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POLO Architects Implements BIM 360 Design

POLO Architects Implements BIM 360 Design

Customer challenge

In Edegem, a town just outside Antwerp, Belgium, an ambitious redevelopment project is underway. The Elysia Park project contains 345 residential units, from apartments to assisted living facilities, attracting residents of different generations. The Elysia Park project is divided into four building clusters, realized in phases, one after the other. The project started several years ago, and during the first two phases, the teams did not use a collaboration platform. The customer would often make remarks by hand on a printout, and these would need to be transferred to Autodesk Revit. Or someone would take notes in a meeting and incorporate them into the model later, with potential omissions or misunderstandings.

Project goals

POLO Architects were keen to help their projects run more smoothly and started looking into collaboration software. Since they were already using Autodesk Revit for modeling, BIM 360 Design was a natural choice.

Solution

The firm tried out BIM 360 Design on several smaller projects and was impressed with the results. So they decided to implement the solution at scale. And this is what they did for phases 3 and 4 of the Elysia project. The project involves four key parties: the architects, the customer, structural engineers, and technical engineers. All are now collaborating on the BIM 360 platform. When the building contractors join at a later stage in the project, the plan is for them to also use the platform.

Business outcome

Having all the parties work together on one platform on such a large project for the first time has made a big difference. “The time we used to lose waiting for other modelers, for issue management – it’s all gone. Everything is in one overview. No more emails, no more uploading and downloading,” says Rombaut. All parties always work on the latest version of the model, which prevents a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings. Instead of comments on paper printouts, there are digital remarks, seen by everyone in the project. “It gives us a much clearer overview,” says Van Thienen. If there were issues marked on a model in Revit, and the model gets updated, the issues get taken over. The additional transparency means that if, for example, the client makes a remark intended for stability engineers, now the architects see it, too, and sometimes catch potential issues. “We estimate a 50% reduction in the number of mistakes, and in the time needed to complete some project stages,” says Cant.

Conclusion

Besides a more efficient way of working, POLO Architects has seen other benefits. Reducing their carbon footprint is one. “Everything is digital, so we print less,” explains Rombaut. “We also have fewer face-to-face meetings. There used to be a regular meeting at the client’s place, which several people had to travel to. Soon after we started using BIM 360 Design, we canceled the meeting, because we could easily address the issues through the platform.” And as coronavirus-related restrictions were introduced in Belgium, the team could continue their work uninterrupted from home thanks to BIM 360 Design. POLO Architects now plans to use BIM 360 Design on all new projects that have external parties.

Project summary

    Duration & delivery

  • 20
  • 2020-12-30

    Autodesk solutions

  • BIM 360 Design
  • Revit

    Services provided

  • Collaboration & Productivity
  • System Architecture
  • Product Training
  • Technical Support
  • System Implementation
  • Configuration & Deployment

    Customer industry

  • Construction
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