The AxeoBIM collaborative platform has been selected for the Grand Hôpital de Charleroi project by the company AtomBIM. François Lahouste, BIM Manager and Head of BIM Synthesis at AtomBIM, shares with us his initial feedback on this project.
Can you introduce yourself and AtomBIM?
François LAHOUSTE, 50 years old and soon 30 years of experience in the field of project management. I often present myself as a geek of the 80's, first because computers have always been the backbone of my professional career, starting with 2D and then 3D to reach BIM in the early 2010's. In 2013 I had the opportunity to participate in the creation of a site called "AROBIM" which proposed to popularize concepts related to BIM as well as to distribute a free magazine on this subject.
I passed by the control of work in architect's office then by the technical and architectural synthesis. In 2017, I was responsible for the BIM section of the group PROJEX INGENIERIE (the company PROBIM) which had just been created.
In March 2021, I started a new project by joining the company AtomBIM composed of two former colleagues and two architects who have a little the same curriculum and the same appétences as me in the field of data processing and BIM.
The company was essentially doing modeling, the idea was to orientate it towards BIM Management as well as Full BIM technical synthesis (exclusive use of the models and the data contained to do the technical synthesis mission), which consists of the spatial coordination of the building techniques, but also of BIM modeling. We also take care of everything related to the implementation of the BIM standard, whether in close BIM (Revit) or Open BIM (IFC).
Can you present us the project of the Great Hospital of Charleroi ?
The GHDC project is the result of the desire to reunite different hospital sites. The aim is to bring together all the hospitals on one site, which will result in this quite exceptional operation.
It is about the construction of a Hospital with a surface of 155.000 m². On the project we are in charge of the BIM Management mission as well as the technical synthesis. We have about twenty companies to coordinate and this represents about fifty digital models.
The particularity to be taken into account compared to France is that the structural work is done before the intervention of the technical lots. In France, we will coordinate the reservations that will be integrated into the formwork and formwork. Whereas in France, we coordinate the techniques and organize the openings in the slabs and walls.
For this method to work, the structure is sized and designed to be cored with a set of strict modeling and organizational rules to follow. This must be taken into account when synthesizing the data. This information must be transmitted in a coherent way to all the participants concerned.
I had already had the opportunity to work on a similar project in 2015, the Edith Cavell Interregional Hospital Center in Brussels (CHIREC), which had several similarities, in terms of the nature of the project, its surface (110,000m²) or the motivations of the project (reunification of different sites). At that time I innovated by implementing a Full BIM method for the synthesis.
What are your collaborative needs on the Grand Hôpital de Charleroi project?
For this project, we had to set up the whole collaborative process necessary for the BIM process in EXE with the objective of obtaining a digital As-built file.
Among the "good news", all the participants use the Revit software from Autodesk, which allows to do more things and to go further on the BIM convention. After that, the difficulties came mainly from the fact that there is a significant number of participants.
There is an allotment of the project, but in each lot there are several companies. In the end, we end up with a large number of participants, who have different levels of maturity in terms of BIM (this would also be true in France, it is not a particularity). Given the maturity and the number of companies, we have chosen to work with a level 2 BIM process.
So we have to manage to federate all these people, to manage to get them all around the same methodology and that requires an effort. We achieve this through education and not by imposing things. We have to explain the advantages of working in this way and one of the challenges in doing so is to provide the right tools so that those involved understand quickly.
We needed a collaborative BIM platform that could easily manage and support a multitude of documents (about 15,000 documents for the CHIREC in Brussels for example). Even if we are not a BIM project manager, as BIM Manager we still have an advisory role with the client and we were therefore able to discuss the various software solutions with him.
Why did you choose AxeoBIM for this project?
We needed a solution that was not only a collaborative BIM platform, but also had a robust document management (EDM) component.
AxeoBIM is the platform that brings together this double answer, by managing both the different file formats (Revit, Navisworks, IFC), all the project documents in compliance with the naming convention, but also offering the possibility to manage the "good for synthesis" and "good for execution" validation workflows.
Another extremely important tool for our project is the management of observations (in BCF format). AxeoBIM offered this function, but the project I'm working on, for the synthesis part, allows us to go further (integration with Navisworks).
The idea of having a platform that allows us to manage all the documents of the project, visualize models and manage observations, all in one, appealed to us.
In collaboration with our product department, you took part in the development of the Navisworks plugin for AxeoBIM. Can you share with us what motivated you on this project?
Transmission has always been an important element. With ProBIM, or at the time of AROBIM 10 years ago, we made many educational presentations on BIM. Today, I still have this desire to share, I am a trainer at the Catholic University of Louvin and at the HEI (High Engineering School of Lille) where I accompany students in their BIM course.
When we knew that AxeoBIM wanted to develop this tool, we immediately offered to participate in the development. Helping the development of BIM is one of our motivations and it also involves participating in the development of solutions/software that revolve around BIM. Participating in this project is interesting, but also rewarding, as the tool developed (in addition to helping us at AtomBIM in our work on projects such as the GHDC), will be able to help all those who will use it on other
Thank you François for this exchange and for this collaboration.
