Campus Ås Veterinary Institute Project
At a mighty 63,100 m2, the new Campus Ås veterinary building is one of the largest construction projects Statsbygg has ever commissioned. The building will be used by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and the Veterinary Institute for three main functions: as a veterinary hospital, research facility, and educational facility.
There will be research conducted on deadly diseases, studies performed on healthy animals, and lectures, held simultaneously in the same building. Biosecurity and biosafety were therefore crucial considerations in the design of the building.
Statsbygg, a Norwegian government agency, act as a key advisor in construction property affairs and began work on the NOK 6.9 billion project in 2013.
They began using Safran Project in February 2016 after they realised they needed a system capable of planning and executing a large, complex project, including managing large contracts.
Integrating Project Schedules
Over time, Statsbygg’s use of Safran Project became more advanced and they needed a way to integrate owner and contractor schedules, without any complicated import/export processes. In April 2017, the government agency moved the project environment to Safran Cloud and began to incorporate contractor schedules shortly after.
Statsbygg’s main goal was for each contractor to be able to plan their own work, while accessing live data from the coordination plan and the other contractors. By using Safran Cloud, contractors can update the master plan in real time, and provide a completely integrated and up-to-date schedule to Statsbygg.
Project Nuts and Bolts
To avoid potential security breaches, the project has been separated from the rest of the Statsbygg IT infrastructure using Safran's secure, private cloud. With the tool, Safran installs, updates and maintains the Safran Project environment, as well as administering users.
Statsbygg also use Safran Web Reporting and Safran Web Progressing – part of the Safran Cloud solution. These modules enable project stakeholders to access reports – wherever they are in the world, on whatever device they choose – and to input progress directly, using a standard web browser. The contractors report progress every week, using Safran Project or the Safran Web Progressing module.
Statsbygg created guidance for all their common set-up values, including master data on the user field definitions. To ensure easy maintenance of master data, they have a dedicated master schedule containing the global data for calendar, user-defined fields, symbols, and resources.
Some of the reference fields were predefined in the master schedule user field set. Remaining reference fields are free for contractors' own use. In this way, the project team can benefit from a blend of both control and flexibility.
One example of a reference field is building numbers. These are used to divide the construction site into smaller control areas. Each building in Campus Ås has its own number, and if needed, building numbers can be combined with floor levels, to get smaller control areas.
The project team has discovered that, by having intricate details represented visually, the project owner can coordinate and control the contractor’s work more effectively.
Having an integrated master schedule is nothing new, but using Safran Project in Safran Cloud means that the owner, Statsbygg, can work in the same environment as the contractors, logged into the same database. Therefore, an integrated master schedule could be created without any importing or exporting.
21st Century Project and Portfolio Management
Assistant Project Manager at Statsbygg, Kåre Johan Haarr, appreciates the increased visibility that Safran Cloud affords:
Having access to the Safran Project schedule in the cloud gives the contractors a better understanding of why we do what we do and the way we do it. Having a seamlessly integrated owner and contractor schedule gives us, the project owner, much more control of the planned work on the construction site and also decreases the risk on site.
Today all the major contractors work directly in Statsbygg’s setup of Safran Cloud and completion of the veterinary building is on track for August 2020 – the start of a new University semester.
At Safran, it’s a privilege to be involved in this valuable ongoing project. And we look forward to commencing another project with Statstbygg soon – the construction of new governmental quarters, which will use Safran tools for its project planning activities.
