BUS2
Since the first floor plans were presented to build the Children's and Adolescent Hospital (BUS) in Bergen, they have fully digitized the last phase, called BUS2. This means paperless, LEAN, systematic completion and much better user participation, among many other things.
Healt-Bergen believes that the future of hospital construction requires digital interaction, LEAN/VDC, and 4D as important tools and forsees that the biggest main contractors will help advance this development quickly.
As one of the health trusts in the Western Norway Regional Health Authority, Helse Bergen has therefore changed the legal commitments in the contracts and enforced the use of BIM software and documentation of BIM knowledge for all companies awarded contracts within the health trust. Sykehusbygg, the state-owned hospital builder in Norway, is also implementing its new national strategy: open BIM for all future public-owned hospitals, and Helse Bergen has chosen StreamBIM as their partnering software.
“When we started the planning of the new hospital in 2006, we started by using paper drawings. Since then, both the team’s knowledge and BIM software has improved, and we have reached a maturity level now where we aim to digitalize the entire project,” says project manager Kristian Brandseth, who has worked with the BUS project since 2007.Open BIM reduces costs.
According to Brandseth, one of the biggest benefits of using open 3D BIM software in a fully digitalized construction process is to aid every team-member in doing their work, because everyone has access to the same revisions of the 3D model and drawings. Time is money, and because StreamBIM is super quick to process the models, and uses streaming technology, everyone in the project can access the same information as soon as it’s published. Project users don’t need to sync or prepare, they just have to log in on their device to access the federated 3D BIM model and the digital drawings, and we save a lot of time!
We also save a lot of time on defects and building errors. Now the people working on site can easily report building errors on the go, take a picture and add a comment and share with the team. No need to sit down a do a lot of paper work after you have done the work. Building errors are expensive and that is without even before considering all the disputes that end up in a courtroom.
For a building owner it is important to prepare for maintenance already while planning and producing a building.
“An open BIM makes it easy to involve people with different knowledge and responsibilities. By using StreamBIM in the planning phase as well as throughout the production, we will create a digital twin documenting all the work which is done and allows traceability on building components. This is amazing compared to the previous way we completed a handover. In the past we received thick paper document folders from the main contractors, which we never used because the information we needed was difficult to find.”
Involve the end users in the planning.
“For huge public hospitals, it is important to involve the end user in the planning phase, because they can give feedback while we are able to make less costly corrections instead of after we have moved into the building and then discover building errors. The end users understand much better than the engineers the practical usage of the building, so we estimate we will save millions of Norwegian kroner by involving nurses, cleaning personnel, office managers etc., in the planning by giving them access to this user-friendly 3D BIM model.
“We have involved 170 end users in the planning phase, from healthcare professionals to patient groups. By accessing this user-friendly 3D BIM model available on their smartphones and tablets, they have access when they have time to study the new building, and it has been a smooth and productive process. If a user has wanted to report an idea, she or he could just tag the room and propose a change. We could not have done this with 200 paper drawings.
“We focus on building without errors the first time, so before we began construction, we had a digital tour of BUS 2 with our VR glasses supported by StreamBIM on the tablets. I don’t think it would be possible to put a total value on implementing such user-friendly software. I only know for sure that no one wants to go back to the way we did this before.”