Hercuton b.v. Setting the Standard in Quality Assurance

Daan Arts, BIM manager at the Dutch design & build contractor Hercuton, showcased how they have become a leader in quality assurance using Solibri and how it is an enabler for them to optimize their digital processes using open standards for collaboration such as the BIM Collaboration Format (BCF).

Daan has around 20 years of experience in both architectural and structural design as well as contracting as his career has evolved from working with architects and now with Hercuton. He has led a team of BIM specialists for the past 4 years to ensure the company is ahead of the game with quality control and assurance on their projects.

Hercuton is part of the Janssen de Jong Groep, which has offices in The Netherlands, Poland, and the Caribbean. Janssen de Jong Groep’s turnover is around €450 million, and they are one of the top 15 contractors in the Netherlands and are seen as a leading innovator. Hercuton’s project focus has typically been industrial buildings such as distribution centre’s as well as offices. In house, the team consists of architects, engineers, modelers, ground and construction crews.

Hercuton has developed a systematic way of checking models for quality and then fine-tuned how they collaborate and interact with the different departments. Due to the variety of its teams, projects, and digital models comes the need for timely information flow and transparency. This is critical for keeping track of outstanding issues and resolutions and ensuring everyone remains on the same page with a clear view of progress and the way forward.

“Solibri is an integral part of day-to-day use for engineering and a key tool for our work-preparation department”

Hercuton uses Solibri for visualizing data from many different perspectives including quality control, clash prevention, quantity and information take offs and cost calculations as well as a communication and collaboration tool. But, for this webinar, Daan focused on two main BIM use cases: quality control and communication.

Examples of a few quality control checks include the following:
- Ensuring that the MEP doesn’t clash with the structural model using the “General Intersection” rule.
- Checking the design model against the production (or manufacturing) model for significant differences using the “Structural. - Components in Architectural Components” rule.
- Checking the structure is at least 30mm above the foundation with the “Clearance” rule.
- Rationalization of bolt sizes using the “Property Value From Agreed List” rule.

Solibri is an integral part of our quality control process which is a multi-step checking procedure. It begins with validation and checking the quality of the data, then a comparison of the differences between the production and the design model. After this has been completed and any issues resolved the team moves into checking the model itself on specific quality demands and finally, they complete their quality control processes by running checks on the federated models for all disciplines.

The second focus point for Solibri usage in this webinar was the hugely important communication and collaboration aspect. Hercuton use Solibri’s BCF Live Connector to communicate and synchronize any issues to Bimsync, their common data environment and issue management platform. Issues are created with model snapshots, locations, markup, notes, part identifiers and resolution responsibilities. These issues can be opened directly in the authoring tools by the responsible person, corrected and submitted back to Solibri for rechecking and synchronization with Bimsync.

Hercuton use the BuildingSMART BCF communication standard, which has also been adapted to fit international needs. The team communicates issues per building aspect and discipline with most issues created directly from the automated checking process and results, saving time and effort. They can also create other BCF issues manually within Solibri and send to Bimsync.

The utilization of Solibri has given Hercuton huge efficiency improvements in their checking process, it has provided a common space for all the information to be available to all teams. Not only has it sped up the checking process it has also improved the quality on their projects by eliminating errors before they get to site and allowed greater collaboration between teams and departments. In turn this has enabled a level of transparency and accountability for the teams actions, which is highlighted by the improvements in the structured process for identifying, reporting, and fixing issues.

You can learn more about Hercuton’s checking process and BCF communication, through the prerecorded video of our webinar, where Daan focused on demonstration and implementation. At Solibri we are very excited to host webinars monthly, during our Customer Insights series, our attendants get to hear how our customers use Solibri to find solutions to problems or challenges, improve quality, and increase efficiency. Come and watch and learn best practices and get ideas from other users.

You can watch the webinar here.

"The core team immediately recognized the value – turning a day long task into a half hour task with consistent results”