Bryden Wood and Mace take BIM to Russia

Innovative architecture practice Bryden Wood is exporting BIM to Russia after being appointed lead designer and BIM consultant on a development of 15 000 new homes.

The appointment was hailed as a British BIM success story by Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith this week, speaking at the launch of the BIM4SMEs working group.

Client SPB Renovation has also appointed Mace to project manage the scheme, which is due to start on site in May 2014.

Multi-disciplinary Bryden Wood has pioneered the use of BIM allied to “semi-standardised” design, notably in a series of private hospitals for private healthcare company Circle.

In a role mirroring its involvement with Circle Healthcare, Bryden Wood is to develop a standard “chassis” and library of components for the St Petersburg buildings, which other architects would then adopt to produce detailed designs. Its role will also cover M&E consultancy across the site.

The site will be divided into five or six separate plots, with a separate architect taking on each plot. But Bryden Wood will also act as design architect for one of the plots, as well as structural engineer.

Director Jaimie Johnston said: “The design principle is that if you’re delivering one million square metres, you can’t think of it as a construction project – it’s an assembly plant. SPB wanted a data-driven project because of the values and logistics involved.

“It’s the perfect project for us. It’s a step up from Circle – a system-build solution to get the right quality within the cost plan, plus architectural variation. It’s a kit of parts, but it won’t produce cookie-cutter buildings.”

The project will be underpinned by BIM. Bryden Wood is to develop libraries of intelligent components that the other design firms will adopt to create BIM models as they test out ideas. “So we can pull out the data to understand the cost, program and logistics of what they’re proposing.”

The protocols for sharing data between team members and the client will be governed by PAS 1192:2, the recently produce BSI standard that defines roles and responsibilities within the BIM data environment. The project will also adopt the BIM Task Group’s “Plain Language Questions” that define the client’s data needs, and its guidance on linking data to intelligent objects.

Bryden Wood pitched for the role last December against several multinational, multi-disicplinary design consultants, and was appointed at the beginning of February. “We’re delighted – we thought we were ideally suited to it but we’re still a relatively small [75 strong] company based in London. But it feels like someone’s finally asked us the question we’ve answering for a while,” said Johnston.

Mace is understood to have been appointed on the strength of its work as one of the ODA’s delivery partners on the Olympic Park. Bryden Wood has also worked with Mace in the past, on projects also including facilities for the Metropolitan Police where BIM was used to cut costs and timescales.

Main photograph: Percita