European Games' Stadium Technology Demonstrates Best Practices for GCC Sporting Projects

Tekla’s Building Information Modeling Software Ensures High Quality and Speed of Design for Baku National Stadium in Azerbaijan

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: The technology used to construct the centerpiece stadium for the 2015 European Games could ensure that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s upcoming sporting projects are completed on time and on budget, industry experts announced today.

GCC countries are heavily investing in constructing new or renovating existing football and cricket stadiums and multi-purpose indoor arenas.

The Baku National Stadium is a prime example of the benefits of BIM, showcasing the speed and design quality at every level of its development. The new 68,000-seat, retractable roof stadium will host the opening ceremony of the first European Games held in June 2015. What is more, the truly global team had just 24 months to design and build the venue.

Baku Olympic Stadium houses the 2015 European Games, the continental equivalent of the Olympics, held from 12 to 28 June in Azerbaijan. The European Games are the final continental Games to be initiated, after the Asian Games, Pan-American Games, All-Africa Games and Pacific Games. As sports fans get to enjoy athletes give their all on field, it is the engineers behind construction of the Baku Stadium that deserve a cheer.  Building of this 496,000 m2 venue took 57,000 tons of steel, 350 000 m3 of concrete and versatile use of Building Information Modeling (BIM).

Utilizing BIM in all structures proved essential

As the different parties in this project were situated all over the world from South Korea and New York to Turkey and Greece there was obviously a need for good information exchange between construction parties. BIM was seen as a great asset in the Baku Olympic Stadium project as meeting the coworkers face to face was practically impossible.

­From the beginning, it was clear to all participants that the only way to achieve maximum efficiency at just 24 months would be implementing BIM in all structures. Precast, reinforced concrete, main and secondary steel structures all modeled using Tekla Structures. The key participants had previous experience in sharing data through different software platforms: developing, updating and sending their work back to the main Building Information Model.

“Tekla gave us huge advantage in terms of productivity as we had to deliver structural drawings for 17,000 tons of complex steel within 8 months,” said Alparslan Gure, President of Tekfen Engineering.

Tekfen Engineering and Sdeng in Volos, they created the detailed, information-rich models with Tekla. These models consequentially served as the information source for creating the fabrication drawings.

BIM improved efficiency on-site

With models storing a wealth of information, it was natural to utilize them for construction. In Baku, Tekfen’s on-site engineering team took over the task of training the site crew to utilize BIM technology, Tekla BIMsight was chosen as the software for 3D model review plus notes on site.

“With Tekla BIMsight the contractor had an opportunity to make a huge step towards paperless workflow, which proved priceless later on. The software was also a strategic tool for communication due to the geographical diversity of the project participants,” told Aris Theodorou from Sdeng.

The giant project employed 4,500 persons at the peak. The construction site was remarkably safe reaching 13,000,000 accident-free man-hours.