Continuation of a successful collaboration

The two national monuments Spaarndam and Het Schip are located in Amsterdam’s Spaarndammerplantsoen, between Wormerveerstraat and Zaanstraat. Both of these buildings, designed by Amsterdam School architect Michel de Klerk, were in need of thorough restoration. Since EversPartners had previously worked on the restoration and renovation of the Het Schip housing complex, post office and museum, the successful collaboration with housing association Eigen Haard, Archivolt Architecten and contractor Vastbouw was continued with the restoration of the Spaarndam 2 housing complex. Again, we took care of the constructive engineering and modelling, the BIM coordination and work schedule facilitation. The project started in 2015, and the 48 apartments were structurally completed in the spring of 2020.

LEAN work schedule

The restoration of Spaarndam 2 started with the evaluation of the Het Schip project, with a view to applying everything the collaborating parties had learnt previously in an even more targeted and effective way. We ran a LEAN session between the parties to identify the ideal workflow before optimising it by improving the coordination and relative pace of the different parts of the construction process. We also applied these insights to the work schedule, which formed the basis for fortnightly design team progress meetings.

Integrated design with BIM

The key to successful collaboration was the integrated approach to the design: all of the parties worked simultaneously on part of the model, pooling their input in an open BIM database. This gave the contractor a direct view of the materials to be ordered and supplies needed, helping to improve the efficiency of preparations. EversPartners was responsible for recording the work agreements in BIM (including a contribution to Eigen Haard’s generic BIM protocol), overall supervision and the final checks on the completed models.

Added value provided by EversPartners

Luc Nelis, BIM coordinator for this project: 'The unusual aspect of this project was the integrated collaboration with the architect, contractor and numerous consultants. Although we were already used to working together, we perfected this process this time. This not only sets us up for future projects, but also resulted in a complete As Built model for the commissioning party, including all relevant information for the management and maintenance of Spaarndam 2. This is an excellent basis for any long-term maintenance budget and plan.'

Photos by Léontine van Geffen-Lamers