What we can do for you – 240 Blackfriars

If you're the head of a property developer and you have the chance to make a £4.5m saving on a project, would you investigate further? BIM offered exactly that sort of reduction in cost to Great Portlands Estates on its recently completed 240 Blackfriars development. And by recruiting BIM.Technologies, Space Group's BIM consultancy division, GPE had someone to guide things along.

Blackfriars was one of BIM.Technologies' first "mega-projects". It's a mammoth 19-storey office block in London which is already renting its nine top floors to United Business Media. Designers AHMM have achieved a genuine one person per eight-square feet floorplan, creating a building that looks good and works well.

BIM.Technologies was faced with some unique challenges during the course of their work. There was, for instance, a rooftop plant room to consider - backward compared to most buildings. But because BIM.Tech are specialists in their field, they were able to create the architectural BIM that was subsequently aligned with the structural and services design models to form a coordinated project BIM.

Great Portland Estates estimates that for every pound funnelled into BIM, they saved two pounds in the contract sum.

Part of this can be credited to the 4D time-lining features of BIM, which effectively gives construction firms the ability to "rehearse" their work, checking in advance for errors in logistics or sequencing.

The completion of 240 Blackfriars is one of BIM.Tech's biggest milestones to date, but we have other mega-projects still to come, such as Google's London Headquarters.

More information on how BIM.Technologies helped shape the Blackfriars project can be found on the consultancy's website.