Collaboration par excellence

Example: Hasselt City Hall, Belgium — The building of the new municipal administration center in Hasselt, Belgium, demonstrates how seamless collaboration in building projects can minimize risks and save costs from the design phase all the way to commissioning.
A joint project of several brands of the Nemetschek Group.
Nemetschek brands involved: Allplan, GRAPHISOFT, Solibri

Pioneering planning and project execution with Open BIM

“The end-to-end use of BIM solutions constitutes genuine added value for all stakeholders in the building process
because it enables seamless and efficient collboration”
Steven Hendrickx, Head Architect in Hasselt

Large-scale, highly complex building projects in particular require ongoing, reliable and efficient coodination between all stakeholders – both internal and external – across disciplines and between companies. Therefore, in association with other market players, the Nemetschek Group is promoting the Open BIM data standard. This is a universal, collaborative approach to designing, constructing and operating buildings based on open standards and workflows It makes it possible for project stakeholders to collaborate, even if the type of software varies from user to user. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) interface has established itself as an open standard and is therefore of central significance.

Sharing and evaluating data throughout the entire product life cycle saves time and money and improves quality. The administration of data is key to this digital transformation, for it is only possible to take full advantage of the potential if each stakeholder can access the data that he or she needs at any given time. This begins with a realistic BIM building model, which is an essential prerequisite for a genuine 5D workflo. This model is no longer limited to just 3D construction data; it also includes data concerning the dimensions of time and costs.

Seamless collaboration exemplified by the Hasselt City Hall

Under the management of the architect team comprising Jaspers-Eyers, MASS Architects and Michel Janssen, a new municipal administration center is being built in Hasselt. The complex, consisting of a renovated building section and a new building, provides approx. 17,000 m2 for the city administration and social services as well as offices. The architects and their most important partners are using Open BIM software solutions for the entire construction process. Three Nemetschek solutions are being implemented for this project: Archicad from Graphisoft for the design and planning of the architects, Allplan Engineering for civil engineering, and the Solibri Model Checker for the BIM quality control carried out by the construction company.

From the beginning, all information concerning the building project is contained in the digital building model – from the draft to implementation – including all design details, desired materials, fire protection requirements, acoustic properties, insulation and building structures, and administration. This constitutes considerable added value for all stakeholders compared to the old standard model, which was purely 3D. Thus, this improvement ensures more than just seamless collaboration between all those involved. The complex project can be turned over to the municipality – the proud building owner – with the required quality, on time and within the specified budget.

Hasselt City Hall is groundbreaking – in terms of design, planning and project implementation.

Independent and yet consistent

Steven Hendrickx, the head architect in Hasselt, recognized four decisive factors with Open BIM over the course of the successful project:

  • Individual partners design their model with their preferred BIM software, and with their own templates. Outstanding collaboration is ensured, though, thanks to a common, uniform standard which is specified in advance.
  • The division of labor is defined at the beginning of the project. Data on statics, for instance, have an essential impact on the architecture and structural design. Data on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, on the other hand, are also important but don’t generally flow directly into the architecture. These data, for example, can be sufficiently analyzed with the BIM solution for quality assurance from Solibri.
  • Design changes in one area don’t necessarily affect the plans of all the others involved in the project. The architecture and the building stage are inherently the most closely linked.
  • The expertise of the staff, i.e., extensive holistic knowledge of the various building disciplines, is also critical for the success of the project.

Two examples of the advantage of precise planning

In Hasselt, the construction company was commissioned with excavation, among other tasks. An assessment of the amount of sand that needed to be removed was done based on a cal culation using conventional 2D planning methods, which yielded a result of 800 cubic meters. The engineers used the Solibri Model Checker based on Open BIM and the data provided by the architects and arrived at a figue that was just half this amount, i.e., 400 cubic meters of sand. This shows how exact the work with Open BIM solutions can be.

The steel struts to be installed are another example: With the interface function IFC Exports from Allplan, it was possible to use the BIM model to automatically calculate which steel struts needed fieproofing. All it took was a mouse click to obtain precise results, right down to the running meter. In projects that don’t use Open BIM solutions, these calculations are made by manually entering the data from 2D drawings in Excel or some other software and then recalculating and evaluating the data for use in quotations and planning, a process that is susceptible to error and one that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. These errors often go undetected until the actual cost planning is already completed. In the case of the Hasselt City Hall,  it was possible to avoid such errors from the outset.

Converting to Open BIM pays off

As is the case with any change, it takes a certain amount of time for companies and employees to accept BIM as the norm. The best way, according to Steven Hendrickx, is to start out by planning smaller projects using BIM. The experience thereby gained will make it possible to complete successively larger BIM projects. The advantages of collaborating through Open BIM are obvious: The entire workflow is much simpler for all project stakeholders, and building projects are completed within time and cost budgets.

CONCLUSION

Consistent standards and open interfaces in par-ticular are essential for successful building projects. Stakeholders need solutions that can “work together” for all and any individual tasks being performed. Seamless collaboration between humans and machines: This is ensured with Open BIM, and backed by the brands of the Nemetschek Group.

Reference projects on this topic:

DDS-CAD 13 released

Data Design System Brand News News Company News

The new version of the CAD/BIM software for building services is now available.

Ascheberg, October 19, 2017 – Data Design System (DDS) has released version 13 of its CAD/BIM software DDS-CAD. Thanks to the new and improved features DDS has integrat-ed into the software for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering, it is now even easier and more productive for their customers to use DDS-CAD.

According to DDS, new developments are included in all areas of the software. In addition to new and im-proved features for the design and planning of the re-spective specialist trades, innovations were also intro-duced in the general handling of the software.

For DDS-CAD users in the field of electrical installa-tions, the features for working with electrical diagrams as well as circuit lists have been optimized and equipped with additional possibilities. As stated by DDS, the diagrams and lists provide more and better-structured information now. In addition, the newly con-ceived feature for the cabling of buildings gives the user more flexibility in cable planning. Furthermore, numerous new features for copying and editing electri-cal installations along with additional presentation pos-sibilities for electrical objects were integrated into DDS-CAD 13. According to the developing company, all these innovations help the users achieve their goals more intuitively, which results in a considerable time-saving in the design and planning of electrical projects.

Among other things, in the field of sanitary and heating installations, DDS has enhanced the calculation of wastewater systems. Through new options, special building situations can now be taken into consideration more individually by the engineer calculating systems. DDS-CAD 13 also offers new features for the planning of ventilation systems. The allocation of rooms to indi-vidual ventilation zones of a building has been simpli-fied. Furthermore, the options that allow considering project specific engineering requirements have been extended. Likewise, the possibilities to integrate differ-ent ventilation system types within a single project were boosted. The inclusion of efficiency levels for heat recovery systems allows more flexible engineer-ing than before. In like manner, the opportunity to edit the volume flows of individual rooms or of different ventilation inlets and outlets increases the user’s flexi-bility. This makes DDS-CAD 13 an even more comfort-able and precise tool for mechanical engineers.

DDS-CAD 13 also contains new general features and improvements. The handling of object groups is just one of these instances. Components assigned to such groupings can now be edited more flexibly. Further-more, the position marker feature has been enhanced. Additional marking and numbering options simplify and accelerate the labeling of individual objects in engineer-ing projects. Moreover, according to DDS, the com-pletely redesigned building zone function allows much faster creation, management and use of zones than before.

In order to provide an ideal basis for the participation in Open BIM projects, DDS-CAD 13 has been equipped with a brand new IFC import and model manager. This accelerates and simplifies the import of IFC data. In addition, DDS-CAD 13 makes a clear distinction be-tween “master” and “coordination” IFC files. This facili-tates the handling of IFC data and adds new function-alities for dealing with these Open BIM files.

The CAD/BIM software DDS-CAD has been continuous-ly developed since its release in 1984. Consultants and contractors in the field of mechanical, electrical and plumbing installations use the software as a design and planning tool for all building services trades. DDS-CAD supports both traditional 2D drafting processes as well as the participation in model-based BIM-workflows.

About Data Design System

With the product family “DDS-CAD”, Data Design System (DDS) develops modular software solutions for the complete, interdisciplinary design of building services (MEP).

DDS-CAD solutions are available for the areas of sanitary, heating, air-conditioning, ventilation, electrical installations as well as photovolatic and lightning systems. All licensed packages are characterzied as individual, modular system solutions with an optimal price/performance ratio. In addition to MEP consultants and contractors, faciltity managers, industry and educational institutes are among the DDS customers.

DDS is one of the pioneers of Building Information Modeling (BIM). DDS-CAD solutions support this advanced approach to building design since its beginnings.

The DDS headquarters was founded in 1984 in Norway. Since then, DDS stands for precision, quality and innovation. With over 14.800 installed user-workstations throughout Europe, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, the company is one of the leading software companies in the field of electrical and HVAC planning.

DDS is part of the Nemetschek Group.

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