New building at DTU wins a Digitalisation Award

Friday 28 Aug 20

by Marianne Vang Ryde

Building 310

The new building is located in the middle of Matematiktorvet and houses employees from DTU Energy, who were previously based on Risø Campus, as well as employees from DTU Physics and DTU Compute.

It is one of the first major buildings that has been 100 per cent digitally designed and built in all phases of the construction process. Not a single drawing was printed along the way, and the total paper spend was a starter booklet costing DKK 17,000.

By contrast, for previous projects, DKK 1.5 million was set aside for printing and drawings in the course of project planning and amendments.

The building covers an area of 9,500 m2. The total cost was DKK 260 million.

DTU has received a Digitalisation Award for the fully digitalized construction process behind Building 310, which was completed on Lyngby Campus in 2019.

The Digitalisation Awards were presented in four categories at the Public Digitalisation Conference on 27 August. The Implementation Award was given to DTU because full advantage was taken of the digital possibilities throughout the entire process, from the initial tender to the construction work and the final handover.

As a result, the jury wrote in its explanatory statement, “the project period was much shorter than it otherwise would have been, unforeseen costs were avoided, and the number of errors was significantly reduced. In addition, the technology was used to create new forms of cooperation in the complicated construction project.”

Building 310 is one of the first major Danish construction projects to be completed 100 per cent digitally, and it has helped to inspire the rest of the construction industry to work more with digital processes.

The building—and the team that designed and constructed it—also received the award for the 2019 Building of the Year in the open category, as well as the buildingSMART International openBIM Award in 2019.

“We’re pleased that we insisted on carrying out the construction process digitally, and thereby helped inspire the industry to work with digital processes in all stages of the building process. We were only able to do this through a dedicated collaboration with the contractor MH Højgaard, the architects Christensen & Co, and the engineering company MOE,” says Francois Svend Court-Payen, Project Manager at DTU Campus Service.

The organizations behind the awards are the Danish Agency for Digitisation, Danish Regions, Djøf, Rambøll, KMD, DANSK IT, and Charlie Tango. The prizes reward successful and value-adding digitalization initiatives that benefit society and citizens and serve as inspiration for others.

Other beneficiaries this year were the Capital Region of Denmark, the IT and Development Agency of the Danish Ministry of Taxation, and the NOPII collaboration. Read more (in Danish)