks of site time.

How the hospital MEP coordination ran

The refurbishment brief covered live hospital floors where services had been modified repeatedly over decades, so the first stage was building a reliable Revit model of existing conditions from point cloud data and site verification. New mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and fire services were then modelled against the architectural and structural models, with clash detection run in scheduled cycles rather than as a single end-of-job check. Each cycle produced a clash report triaged into genuine conflicts, tolerance issues and false positives — and the genuine conflicts were resolved in coordination meetings with the design consultants before documentation, not on site.

Deliverables and the clash-resolution record

Across the coordination cycles, more than 200 clashes were identified and resolved in the model — duct-versus-beam conflicts, ceiling-space congestion above corridors, and riser allocations that existing conditions made impossible as designed. The delivered package included the federated Revit model, discipline documentation sheets extracted from it, and the clash-resolution register showing what was found, how it was resolved and who signed it off. For a hospital refurbishment, that register is as valuable as the drawings: it is the evidence that the ceiling void actually closes before the contractor prices the work.

Software, standards and what transfers to your project

The coordination ran in Revit with Navisworks clash cycles, existing conditions verified against point cloud capture, and documentation extracted from the federated model so drawings and model never diverged. The approach transfers to any services-dense building — hospitals, laboratories, data centres, commercial towers — where ceiling voids and risers are contested space. If your project has multiple services consultants working in parallel, running scheduled clash cycles with a triaged register, as this case study shows, is the difference between resolving conflicts in a meeting room and paying for them as site variations. Coordination programmes are set by the design team’s meeting cadence rather than a fixed calendar; on this project the clash cycles ran fortnightly across the documentation period, with the register circulated two days before each meeting so consultants arrived with positions rather than first reactions.