Collaboration with the help of Trimble Quadri is of great use in order to efficiently design and build the new town district of Barkarbystaden outside Stockholm. With a goal of 14,000 new homes, thousands of new workplaces and all related infrastructure by the year 2032, it is a very complex project.

It´s on the old airfield Barkarby in Järfälla north of Stockholm that the new town district is developing. Here, a completely new town is being developed with housing, schools, preschools, hotels, trade, services, sports, health and culture – as well as all necessary infrastructure. All this in the middle of a future traffic hub with a metro, bus square, commuter train and railway station. Barkarbystaden is pt. the largest development project in the Stockholm area. Skanska is hired as the turnkey contractor by Järfälla Municipality for detailing plans II, III and IV. Norconsult is one of more consultants who are hired to carry out the planning and design in collaboration with Skanska and Järfälla.

Responsible for all infrastructure

“The project is divided into several development stages, and according to plan, the last of them will be finalized in 2030,” says Tom Thongying, discipline and utility coordinator at Norconsult. “In total, we are talking about 4000 apartments in the detailed plan we are working on right now. Norconsult is responsible for the entire infrastructure in the area. Not only streets, roads, water and sewer, landscape and stormwater handling, but also the coordination of the garbage vacuum system, district heating, fibers and lighting. Even the technical coordination for all existing utility lines that lie in the ground is part of our mission.”

BIM collaboration is of great benefit

“We design the roads and water and sewer with Novapoint, and then coordinate and present all the discipline data in Quadri,” says Alexander Svensson, who is Norconsult's BIM manager in the project. “In addition, we do a lot of utility coordination between different utility networks and existing infrastructure, where we get good use of the collision control capability in Quadri.”

“This advantage, including the benefit of working cloud-based and not having to export and import all discipline types, made us propose the Quadri solution to Skanska. The fact that you can quickly view 2D data as a 3D presentation is a big factor. Once you have imported a file, it is easy to reload it if there are any changes. Likewise, that you can easily distinguish the design data from the existing real world situation.”

“At the same time, we saw the benefit of being able to communicate online with the client. Not least through Quadri Easy Access, which provides access to the model via the web browser. With the help of the model commentary function, Topics, we can communicate and document joint inspection comments directly in the model.”

Flexible tools

“For our part, we started the project for real in November 2018, so we are still in an early phase. We have not encountered any major challenges with the software yet,” continues Svensson.

“It is all very much about presenting existing assets in 3D, information that unfortunately largely exist only in 2D. It is very easy in Trimble's products to import and present this in 3D. With such a large project area, it is very valuable to be able to process existing 2D data in this way. It would have been very time-consuming to do it in a pure CAD environment, both technically and timewise. With Trimble's solutions, we save a great deal of time when it comes to modeling and managing the existing assets.”

“It is a great advantage BIM-wise to have software that is flexible and easy to handle existing objects and show how the ground base looks. This is perhaps the greatest strength for someone in my role,” says Svensson. “For the project, it is obviously the flexibility and the model exchange strength between internal and external parties. We see that both Skanska and Järfälla Municipality are satisfied so far.”

Many benefits

“From a BIM point of view, we handle the project as an assignment from Trafikverket, with the same working methodology and proven approach. It is a flexible work set, so it is easy to adjust the level of detail, content and presentation. I see no limitations in the software with the working method we use.”

“As we can make a visual collision check in 3D with the existing utility network, we can work flexible and correctly, with the least possible errors. As we also have a methodology that can handle this, we will neither get interruptions in the work,” says Thongying. “The strength is that we all share the same model, allowing everyone to work simultaneously with the same database, and have the current version in one place.”

“The Quadri model is also used as a presentation model,” says Svensson. “Despite the fact that it is primarily a collaboration model, it becomes very neat visually, which is also a great advantage. It is much more efficient to digitally present something in 3D, plane and section, than with PDF and paper drawings. The model is a powerful tool to use in meetings and reviews.”

Facilitates and wins time

“When there is so much infrastructure in the ground and many suppliers to relate to, it is effective to be able to coordinate everything in the same tool,” adds Tom Thongying. “When we can facilitate the work through this, we will win both time and money, even if the pre-work may take a little longer. It will pay off in the long run.”

“We do not have to import new things and regenerate the model all the time. We build the model from the basis of different data and can make changes to it at any time. When you have good routines, you can quickly update the model. Whether there are thousand utility lines or just one to be updated, it doesn't matter. It is a great benefit that the update of the model goes so smoothly,” concludes Norconsult's BIM manager Alexander Svensson.