There’s a version of this story you’ve probably experienced. A project is moving fast. Precast gets specified. You go out for bids, a manufacturer comes in at bid stage, and suddenly there are structural connection conflicts nobody caught, panel sizes that don’t work with the structural grid, and a revised drawing set nobody acknowledged time for. The schedule absorbs the hit. So does the budget.
It’s a frustrating pattern and almost always a timing problem. The precast manufacturer had the information they needed to flag those issues weeks earlier. They just weren’t in the conversation yet.
In Precast, Timing is Everything
Precast has to be engineered, fabricated, sequenced, and delivered in a specific order and every one of those stages depends on decisions made upstream. Panel sizes are constrained by what a manufacturer can actually produce. Opening locations affect structural calculations. Embed placements have to be coordinated before a single piece goes into the form. A change at design development doesn’t just affect the drawing, it creates a cascade that ripples through engineering, production scheduling, and erection.
The earlier a precast manufacturer is involved, the smaller that cascade is. Most bid processes don’t allow for that. By the time a precaster is in the room, the design decisions that create the most downstream problems have already been made.
What “Early” Looks Like at ATMI Precast
At ATMI Precast, the building information model (BIM) doesn’t start at engineering handoff. It starts at the sales stage.
Ron Olsen, Sales Modeler at ATMI, is often among the first people at the company to work on a new project. Before a contract is signed, before shop drawings are requested, he’s building a 3D model in Tekla Structures, ATMI’s BIM platform, based on whatever design information is available. That might be schematic drawings, early permit sets, or a conversation with an architect about what they’re trying to accomplish.
What that model makes possible in a first preliminary conversation changes the nature of the discussion entirely. Ron can show a design team where their panel sizes push up against what ATMI can produce. He can identify opening locations that will create problems downstream and propose alternatives before those decisions are locked in. He can run value-engineering options and show the cost implications side by side. And because the model is built in a format the architect or engineer of record can import directly into their own software, it becomes a shared coordination tool for the whole project team. Not just something ATMI uses internally.
The difference, as Ron puts it: “We don’t just bid quantities. We bid a buildable solution.”
That’s not a marketing line. It describes something specific. A buildable solution means someone has already thought through how the panels come off the truck, how the crane reaches them, how the erection sequence flows before you’ve committed to anything.
From the Sales Model to the Field
What makes the early BIM model more than a sales tool is what happens to it after the deal is done.
At ATMI, the model Ron builds doesn’t get shelved when a contract is signed. It travels with the project into engineering, production planning, and erection logistics. Because sales, engineering, and the erection team all work under the same roof, that handoff isn’t a file transfer across companies. It’s a conversation down the hall.
When a question comes up in engineering that affects how the panels were modeled, Ron is a short walk away. When the erection team needs to think through crane placement or delivery sequencing, the model is already there to work from. Problems that would have required a phone call, an email chain, and a three-day wait in a fragmented process get resolved in an afternoon.
On a large-scale precast parking structure in the Chicagoland area, this played out across every phase of the project. The sales model Ron built was used for estimating, panelization, engineering calculations, crane logistics, and field concrete topping planning. It was shared with the architect, engineer of record, and general contractor for coordination and scope discussions. The erection team used it to plan the full lift sequence, including load calculations for a 100,000-pound wall panel, before fabrication began. ATMI even produced an animation of the erection sequence from that same model, giving the entire project team a visual they could use in owner meetings.
None of that would have been possible if the model had started at engineering handoff instead of the sales conversation.
What This Means for Your Next Project
The ask here isn’t complicated. It’s just earlier than you might think to make it.
If you’re working on a project where precast is on the table, even at schematic design, even before you know who’s building it, bring ATMI into the conversation. Not to lock in a commitment, but to have a different kind of first meeting. One where a 3D model is already in the room, design constraints are already on the table, and the conversation starts at “here’s what’s buildable” instead of “here’s what it’ll cost.”
That’s the difference between a bid and a solution. And it starts earlier than most project teams expect.
Interested in seeing what early engagement looks like on your next project? Contact ATMI Precast to start the conversation.