Practitioners Report on Applied Industrial, Flexible and Sustainable Building in the Retail and Office Sector

Building projects which are build in the Dutch Industrial, Flexible and Sustainable (IFD) Building programme usually focus on the design of the project and the application of prefabricated parts. Though this is indeed an important factor in IFD-projects, the paper supports the idea that successful IFD projects rely on three aspects: An industrialised product, an industrialised building and supporting ICT process and the accompanying organisation structure based on industrial paradigms. For the realisation of the ‘Runshopping Centres (RSC)’ we build in The Netherlands we organise our projects far more innovative than us current practise. We build without a construction company. By contracting the various systems in the buildings to partnering suppliers -who often are shareholders in the project- on a performance contract basis, we create far more durable solutions than normal in this industry and create high quality buildings.

Key to our success is the building system we developed. This ‘LEGO’-like building system allows us to be very flexible in the design and construction phase of the projects and promise even re-utilisation of building materials. Our physical building system is closely matched by the ICT and CAD systems we use. For this to succeed it is necessary to use an integrated design and configuration management system around the entire project. This paper describes how this is done.