Success for Wood Wharf will mean the ongoing evolution and development of the Canary Wharf Estate.
The school they’ve got in H2, to the GP surgery in H3 and then it’s trying
to make it evolve to become a well-rounded estate.
Over 100 different firms of designers all working to different programmes, different
buildings and its really bringing that together as a jigsaw to make it all flow together,
that’s the biggest challenge for Wood Wharf.
As a company trying to find the best way to do things is in our DNA.
3D Repo has added transparency to help the
client see what is going on in a very complex project. It brings all the information together
in a very easy and coherent way in the cloud and allows even non-CAD users to access the information.
It is certainly rewarding to have been involved
in developing a new district in London knowing that people’s lives will be shaped by the
work that we’ve done.
Canary Wharf are renowned for delivering quality
projects and this will be no exception.
Wood Wharf is a 23-acre development situated to the east end of Canary Wharf.
It started in February 2015 and has about a decade long programme.
One of the key challenges is really about
placemaking. So, it’s bringing together different users in a way that knits together.
Wood Wharf won’t just be an extension of the existing estate, it’s a whole new city
within a city for want of a better term. It’s creating the right development in the right
location with lots of integrated uses. You go to school, you go to work, you go to live,
you go to eat, you go to drink and it’ll have a really nice waterside feel to it.
It was semi derelict, British Water Ways owned it. It had some low-grade offices; part was
used as a storage facility and there was a nursery on-site as well.
It was fundamentally run down.
In 2016 we installed a sheet pile combi wall
which capped the silt layer that was existing in the dock. We bought a barge in; in fact,
it was the largest barge that we’ve had in the dock since it was a working dock.
We discharged 7,500 tonnes of gravel in one sitting then the boat turned around, went back round
the south side of the Isle of Wight and came back gain. That capped the silt layer off
then we discharged all of the water back into the dock from the other side.
That was about 57 million litres over a week and then two guys called Shane and Paul went fishing
for four days, caught all the fish and put them the other side and then we completed
the rest of the de-watering.
We’ve got approximately 5 million square
feet of development to do. Phase One has got 12 individual buildings ranging from 12 to
57 stories in height, we have got 1,600 new homes to deliver as part of Phase One out
of a total of about 3,500.
2.8 million square feet of office accommodation, half a million
square feet of retail, 8 acres of public space as well as complex energy infrastructure.
The particular challenge of Wood Wharf is how we bring all of the different workflows together.
There is a number of large towers being sprung
up from the same common basement, so all of the buildings share the same utilities, which
makes it an extremely complex and interesting project at the same time.
On the coordination front it’s been overlaying partial buildings landing in to the infrastructure
basement which means you double the amount of people you are trying to communicate with.
You’ve got two architects, two mechanical and electrical service engineers so we’ve
also doubled the number of contractors that are working in the same area.
That’s where we’ve had most, I won’t call them issues because we’ve solved them, but we’ve had
to spend a lot of attention making that coordination work.
We’re always keen to support innovation through the work that were doing, there’s
always a better way of doing things so we’re always looking and hoping for someone to come
and show us something that would help us.
I first met 3D Repo in a start-up competition
set by Canary Wharf Group. They knew nothing about construction, I still no nothing about
computers, but putting their expertise of computers with my team’s expertise in construction
and design management, we’re coming up with a tool which is certainly benefitting us at
the moment and will hopefully go on to benefit others.
Before I graduated from my doctorate research, that was sponsored by Arup, that I did at
University College London I already established that we needed a company, 3D Repo. We were
invited to join the Incubator run by Level39 Canary Wharf, that was back in 2015. Through
the Incubator we won the Virtual Design and Construction phase.
3D Repo is a design and coordination platform. It allows us to make notes and communicate
those notes throughout the design team. Looking at the 3D model in 3D Repo before a meeting
I can set an agenda, through the meeting I can do the minutes and after the meeting each
person is clear what task they have to do to try and clear all the design issues off
the 3D Repo platform.
Because 3D Repo won the Incubator by Canary
Wharf Group, Wood Wharf was the very first project that started fully utilising 3D Repo.
The natural flow of design tends to make people want to use the model in different ways at
different times, so where 3D Repo helps is understand really what’s going on in detail,
making sure we don’t lose sight of clashes and allowing the team to concentrate their
efforts in to where it’s going to have the biggest impact.
Since Wood Wharf is such a complicated project and such a multi-party undertaking 3D Repo
enables asynchronous collaboration that means that different companies can login to the
online platform, access the data as and when they need and they can very easily communicate
with the other parties without the need to exchange anymore emails or written notes.
Any issue I raise, or any other person in the team raises, is available to anyone else
in the team. You drive around or walk through the model and you see the pins in the model.
You click them and it will take you to the description of the issue, allowing you to
talk on top of that issue to add your comments, have your say, so we’re allowing full open
discussions. So, it’s a higher level of collaboration, its early communication and
coordination – it’s the 3 Cs.
If you compare 3D Repo with traditional ways
of working, we provide an online platform so users don’t need to install new software
anymore, they can very easily connect with a web browser.
They have immediate access
to the latest information and the latest model, the latest variations in 3D data coming from
the consultants and contractors.
The cooling towers are integral to the chilled
water system which is providing chilled water to the entire development. Their location
being on top of one of the taller buildings, the complexities came in that we had to get
them done quick, we had to be efficient so we could install them and commission the chilled
water system to make sure everything is ready for the occupants to move in at the end of 2019.
The cooling tower is an extremely complex
piece of design, especially due to the size and space restrictions on site. 3D Repo enables
us to bring all these different disciplines together in a very easy manner, so that each
party could see where the clashes and potential design problems would be, and they were able
to resolve them in the cloud very easily.
Using 3D Repo in the cooling tower compound
allowed a level of transparency where everyone was aware of what everyone else was doing.
There were no lost emails because we are not emailing anything anymore and there was no
ambiguity related to any of the issues or tasks which were being set.
Coordination on site so far has gone very well. We even identified a minor clash between
insulation, which has been agreed through design team, and we’ve just been up on site
and seen that clash on site. Well its not really a clash, it’s a soft clash, we don’t
have clashes anymore.
Being a small start-up enabled us to work
very closely with our customers and be able to listen to their needs and very quickly
create new features into the software which gives us a massive advantage over established vendors.
Our job is really to create the conditions for the designers to succeed.
In terms of technology and BIM and 3D Repo it’s creating a collaboration
platform to allow the team to work together and to collaborate and to work efficiently.
Project Managers live to have their projects delivered and they want to be known for the
ones that do it safely, on time, on budget and have the best wow factor. That kick of
getting a project delivered will never change. If you pass that enthusiasm for what you do
on to the guys, then you won’t go far wrong.
Once the district is complete it will be nice
to see all the work, all the drawings and all the stuff that I see, the 3D models, all
coming in to one and being the finished article.
Throughout the years we’ve been extremely
proud to see the technology that was developed as a student project at university to be utilised
in one of the most famous districts in London.