The Development of a Concept for a Dutch Construction System for High-Rise Buildings

During the eighties, the construction industry in Japan was in trouble. The image was bad, too many fatal accidents happened on the construction sites and craftsmen preferred to work in other industries. In addition, the space for constructing high-rise buildings was minimal, especially in the big cities. This is why in the nineties, the leading Japanese construction firms started to develop and use mechanised and even automated construction systems for high-rise buildings. In the Netherlands, only one experiment (Delftse Poort) with a comparable construction system is known to exist. Dutch contracting company Ballast Nedam has built a residential building called Westpoint, which is 111 meters high. It was built in a traditional way. This was a chance to erect this building using particular a construction system, but in the preparation phase, the process designers had too little insight into the costs, production time and risks, so they decided to build it in a traditional way. Now the building is ready, a simulation has been made of the production process involving the use of an automated construction system. This paper provides the results of this study.