BIM Award for great and challenging collaborative project Stadsbader

On Monday, October 17, 2022, the Construsoft BIM Award was presented to Stadsbader for their 'GSK Wavre' project. This project scored high marks with the jury, also thanks to the in-house developed planning tool, the use of different materials and the cooperation with many parties, which resulted in no less than 40 IFC models. Jeroen Dewever, Project Engineer at Stadsbader, accepted the Award. His responsibilities within the project included building the 3D model in Tekla Structures and communicating with the various subcontractors.

The winning project 'GSK Wavre' is a connection to an existing building, which will house offices and GSK's production. Dewever explains, "We are connecting to an existing building, building along an existing basement and over an existing tunnel, with as many as five floors in cantilever. At one point we even have a double cantilever over both the basement and the tunnel." Why they submitted this project for the Construsoft BIM Awards is quite obvious, according to Dewever: "The variety of materials, the number of project partners and the complexity made this the most complete project for us to submit for the BIM Awards." And with success!

During the project, Dewever and his team ran into several challenges: "The assignment was to deliver a wind and watertight structure, which we did through the Design & Build concept. Here we came up with not everyday solutions to technical problems," explains Dewever. "It was not desirable to have the columns in the façade plane, so a cantilevered concrete structure was chosen. These concrete floors were alternated with steel floors, which were suspended from the concrete structure of the floor above." Another challenge was the complexity of the building. Dewever says, "For example, in the project we had wooden curved roof beams, to which a fair amount of steel and concrete connections had to be connected." Because of the complexity, a BIM approach was chosen. This allowed existing structures around the building to be incorporated into the Tekla Structures model and also all structures poured on site to be drawn in 3D.

During the project, the BIM software included Tekla Structures deployed, taking full advantage of its various capabilities. "The great advantage of Tekla Structures is that a lot of information can be extracted from the model to drive production, such as the setting out of the formwork and the cutting and bending of the rebar," Dewever explains.

In addition to Tekla Structures, the Trimble Connect used. Says Dewever, "This platform has tremendous usability, making it easy to visualize models on the construction site and office. We have our own developed planning tool working together with Trimble Connect to assign elements a color with a status, so that it is immediately visible how the planning is put together. This can be updated and retrieved at any time," adds Dewever. "This ensures that everyone involved can see the status of each precast element at any time. This resulted in good mutual coordination as well as a successful project."

About the Construsoft BIM Awards.
During the Construsoft BIM Awards the most beautiful BIM projects are submitted every year. Tekla Structures users from different countries in Europe can submit one or more models in seven categories, choosing the text and images themselves. The projects are thus truly the story of the submitter. The public then votes for a favorite project in each category, and a jury considers the use of BIM. This is how the final winners are determined.