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Bedford Academy
Construction is now a global industry. Companies involved in major international building projects harness the expertise of architects, designers and engineers around the world, and site their offices to support both overseas and local demand.
Bond Bryan Architects. Image: ©Soluis Studios
To cope with the need to work as a team, and to share information worldwide on a 24 hour basis, companies need to re-evaluate their working processes, and to adopt collaborative solutions that enable colleagues to communicate with each other as simply and as rapidly as if they were sitting at the next desk.
This was the problem faced by Bond Bryan Architects, based in Sheffield, which had opened a second office in Westerham, Kent – as well as the establishment of an office in Kuwait. As the company has based all of its Building Information Modelling (BIM) capabilities on GRAPHISOFT® ArchiCAD®, the obvious solution was to implement ArchiCAD Teamwork, which would enable architects in each office to share BIM models, drawings and other documents – both from ArchiCAD and, if necessary, from other applications.
Before implementing Teamwork throughout the organisation, though, as Rob Jackson, BIM Systems Manager at Bond Bryan, pointed out, they wanted to ensure that it would be suitable – ‘We wanted to see if it worked, if it was fast enough, and what issues its implementation would raise’.
It was decided that the best way to do this would be to have a trial project, based in the Westerham office, rather than in Kuwait, where immediate trouble-shooting would be more difficult at this early stage of Teamwork adoption, and, accordingly, a real project, the Bedford Academy, was chosen for the trial.
There was another, and rather pressing, imperative. Academy projects tend to have extremely short bidding timescales – a mere 6 weeks to produce a co-ordinated and documented project - and it was vital that the system should be both quick to set up, and capable of quickly improving the efficiency of work processes.
“Such projects are done at risk – there is no guarantee that they will be won – and we have to have a balance between overdoing the bid and providing a good, co-ordinated design.” Rob Jackson - Bond Bryan Architects
Bedford Academy
Bedford Academy was designed as a co-educational and comprehensive Academy, taking in students from 11 to 18 years, and specialising in Science and Technology. Based on a ‘hub and spoke’ design that exemplified the ‘spatial relationships’ between each of the Academies’ elements – communal hall and dining areas, and an Independent Learning Centre, surrounded by learning environments in ‘the spokes’. Surmounting the two stories, and a prominent feature of the Academy, is the Science and Technology penthouse, ‘floating above the 2 storey accommodation, giving it grandeur and status’.
The Community Hub has a cutting edge design – a triple height atrium, flooded with daylight, and with double height glazing opening out onto the school’s extensive grounds, and featuring an impressive Lecture Theatre and exclusive Sixth Form pods.
Bond Bryan Architects. Image: ©Soluis Studios
Implementing Teamwork
It was decided that the first week into the project should be spent on setting out the working relationship between the two offices, teaching staff how to use the system (which turned out to be very simple), and categorising each element of the Academy. All of the design work was carried out using ArchiCAD, but some of the structural engineering work was done in AutoCAD, by external consultants, and was then modelled directly in the ArchiCAD BIM model to ensure co-ordination.
A significant effort was put into preparing, setting up and building the model of the Academy. The model included all key architectural components, but features such as furniture, stairs and even the steel frame were referenced in due to their source or because elements were replicated throughout the model. In this way, model sizes were optimised, and communication bottlenecks avoided. Architects could log in rapidly, access the information they required, and using Teamwork’s integral messaging service release information, reserve model segments and talk through modifications and other issues with their colleagues.
“We’ve proved that Teamwork allows us to manage our workforce in a more flexible way, and utilise our skills in a more effective way – wherever they are.” Rob Jackson - Bond Bryan Architects
Once the model was built, as Rob explained, ‘resource requirements reduced dramatically and could be re-allocated flexibly to other projects, and for the Academy the BIM model provided the ability to extract visuals and documentation quickly, and as and when required’.
The start of the project actually suffered an early setback. A burglary at the Westerham office deprived Bond Bryan of a large number of workstations. Because Teamwork was already in place, and with data still on the main server, the project was back on track within 48 hours.
Bond Bryan Architects. Image: ©Soluis Studios
The Hub
A critical part of the Teamwork implementation was The Hub. Not the Hub of the Academy, but the intranet repository used by Bond Bryan Architects to share data and standards, and which provides the authoritative definition for file naming, standard report formats, the company’s Health and Safety policies and other administrative tasks – and which defines the company’s ethos and working processes.
Conclusion
Rob says that Bond Bryan Architects are now confident to use Teamwork on any of their projects, both here and abroad, but proving it on Bedford Academy was a necessary learning step. ‘Such projects are done at risk – there is no guarantee that they will be won – and we have to have a balance between overdoing the bid and providing a good, co-ordinated design. We’ve proved that Teamwork allows us to manage our workforce in a more flexible way, and utilise our skills in a more effective way – wherever they are’.
