Overview

A historic building in downtown Los Angeles had been shuttered for over a decade when the luxe, design-minded Proper Hotels acquired the structure. In the process of remodeling the new 148-room hotel, the client found some considerable quirks in the floor elevations. They needed an accurate as-built model of the building as it stood to keep the project moving without major delays.

Process

The DTLA building was originally completed in 1926 and has since housed several owners ranging from a private club to––most recently––a YMCA. When Proper Hotels purchased the property, demolition soon began. It was during this process the client realized their design model did not match the ceiling heights observed on site.

This was an unexpected surprise, rendering the clients’ current RVT critically inaccurate.

Spatial Acuity’s laser scanning team was deployed to the project site to begin the meticulous work of measuring the gutted building, inside and out, with accuracy within ⅛”. The Spatial crew was working while the building was in the middle of demolition, and the project involved four phases of scanning to work around the other contractors. Close communication was critical for this logistically complex task.

The floor to floor height variations had its greatest impact on a new elevator planned to replace an existing staircase. How could the elevator stop at the right spot if the precise distance between each floor is unknown? A detailed laser scanning of the entire structure cleared up all that and more.

Result

Getting these scans was crucial to keeping the project from going haywire. The scan uncovered that the design model and as-built model floor elevations differed by as much as of 10′ at around the 7th floor.

At the time, the architect and contractor could not perform a full Design vs. As-Built clash detection. So Spatial Acuity provided 2D views of all riser/structure clashes and arch design / as-built clashes for advanced coordination and resolution, avoiding costly field coordination.