Page 229 - ELEMENTS EUROPA (EN)

ELEMENTS EUROPA
A NEW WAY OF WORKING
The project’s highly collaborative way of working is one of the
major changes unleashed by BIM.
Working in a traditional way, each member of the design team
produces his own documents and a construction company
executes them. Coordination is seen as a separate task.
By contrast, when using the BIM approach, the designers,
builders and operators jointly develop a model of the building.
Any coordination issues are automatically raised the moment
any change is made to the model.
At the beginning of the 20th century, architects like Victor
Horta had complete control of every aspect of a building’s
construction and were able to coordinate everything due to
their comprehensive knowledge of building technology. This
gave Horta in particular the architectural freedom to let the
various construction elements express their technological
“content”, meaning that he had to draw them all right down to
the very last detail, leaving the builders with the task of faithfully coordinated use of software. One example of the high degree of
reproducing his drawings.
Conversely, a large number of execution drawings for the
Europa building were made by the builders/manufacturers
themselves, on the basis of the details determined by the design
team and also specifying the performance levels to be achieved.
It was left up to each builder/manufacturer to integrate his own
technology, in the form of detailed 3D execution plans for the
structure, the ducts, the inside walls, the lightweight facades,
etc. These drawings cover a large part of the construction
elements and give a realistic vision of the building, while at the
same time being considered to comply with the specifications
and the agreed budget. The design team then examines these
documents, checking whether they comply with the contracts
and making formal corrections. Where necessary, they can
improve them by formatting the technological elements
contributed by the builder/manufacturer. With each participant
thus fully involved, this exchange results in a balanced dialogue
between the architect and the executing companies, very
similar to that which might have existed between Victor Horta,
his metalworker and his stonemason ...
REASONS FOR DETAIL 225
However, this similarity applies only to a certain extent to
the construction elements subject to large-scale industrial
production: the heavy metal structural elements, ventilation
ducts, various electrical devices, etc. By contrast, it was of great
significance for certain non-standard elements of the Europa
building, such as the numerous elements made of perforated
steel sheeting, the cylindrical panelling of the sloping columns,
the multi-coloured carpets with their elliptical rings in the
conference rooms, the multi-coloured door panels, etc. The
common denominator in all of these elements was that they
were produced in a small series or as one-off items by medium-
sized companies using CNC machines, on the basis of detailed
design files. Today’s IT technology allows flexible tailor-made
solutions to be combined with the precision and low unit costs
of industrial production: a new way of working, driven by BIM.
INFORMATION
As was the case at the start of the industrial era for screws
and nails, BIM needs to rely on a complete documentation of
all standardised construction elements. It also requires the
coordination needed concerns the external gate at the entrance
to the Europa building, which is made up of four different
sections, each made by a different subcontractor, each one
using different software. This serves as a good illustration of
the extent to which all stakeholders will be expected to change
their way of working to participate in BIM.
Similarly, the necessary data transfer itself has to be properly
structured. To give an idea of the size of this task, in the
building’s execution phase (the main structure and the finishing
work), more than 26,000 execution documents were stored
on the exchange platform, set up specifically for the Europa
project. More than 13,200 design drawings, most of them drawn
by hand, were established by the architects for the finalisation
of the execution documents, and more than 20,500 e-mails
were sent out by the design team.