Entrant details
Role or Job Title on the Project
BIM Manager & BIM Coordinator
Employer
Losinger Marazzi SA, Lausanne, Switzerland
Employer Role
Design-Builder Company
Are you or your employer a member of buildingSMART?
Yes - Chapter Member
Submission details
Submitting Party Company Name
Losinger Marazzi SA
Submitting Party Company Location
Berne, Switzerland
Submitting Party Role on Project
Design-Building Company
Submitting Party Company Website
Full Project Name
The Eglantine neighborhood, Morges
Project Location (Country)
Switzerland
Project Objectives
Eglantine project aims at providing a high quality neighborhood following the Swiss sustainable building standards "Minergie ECO" and "Site 2000w". It also aims at integrating all stakeholders and inhabitants through a participatory approach at every step. To address such a challenge, it relies on the latest technologies, and on a deep respect of its urban and natural context, to offer the best amenities for the community.
A 37.500 m2 site gathers 13 buildings implanted within a city-scale public square, three themed zones and a public park. Six architects and 14 partners were involved to design this project in openBIM.
openBIM Achievements
Losinger Marazzi develops most of its projects in openBIM. At Eglantine, we applied the fundamentals of BIM methodology in all phases; collaboration, sharing and communication. We need this at the heart of the project because the neighborhood design relies on an Integrated Design Team of more than 180 people from 20 partner firms. All of them working with their own design authoring software, 12 of them, with a common language, IFC.
Our openBIM strategy have allowed us to build a sustainable thirteen building neighborhood, optimizing every phase, with the best quality, very efficient in following the planning.
openBIM used
IFC 2x3, IFC4, BCF, MVD
openBIM or open standards used other than those listed above
Software used
Archicad, Revit, Dynamo, Vectorworks, CADworks, SOLIDworks, Rhinoceros, Covadis, 3DShaper, BIMCollab, dRofus, Solibri Office, Solibri Anywhere, eDoc plans, simpleBIM, Dalux, EVOHOM, eDOCPlans, Lesosai, MS Project, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams.
Strategic Alignment
Losinger Marazzi is the design building company who managed the project in all phases. First with the city and the future population, then with the investors, and finally with the design team and the workers. In parallel to this role we established a dynamic BIM strategy adapting it to each step. The BIM Execution Plan (BEP), created in collaboration with all partners, have taken over the entire strategy and evolves with it the same timing. With this workflow, our aim is twofold: 1- to build more effectively and 2- to address all stakeholders’ expectations.
Highlights
- More than 180 BIM users work for the project from 20 partners firms.
- More than 2.500 IFC files federated form the beginning of the project, and a neighborhood coordination model with 300 IFC Files
- Over 75.000 files shared in the project Common data environment (CDE)
- Mechanical electrical plumbing (MEP) networks continuity in IFC, from the city pipelines to the bathroom shower.
- Two Label’s certification “Minergie ECO” & “Site 2000w” survey on site with BIMtoField
Project Website
Project Address
Quartier Eglantine, Avenue de Warnery 14, 1110 Morges (Switzerland)
Project Type
Residential
Size of Project
- 35.000 m2 of landscaping area.
- 450 apartments (42.500m2), with activities (1500m2) and an underground parking (16.000 m2)
- No roads on the site, and more than 1200 bike parking places planned
- More than 2.500 IFC from the beginning of the project, and a coordination model formed by 300 IFC files.
Detailed description of the project
Build differently, The Eglantine project, from a participatory approach to a 100% BIM neighborhood.
The project is located near the city center of Morges, close to Lake Geneva in Switzerland. This area combines urban facilities and a qualitative natural environment for the creation of a residential area.
The particularity of this project lies in the way it was developed. In 2015 starts a work of co-design between the municipality, the civil society and Losinger Marazzi SA around four main themes: “Mobility”, “Nature and environment”, “Quality requirements” and “Services and leisure”.
This work produced the idea of an ambitious neighborhood, dynamic and sustainable, aiming to reach the highest sustainable and ecological Swiss standards. The Eglantine project is designed and executed to meet the requirements of two Swiss sustainability labels: «Minergie ECO» & «Site 200W».
From there, we make evolve the participatory approach in the early phases of the project to an Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) Team not only formed by architects, engineers et other specialists, but also including the inhabitants, the city and the investors. And the best way to create an efficient strategy & organization in applying and openBIM methodology. Losinger Marazzi has a strong know-how in openBIM matters, on the one hand because of the mandatory use of IFC in every BIM project, and on the other hand we have developed, managed and executed projects in BIM for almost seven years. This aspect is crucial to provide us sufficient knowledge to establish the three major axes of our ICE Team:
-
- Collaboration: Collective work is essential to achieve the global objectives of the project but also the individual ones. Therefore, flexible and dynamic sub-teams are formed and evolve during the project according to upcoming unsolved issues.
-
- Communication: The information need to be exchanged easily and clearly, to boost and improve the collaboration. A good communication is the key to maintain the continuity of information and to achieve better quality planning & execution.
-
- Sharing: Sharing information, documents and know-how is key to achieve an efficient collaboration and communication. At the core of the team work, it gives us the capacity to solve every upcoming problem.
For the Eglantine Project Team, that mean build differently, build better and build efficiently.
Several reasons supported the adoption of an ICE strategy in the early 2017. 1- It provided a way of involving as many disciplines as needed in order to achieve the ambitious goals of the project. 2- It allows a complex workflow, carried out simultaneously for each part of the project (MEP concepts, programming, building, landscape integration, etc.). 3- It fitted our posture towards a “solving problems” instead of creating them. At the beginning of the design phase in October 2018, we believed this strategy, based on simultaneous combined performances and discipline integration, would ensure the best results for Eglantine. Today, close to two years later, we are convinced it was the most effective way to conduct this particular project.
The Eglantine project gathers thirteen residential buildings (42.500 m2) and an underground parking (16.000 m2) designed by five different architectural firm, with some non-residential activities areas (1.500m2). Landscape integration of the neighborhood in its context on several scales has been an important design principle. That is why, three different themed semi-public squares between the buildings, and a main central public square connect the neighborhood to the city of Morges. Buildings and squares are distributed within a 35.000 m2 landscaped park, merged with the neighboring protected forest. Addressing mobility issues also led part of the design. As a result, all cars must park in the underground parking because the surface is entirely dedicated to soft-mobility and nature: Eglantine is a car free neighborhood, where more 1200 bikes parking places will be available (more than the half of them indoors).
The organization we deployed have expanded throughout the project to progressively integrate our clients and investors, as well as the Swiss main three housing production schemes (rent, individual property (PPE) and cooperative). Five private investors financed eight buildings, while the 111 apartments of four buildings are privately owned by 111 individual clients, the last building is managed and executed by an association.
Currently, nine buildings and the parking are being built. It represents the first construction phase which also integrate part of the landscaping works and which will be delivered in the first quarter of 2021. The second phase is due a year later, in 2022, with the final part of the park and the public spaces.
Today we are, more or less, at the middle of the execution phase. The clients and investors appreciate the project rhythm because our strategy and organization will allow us to deliver every building at the correct date with the best quality. The openBIM strategy and our ICE organization have proved to be essential for this complex project. No matter the challenge the project shows, there have always been multiple answers to solve it. This philosophy is a result of our organization, and today most of our partners work together to find global solutions for their own discipline problems. We witness the same approach with our clients and investors. This continuous research to improve quality and solve problem collectively encourages us to develop more project 100% BIM like Eglantine.
Detailed description of openBIM on the project
The heart of the Eglantine project is the ICE Team. Managed by Losinger Marazzi, this extended collaboration of more than 180 people from 20 partner firms (architects, engineers, landscapers, manufacturers…), resulted as an important challenge to enable the success of the design phase. Collaboration, communication and sharing, as our three strategic axes created an effective equilibrium that supported flexible management and team spirit. This is also reinforced by a complete process digitalization which makes coordination & design more precise and easier for everyone. Microsoft Teams & Microsoft SharePoint tools that have been progressively implemented in every task, such as Solibri and BIMCollab. Together they offer a strong complement in this process as part of the “must to have” tools deployed since the project started.
Our first task as a team concerned the actualization of the first BIM Execution Plan to achieve Eglantine’s goals, and control the openBIM implementation. Each openBIM use case we have developed in Eglantine is defined in this document, some have been added in the course of the project. Hence, the BEP would be updated after an ICE meeting when new parameters and goals required for each partners are discussed and decided. This flexible strategy grants the possibility to treat new use cases and to innovate in every field. A major element of the BEP is the geo-location requirement according to the Swiss National Coordinate System MN95. Today, 2500 IFC files from 8 different design authoring software, are geo-located. This parameter allows a high precision in all our controls during the design phase, and avoids potential expensive problems on the construction site.
After that, the first use case and innovation for Eglantine was the contract digitalization. The database dRofus compiles all the available data and centralized the data for each room and equipment. 14 contracts (the 12 buildings, the parking and the landscape) are created by connecting together the relevant data. Therefore, each building contract is directly extracted from collaborating within the database.
During the same period, Losinger Marazzi designated both persons in charge of Design & BIM disciplines. A Design Manager and a BIM Manager. This is another key fact, because the BIM Manager is simultaneously Manager and Coordinator, to manage the huge amount of data and technical requirements the project will need, and to provide the construction and synthesis spirit the project needs to solve each execution and BIM problem. Both managers are involved in the ICE Team with a role of moderator throughout the project life. In other words, they are involved in the main missions for the ICE team related to landscape design, building construction, energy performance and neighborhood living-environment design.
Once those elements are defined, all our partners began their BIM models for each subject and discipline. Following the Eglantine project philosophy, we quickly added the first partners to collaborate with the ICE Team. First, the sustainability part, to integrate all the requirement in the models and also the limits (what can’t be used or done). Second, the manufacturers, optimizing some important parts of our buildings. Having them involved in the early design phase was an efficient and detailed way to design each subject only once avoiding long update that would take years to finalize. In Eglantine we have developed five of twelve façades with prefabricated panels, wooden and concrete ones. It resulted as a real challenge to manage them in IFC because the modeling principles are different between industry and construction. We found an equilibrium point between both of them to use always the same model. First for the coordination and design, and second to generate the prefabricated elements layouts. All those layouts, plus the usual ones follow a validation process in our documents server, eDOC plans.
Some other openBIM use cases and innovations we have developed in Eglantine are:
-
- EVOHOM; an online tool based on the IFC model of the architect, which recover the product & materials from our database, to create a 3D user-friendly environment where our clients are able to select all the architectural finishes, materials they like while the budget evolves accordingly.
-
- Extended collaboration in openBIM with new actors, adding new features to our process, such as the surveyor treating the contextual BIM model; the civil engineer for the piping design, the manufacturers for the landscape design…
-
- Earth-moving design and programming linked to all the other works on the site. Allowing us to optimize every intervention avoiding any security risk.
-
- 3D printed chambers; the result of a collaborative design between the pipelines, the landscape and the startup MOBBOT to generate and print customized underground concrete chambers.
-
- The submissions and quantities from the IFC data, avoiding duplicates and assuring an up to date information.
Today we are in the middle of the construction phase, and close to end of the design phase for the last four buildings. While the ICE team finish their work with their tools, we have already deployed our BIMtoField tool, Dalux. It gathers all the generated data, the updated IFC models, and the layouts of every discipline available in the cloud. Available on smartphone or tablet, everyone in Eglantine has access to this information. In parallel, we still develop more and more use cases to digitalize our site controls, manage the security & safety, and monitor the execution quality, etc., and to achieve a global higher efficiency.
We are proud of every day results. Most of our use cases produced the attempted results, and the others show us new ways to create and innovate in our field. The Eglantine project is a true openBIM neighborhood, and soon its inhabitants will be able to benefit from our development applications during the facility management phase.
Benefits from using openBIM
The Eglantine project has all the disciplines working with IFC in an openBIM environment. The first benefit is the information clarity. Every question in design, programming or coordination is answered with the coordination model in Solibri, maybe through a short Microsoft Teams meeting with some of the ICE Team members.
The MEP networks are completed, we can follow the water flow from the city pipelines out of the neighborhood, through every step, passing the connection with its details, the technical room with the water pump and the water meter, to the mixing tap in the bathroom. Knowing the path we can optimized it also by step, integrating the knowledge of the others ICE Team members who don’t usually participates in these subjects. Linked to this feature, all the MEP holes have been anticipated with the coordination model and produced by different manufacturers, avoiding the creation of more than 1600 holes in concrete elements.
New actors participate now in the ICE team, the surveyor who need precision to control every MN95 coordinate, and the landscaper who usually arrived and the end of the project and in Eglantine was one of the first ones to arrive, detailing and working the 3D model of the terrain.
We could possibly say that the main benefit of the openBIM implementation in Eglantine is efficiency. To be more correct, multiple aspect efficiency:
-
- An efficient organization, because the collaboration, communication and sharing are dynamic and with no barriers.
-
- An efficient programming, because we are able to plan better our works and manage them to save time and money.
-
- An efficient design, because all disciples are coordinated and we find less and less unseen problems on the construction site
-
- An efficient and sustainable neighborhood, using less energy and producing renewable one, because the project has been developed with the Swiss construction standards “Minergie ECO & Site 2000W”
All of this is possible because Losinger Marazzi and the ICE team has invested a lot of energy in the early phases of the project to prepare it. Without this implementation the Eglantine project would not be the same today. So an openBIM organization like this one need an important investment of every partner, not only to implemented, but also to maintain it. This project is going to last more than 4 years in design and execution, and will continue also in the facility management phase.
"We were able to innovate using openBIM."
The innovations match in part with the benefits. The Eglantine project is the first one where we rely on the ICE strategy with such large team, the amount of collaborations flows has been the main challenge.
A few new actors, the surveyor, the landscaper, but also new partners have joined the team along the way. We have developed prefabricated elements for five buildings’ façades, using concrete and wood in multiple ways. Also on a different scale, as far as we develop the detail in our models to a LOD 350, we have been able to develop new digital solutions with our new partners:
-
- An application to configure any of the 111 for sale apartments as the client prefer in the range of options we have prepared in advance.
-
- New fabrication methods in the construction industry. The concrete 3D printed chambers, customized to answer to all our needs in the field. And the test of 3D printed plastic elements to adapt the object to our need in design without modifying it.
-
- Be able to design customized objects and test their conformability directly in IFC with a coordination checking. This is the example of the metallic channel we used in our balconies, or all the 1.600 MEP holes anticipated and fabricated to be included in the concrete elements of the project.
An important innovation is to understand the CDE concept not as “only one tool” solution, but as a way to connect multiple tool from different sources and be able to work with them. Because the better option is to be always capable to adapt the project to every upcoming challenge.
Finally, with the openBIM strategy in Eglantine we have been able to implement each BIM dimension:
-
- 1D & 2D: The first ideas and the base layouts in the participative approach at the beginning of the project. Keeping them in the collaboration workflow of the project.
-
- 3D: All the project has been coordinated using IFC files, productions all the layout used in the field from 8 different authoring software.
-
- 4D: Planning and programming linked to the BIM data. Also the use of a variety of earth moving models to optimize the works and avoid security risks.
-
- 5D: All the submissions have been extracted or treated with the BIM data or its data.
-
- 6D: The sustainable and efficiency problems treated in the participative phase, maintained, calculated and tested with BIM for a part of the criteria list.
-
- 7D: Our current BIM task is to prepare this phase for next year, where we already have most of the needed data.
For us these innovations and methods represent the new reference we will maintain in our future projects.
"We were able to identify where we need openBIM to develop further."
Our main further development is to continue and maintain the current use cases we have improved in Eglantine, securing them to become a standard for all our projects.
One of the hardest points, if not the hardest, is the interoperability. Most of the design authoring software our team use, are not very flexible in the import-export IFC management and the geo-location process. We found solutions for each step by investing a lot of energy, although we know these solutions are only temporary, since the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry and the software developers need to define a common standard in this two theme to really achieve a good and fluid interoperability.
Apart from that two main axes remain:
-
- The use of IFC files directly on site, to execute the realized work or to control them.
-
- Create a stable solution to the facility management phase. This point is our actual task in the BIM process of the project.
From there, we will continue to optimize our work in the Design & construction phases, with a clear goal: Have an openBIM continuous process where we have the flexibility to respond to all kinds of challenges, with the least possible loss of information and without task repetitions.
BIM Uses were defined on the project
I agree to be contacted about the project BIM uses outside of this awards program.
Stakeholders
Losinger Marazzi SA, Berne, Switzerland,
https://www.losinger-marazzi.ch/fr/#1, Design Building Company, Miguel Bermudez
