Special steel frame construction project earns BIM Award

Thanks to CFP Engineering, specialists in cold-formed steel profiles, a complete (precast steel-frame) shell of a detached house was assembled in seven days. For this, the entire work preparation, production and assembly was controlled from Tekla Structures and the production of the elements from Trimble Connect. Thanks to the detailed model and by thinking about the optimal use of materials during design, a considerable amount of time and material was saved. This also did not go unnoticed by the jury of the BIM Awards. They chose the steel frame construction project as one of the winners of the Construsoft BIM Awards. Corné Verhoeven, draftsman at CFP Engineering: "It's cool to participate in the BIM Awards because it allows you to put your project in the picture and compete with others to further deploy Tekla Structures in the process."

"In 2020, CFP Engineering was asked to fully elaborate a house," Verhoeven says. "The client wanted to build the house in-house and we were asked to work this out, i.e. including plating, piping and concrete. This resulted in a BIM model which consisted of 120 prefabricated steel frame elements that were eventually assembled on site in seven days. Because we worked out the house in a BIM model, we were able to put all the information into the model. In this way we could easily control all parties involved and provide them with relevant information."

Verhoeven continues his story, "For this project, at the very beginning we had Trimble Connect used to have all project partners look in and check everything. This allowed us to tackle errors early, establish a communication flow by using To Do's and coordinate everything with each other. Ultimately, this allowed us to do the entire construction process paperless." Frank Maatje, Director of Bouwen met Staal, confirms Verhoeven's words, "What you see with this project is that CFP Engineering put a lot of time and energy into it beforehand, which allowed the parties they are working with to work much better. This is the basis of BIM: you always do something for a party that comes after you, and if you do it in a good way, you end up with a much better project, as is the case here."

In addition to the collaboration platform Trimble Connect, CFP Engineering also deployed the 3D BIM software Tekla Structures, which they used to control the work preparation, production and assembly. Verhoeven explains, "On this project, we really worked out everything in Tekla Structures, both the E- and W-installations as well as the concrete and all the precast steel frame elements. With this software, we modeled everything, even all the architectural details, made overview drawings, controlled production and created material lists. We also created freight lists and production sequences and simulated all freight movements. Everything related to construction, we controlled from Tekla Structures. Because everything was modeled in such detail, failure costs were zero, we were able to properly estimate all materials, and the house was built in just seven days."

Verhoeven says proudly, "This project was a way for us to prove that steel frame construction has potential. We worked it out at a certain level of detailing that we also believe in and showed that this actually provides benefits during the construction process. Now we hope that others will follow us in this and there will be more projects like this. It would be very nice if CFP Engineering is surpassed in this next year and this project was the impetus for that." Maatje can only applaud Verhoeven's train of thought: "Steel frame construction is a very good building system for the future. It has a lot of potential, especially if you do it from a 3D system, fully automated."

Tekla Structures is a 3D BIM software that allows you to easily design, detail, plan, coordinate and manage your BIM projects. Here it is possible to directly and automatically generate production data for steel, timber and concrete builders or contractors.