The company (OCCA Offsite) successfully integrates design and manufacturing seamlessly and by doing so it delivers flawless off-site manufactured building components.
Our design and production teams embrace off-site thinking in construction and therefore every aspect of design is considered from the perspective of manufacturability.
As most of our clients are abroad, most of our projects are managed remotely. The physical distance between OCCA and the clients becomes insignificant as our design teams communicate with our client’s design team through 3D design platforms such as REVIT. Therefore, all design work produced is shared with Engineer on Record (EoR) and Architect on Record (AoR) on a real time basis so that design changes are shared and jointly evaluated early on.
Utilization of Building Information Modelling (BIM) tools enables us to design our buildings and structures suitable for manufacturing and assembly. At OCCA, the concept that is defined as Design for Manufacturing & Assembly (DfMA), derived from manufacturing industry practices, is the motto. As a manufacturing company, OCCA is always concerned with reducing the assembly cost and minimizing the number of assembly operations.
OCCA design teams are capable of designing for green field off-site projects as well as for projects at the stage of schematic design or design development. Our company can both deliver for Volumetric Off-Site as well as Hybrid Off-site projects.
Clients sometimes only look for off-site components instead of off-site built buildings such as bathroom pods, off-site built façade panels, MEP risers. OCCA is also flexible enough to meet such customer requisitions.
Value engineering is always what our clients are looking for to streamline design and manufacturing simultaneously. As OCCA is both a design and a manufacturing company, OCCA design team is capable of seeing things from both perspectives and very successful at rendering value engineering services.
For instances when OCCA needs another design party’s involvement with the project, that party is required to deliver the design in 3D format so that all parties are aligned.
Our design team is also well versed with New York State and New York City codes, and capable enough to suggest right materials through material submittals and get approvals from client’s team.
For each project that OCCA takes on, a project specific technical manual that addresses general design, detailing and production issues as well as the ones related to project specific necessities is developed. Equally, for each technical manual there is always an accompanying Quality Assurance (QA) Manual. Once QA Manual is approved by the Client, it then becomes a decisive document that our production teams need to follow and comply with.
Virtual Reality (VR) technology has so much potential for architects and designers. To capitalize this potential, OCCA visualizes design through such digital tools and simulates design for end users, developers, and construction professionals. OCCA uses contemporary VR technologies for improving first time experience of building design. Photo reference:
Clients value quick response time to their request for price quotations and OCCA benefits greatly from Bluebeam software as quantity take-offs are easily calculated from over preliminary design documents that are in PDF format.
OCCA enjoys a unique position as it integrates both design and manufacturing within the company. In the world of off-site construction, it is very common that design and production entities are separate from one another and this generally prevents the benefits of co-design from happening, which in turn results with poor project delivery.
One needs large production halls and adequate crane capacity for volumetric off-site production and OCCA has both. Our production facility has 650.000 square feet of open space which can easily facilitate further physical expansion in times of production bottlenecks. Equally, a closed area of 160.000 sq. ft. serves for both steel module production and fit-out operations.
At OCCA, the production environment is paperless. Autodesk’s BIM 360 Construction Document Management Software is the channel of communication between the design and manufacturing. Production supervisors can view and mark-up construction drawings, documents and models that come from structural and architectural offices on their iPad. Management of construction documents in print creates confusion in production especially once design teams make revisions on the model, all previously printed documents must be disregarded and replaced with new ones.
With the use of BIM 360 Construction Document software, OCCA teams as well as Client’s team members can get access to all design information anytime and anywhere. This is a very important feature especially for international projects where design teams at both ends operate under different time zones.
Design freeze is a term borrowed from product design, and it refers to a point in time that off-site design is finalized. Contrary to traditional construction, once design is frozen it is very difficult to alter the design or make changes on it during manufacturing.
However, a well-detailed Technical Manual that provides information on the following:
largely eliminates haste alterations on design and manufacturing.
OCCA’s Technical Manuals are accurate and precise enough from which one can develop comprehensive Quality Assurance and Quality Control Manuals. Consequently, these Manuals greatly eliminate manufacturing defects. Third party inspections are carried before and during the production, OCCA greatly benefits from its Manuals to pass stringent inspections for building code and product compliances.
OCCA is capable of handling complex supply chain operations as some construction materials should be sourced from abroad on a timely basis. The number of stock keeping units (SKUs) may easily surpass 500 items for a small off-site project and this number may increase substantially on larger scale projects.
