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:

Nemetschek doubles earnings per share

Corporate News Company News

  • Revenues up by 12 percent in the first nine months of 2010
  • EBITDA margin of 25 percent
  • forecast confirmed

Munich, October 29, 2010 – In the first nine months of 2010 Nemetschek AG (ISIN 0006452907), Europe's largest vendor of software for architecture, civil engineering and the building industry, managed to significantly increase group revenues: compared with the same period last year, which was marked by the consequences of the world economic crisis, revenues increased by 12 percent to 108.3 million euros. The EBITDA increased by 40 percent to 26.5 million euros. The operating margin thus increased from 20 percent to 25 percent. Net income (group shares) rose by more than 100 percent from 6.3 to 13.2 million euros. The cash flow from normal business activities amounted to 27.6 million euros, up from 18.1 million euros in the previous year - a year-on-year increase of 52 percent.

Revenues from license sales up by 21 percent

Compared with the first nine months of 2009 the revenues from license sales increased by 21 percent to 53.3 million euros, while the revenues from long-term maintenance contracts improved by 6 percent to 49.1 million euros. Here, it is the group's foreign markets in particular that have clearly recovered, with a 17 percent increase in revenues to 64.5 million euros. The revenues in Germany rose by 4 percent to 43.8 million euros. While the revenue level remained largely stable in the Build and Manage segments, the Design and Multimedia business units showed significant growth: in the Design segment revenues rose by 12 percent to 88.0 million euros. The Multimedia segment increased its revenues by 33 percent to 7.7 million euros.

Earnings per share more than doubled

Thanks to this considerable growth the Nemetschek Group achieved an EBITDA of 26.5 million euros in the first nine months of the current fiscal year (previous year: 18.9 million euros). At 91.9 million euros the operating costs were up by 5 percent from the previous year. This is largely attributable to revenue-dependent cost items such as dealer commissions and bonuses as well as higher expenses for the market launch of the new product versions of Allplan, Vectorworks and Maxon. The operating profit (EBIT) amounted to 19.4 million euros compared with 11.7 million euros in the previous year. Net income (group shares) thus amounted to 13.2 million euros (previous year: 6.3 million euros). The earnings per share (group shares, basic) thus more than doubled compared with the previous year: from 0.65 euros to 1.37 euros.

The strong operating result in the first nine months is also reflected in the cash flow: compared with the previous year the cash flow from normal business activities increased by 9.5 million euros to 27.6 million euros (previous year: 18.1 million euros). The cash flow from investing activities amounted to -2.4 million euros (previous year: -2.9 million euros). The free cash flow thus amounted to 25.2 million euros. Compared to December 31, 2009, the liquid funds increased by 13.3 million euros to 36.2 million euros and now exceed the remaining loans from the Graphisoft acquisition (27.0 million euros) by 9.2 million euros. The Nemetschek Group has an equity quote of 52 percent (December 31, 2009: 50 percent).

Forecast confirmed

'In the first three quarters of the current fiscal year our revenues almost returned to the level achieved in 2008 - and the EBITDA margin is at a record high,' emphasizes Ernst Homolka, CEO, Nemetschek AG. For the year as a whole, management expects revenues to increase by around 9 percent - and thus growth to settle at the upper end of the forecast that was raised in the middle of the year. With this in mind the EBITDA margin is expected to be at around 24 percent. 'The plus in revenues could be even more significant should the fourth quarter progress well', emphasized Homolka.

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