Barry McAuley, PhD Post-Doctoral Researcher 086 014 4853 bmcauley@cita.ie www.bicp.ie
BICP Case Study 3 – Grangegorman: Greenway Research Hub Background
also the first building to be constructed on site using Building Information Modelling (BIM).
The Grangegorman site is an area of approximately 73 acres located in the Arran Quay Ward of Dublin in the district of Grangegorman. Part of the development of the site will include the relocation of all of Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) facilities and a student body of up to 22,000 students. This new campus will have state of the art sports facilities with an all-weather pitch, tennis court, jogging track, sports track, swimming pool and fitness studio. DIT Grangegorman will eventually have 2,000 student accommodation spaces on the campus. The total investment in developing this site represents a spend of over €1 billion, the largest single investment in higher education in the history of the state.
This technology allows the contractor and design teams to utilise a full digital representation of the building and it’s functions to assist with construction. To effectively achieve the required targets the GDA specified that BIM should form part of the tender for the Greenway Research Hub. This represented the first project tendered by the GDA that had a BIM delivery requirement. The contract type was Design and Build and represented a value of €13 million.
The Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA) is the statutory agency charged with redeveloping the former St. Brendan’s Hospital grounds in Grangegorman. The GDA’s function is to accept the site, consult with stakeholders, prepare all necessary plans and strategies documentation and to procure and manage all developments. The GDA team have engaged with designers, consultants and the DIT campus Planning Team to ensure that the needs of the end user were met and that fitness of purpose of the campus was achieved.
Tender Stage A number of challenges existed in 2011 for the GDA in specifying BIM on the Greenway Research Hub project. No existing processes or templates such as the Employer Information Requirements (EIR) were in place, which made it difficult when trying to capture the needs of the end user. The GDA communicated their requirements to RKD Architects who in turn created a 3D model and used this to produce 2D drawings as the basis of the tender. As the model was developed GDA began to fully understand the capabilities of BIM and senior members began to advance their knowledge base within this area. Figure 1 represents a fully rendered image taken from the model.
Greenway Research Hub The Greenway Hub was the first new DIT building to be completed at Grangegorman. The building provides for a range of research laboratories and facilities for the Environmental Sustainability and Health Institute (ESHI) and start-up business spaces for the DIT Hothouse Incubation centre (HHI). Funded through the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) and Enterprise Ireland, this five-storied research and innovation building is
Figure 1 –Rendered image of the Greenway Research Hub