Innovation

Skanska goes digital for $680m European particle accelerator campus scheme

Swedish giant Skanska is using Bluebeam solutions Revu and Studio on its project to build the $589m European Spallation Source (ESS) campus at Lund, in the south of the country.

Scheduled to open in 2024, the campus will house the world’s most powerful linear proton accelerator. Some 3,000 researchers a year will come to work on its helium-cooled tungsten target wheel, and in its suite of laboratories and its data centre.

We use Bluebeam to sketch and draw traffic management plans. We can go out on site and look at what we have just drawn and compare it to reality, and do fix-ups on the spot– Staffan McLearnon, Skanska Sweden Production Manager

As well as the campus, Skanska is building a $90m, 6.4-km-long light railway to connect it to Lund’s central railway station.

Bluebeam has published a case study detailing how Revu and Studio are helping Skanska execute this large and complex project. As a member of GCR’s global content partner network, Bluebeam made that case study available to readers of GCR.

Emil Hagman, Digital Coach for Health, Safety and Sustainability at Skanska Sweden, said the Skanska-Bluebeam partnership supports both good building and good business. It connects workers so that communication is easier; it customises tools so workflows can be both standardised and tailored to an individual’s needs; and it helps to recruit and retain talent.

According to Feroz Razwan, Construction Engineer and BIM leader, the ease of working on drawings is a major benefit. Formerly, a drawing would be physically marked up and then sent to other offices for review. Now, that process is instantaneous with the ability to mark up documents on the jobsite using Revu’s mobile application, and to send those drawings digitally to other parties.

This is especially helpful given that the ESS campus site just over 640km away from Skanska’s main office in Stockholm.

Staffan McLearnon, Production Manager, Skanska Sweden, says he regularly uses Revu on the go when designing traffic plans, such as for the rail extension in Lund.

"We use Bluebeam to sketch and draw traffic management plans. We can go out on site and look at what we have just drawn and compare it to reality, and do fix-ups on the spot," he said.

Lotta Wibeck, Programme, Business and Change Manager at Skanska Sweden, said colleagues now regularly credit software like Revu for allowing them to get necessary assistance from coworkers.

"In the construction industry you cannot really wait for the answer the next day, you are stuck with your issue right now and you need help directly," she said.

Read the case study in full here.

  • Bluebeam is a member of GCR’s global content partner network

Further reading:

"It’s magic": Construction is digitalising more rapidly than you might think

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