Customer Stories
AF Gruppen preserves Viking history for future generations with Hoylu
est. 1985
Oslo, Norway
One of Europe’s leading contracting and industrial groups
Hoylu Value
Facilitated flexible, BIM-centered planning to eliminate planning collisions before work began
Supported planning throughout the project lifecycle from tender submission through the construction phase
Increased inter-disciplinary engagement and accountability
Tailored product development in direct response to the team’s feedback
AF Gruppen is one of Europe’s leading contracting and industrial groups, employing over 6,000 people. The company is active across six divisions; Civil Engineering, Construction, Energy, Environment, Property, and Offshore, working mainly in Norway, Sweden, and the North Sea.
Introduction
At the Viking Age Museum expansion project in Oslo, Norway, innovative building techniques are safeguarding ships whose construction was equally ahead of its time. The project’s contractor, AF Gruppen, is using cutting-edge BIM techniques in combination with Hoylu to painstakingly plan the museum’s construction around the ships, ensuring that these irreplaceable artifacts are not damaged.
Challenge
The expansion of the Viking Age Museum has been over thirty years in the making. Its predecessor, the Viking Ship Museum, has exhibited Viking ships since 1926, but the museum’s new incarnation is designed to display exhibits covering the full scope of the Viking era and culture. The project, which AF Gruppen began work on roughly three years ago, began with closing the existing museum and securing the ships to large steel structures to ensure they are undisturbed by the work around them.
The complexity of executing such a large project around ships that are over a thousand years old is daunting, and the team knew their planning would need to be airtight. They had previously used Microsoft Project and Excel, but found that these solutions lacked the flexibility to fully visualize the impact of each planning decision on the project’s flow.
The team’s approach is to use increasing levels of detail within their BIM model to eliminate any planning collisions. Before the production phase, the installation flow has already been determined in detail. “We don’t have any big discussions out on the construction site. Everybody just looks at the model. It should be that every collision is sorted out before you actually build,” says Thomas Crosby, project director at Sweco.
Solution
AF Gruppen selected Hoylu to support their planning, and began utilizing the platform when they submitted their bid to the client, the Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property (Statsbygg).
“When we gave the tender to Statsbygg, we used it to visualize our plan for the design phase. So we showed Statsbygg how we planned to work, and then we used Hoylu as a tool to visualize it,” explains Maria Bagdasaryan, BIM and VDC coordinator at AF Gruppen.
After winning the project, the team opened a new project in Hoylu and began their more detailed planning. Choosing a uniquely BIM-centric approach, they maintain a dedicated swimlane for BIM, organized by control area and Model Maturity Index (MMI) status. The BIM swimlane highlights milestones and delivery dates for each phase and each control area within the building for all disciplines involved, ensuring that everyone has real-time visibility into the project’s progress and all handoffs.
The increased flexibility and ease of use has enabled the team to involve other project participants more directly, rather than delegating plan administration to one individual or team. “Instead of us making the plan and just setting it up in a project, it’s so easy that all the engineers and architects were in Hoylu as well. So they made their own plans in Hoylu, and they have to report on their tasks in order. So, we moved some of our work to them, and made them responsible for their own planning,” explains Crosby.
Directly involving other teams in the planning process has generated an increased sense of accountability for deadlines and deliverables. The mentality has shifted to “I made a plan, so I have to deliver on it,” Crosby adds.
This increase in accuracy and accountability is in everyone’s interest. The project is structured as a collaborative contract, so the cost of any budget overruns is split among all parties involved. “It’s a collaboration contract where we must work together. We work together with all the engineers and Statsbygg to find solutions according to the total cost of the project. And together we work the solution out and in the end, we set the price. If we go under and over, we split it,” explains Bagdasaryan.
Results
Hoylu’s ease of use and onboarding were game-changing. “You didn’t need time to learn, and the engineers don’t have a week or two to learn a program that they’re using on multiple projects. They just need to go in and do the task,” says Crosby.
Because it was easy to quickly onboard all necessary parties and enable them to proactively supply information and input, the time spent coordinating between teams and collecting information was reduced significantly. “For me, it was a dream, because it’s easy to have a plan and not be asking people if they can complete a task or have a meeting. I knew exactly when I start, and what will be going on, and what we will check. Hoylu helped me to have a plan for my work,” says Bagdasaryan.
With a flexible planning tool and strong engagement from the team, they have so far been able to eliminate planning collisions. Being able to structure their Hoylu plan around their BIM model ensures that the whole team is collaborating on the same control area at the correct level of detail. “They need to be tightly coordinated because when you work in the same model, you can’t have people working on different detail levels in the same area because then you’ll have to do it again on the other level,” Crosby explains.
This coordination extends to the project’s owner as well. Because of the collaborative nature of the project’s delivery, Statsbygg is heavily involved in decision-making at every stage. The real-time visibility afforded by Hoylu makes the impact of the decisions (and their timing) easier to visualize. “It’s very clear for the owners as well that this will have impact on the project if they don’t make a decision,” says Crosby.
Hoylu’s responsiveness to the team’s feedback has made them avid users. “Hoylu is always listening to what we have to say. If we see something is difficult or something takes some time, we report it to Hoylu and within weeks or months, it’s improved. Hoylu is always in progress with everything, all the time. You learn from us, you see what we want, and you fix it,” says Bagdasaryan.
About Hoylu
Our platform offers you and your team the power of unified planning with an intuitive solution that combines feature-rich whiteboarding, planning, and task management. Plan, engage, and visualize your projects with best-in-class usability and integrations. Bring your best ideas together with your best data across disparate teams and solutions for unified, unlimited, unbeatable construction project planning.