Building Iceland's New National Hospital with ��Ǵ��

The Challenge

Opening in the mid to late decade, the new National University Hospital of Iceland will provide more efficient and effective care to the next generation of Icelanders and their families. The construction of the main hospital building will be divided into five building sections. It will measure about 70,000 square meters (753,000 sq ft) and be one of Iceland’s largest buildings. To manage such a complex project, Nýr landspítali ohf (NLSH, English: New National Hospital Plc.) was formed with a special act from Parliament in 2010 with the purpose of overseeing the complete project and acting as a hub between the design teams, contractors, consulting personnel at the hospital and the government.

NLSH needed a construction platform capable of connecting thousands of project stakeholders and over 7,000 architectural drawings––providing complete visibility from design review through the course of construction.

The Solution

With ��Ǵ��’s easy-to-use and intuitive platform, NLSH can achieve a seamless process for drawing management, ensuring that project teams can quickly and easily view and markup drawings and revisions from start to finish.

��Ǵ�� enables NLSH to bring information and teams together on a single connected platform, with information updated in real-time so nothing is missed. ��Ǵ��’s information logs also provide the full history of the project.

As the project moves from pre construction through the course of construction, ��Ǵ��’s mobile collaboration tools make it easy for everyone to have a clear understanding of what needs to be done every day to stay on schedule and prevent rework.

“With ��Ǵ��, we have a single, easy-to-use destination for our project. ��Ǵ�� ensures that the project is running consistently, and to schedule, which is essential on a complex project such as a new hospital.”

Einar H. Reynis

IT and Technical Officer

Nlsh

The Story

As the single largest and most expensive project in the history of Iceland, providing a seamless process for information management and design review is critical to the success of the new hospital project. ��Ǵ�� provides a centralised repository for over 7,000 architectural drawings with an unlimited number of project collaborators working across the platform from start to finish.

Einar H. Reynis, IT and Technical Officer for NLSH explains: "It was obvious from day one that we would need a solution. The sheer volume of information on a project this size means that it is essential that the entire team is always viewing the latest, most up to date drawings and programme information. Not everyone on our team is familiar with Gantt charts, so we like that the programme tool offers a view by day, week or month. With ��Ǵ��, drawings are automatically named, numbered and recorded too using OCR, which saves a lot of time with manual filing."

��Ǵ��’s platform connects all of NLSH’s project information in one place that is easily accessible to project collaborators. "I researched other solutions, but quickly saw that ��Ǵ�� was ahead of the competition," Reynis says. "��Ǵ�� offered a single destination which would help us organise information, drive visibility of performance and ultimately deliver the project on time and budget."

Because ��Ǵ�� offers unlimited storage space, and no limit on the number of sheets or data on a project, NLSH can easily manage the large number of collaborators on the project and the significant number of drawings that need to be reviewed.

Easy Collaboration with Design Teams

For a project of this scale, timely and efficient collaboration with design teams is essential, and a key aspect of this is collaboration on Requests for Information, or RFIs. RFIs can help a project run smoothly and on schedule, but they can also cause significant delays and overruns. Timely RFI management is the key to good schedule management, and ultimately, project success.

With ��Ǵ��, the NLSH team is easily able to collaborate with design teams on RFIs. "Architects and engineers don’t have to log into ��Ǵ�� to complete an RFI," says Reynis. "All of the processes around an RFI can be completed via email. With ��Ǵ��’s RFI email functionality, and in particular the Outlook integration, there’s no learning curve, and no formal training is needed."

��Ǵ�� also adds value to NLSH’s design review process by keeping track of the various communications that are involved in closing each RFI. ��Ǵ�� tracks the email trail of back and forth conversations for each RFI, which enables the history to be recalled and reviewed at any time in the future. This could be during the project or long after the course of construction has been completed.

With ��Ǵ��’s "Related To" feature, teams can also attach any document to an RFI, so that the supporting information—plans, specs, photos, PDFs—is linked to the RFI.

Aerial shot of a construction site and the buildings next to it

Robust Correspondence Management

"With a project like this, one of the major challenges is keeping track of all of the information that goes around a project," says Reynis. "It was important that we were able to standardise and manage project correspondence and communications in one place."

Using ��Ǵ��’s Correspondence Tool, NLSH has been able to consolidate and connect the entire scope of business processes on a project through the design phases into the course of construction. Everything is easily accessible in one place so you can minimise risk and mitigate project disputes.

The Correspondence Tool has also highlighted the benefits of NLSH working from a single, connected platform. A correspondence can be turned into an RFI or a variation at the click of a button, and each item links to the other for complete record keeping. A correspondence can also be linked to drawings stored in ��Ǵ��, and is fully searchable, enabling NLSH to surface new insights that were previously impossible or time-consuming to gather.

With ��Ǵ��, administrators like Reynis can also easily set permission templates to ensure the right level of visibility for each type of communication, or area of the project. The permissions tab also enables administrators to quickly check who can see each communication, removing guesswork.

For Reynis, the benefits of a platform approach are clear: "With ��Ǵ��, we have a single, easy-to-use destination for our project. ��Ǵ�� ensures that the project is running consistently, and to schedule, which is essential on a complex project such as a new hospital. ��Ǵ��’s always-on support has also proved invaluable in ensuring that everyone can make full use of the platform."

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The new National University Hospital is a landmark project in Iceland and is the single most extensive and expensive construction project in the country's history. The treatment centre will be the single largest building in the Hringbraut Project and is a critical component of the operations. There, complex operations will be performed, research conducted and patients treated, using advanced technology and expert knowledge. Requirements for the working environment are comparable to those of new hospitals in Iceland's neighbouring countries. The treatment centre is based on the operations of an emergency and university hospital, with an emphasis on a clear and simple arrangement and easy access between operational units. The total project will involve constructing an entirely new four-building hospital complex that will be built in many stages over many years. When completed, the hospital will contain several inpatient and outpatient wards, an emergency room, research labs, a treatment centre, patient hospital, specialist sterilisation units, waiting rooms, a waste disposal zone, a helipad and parking facilities, as well as the installation of more than three dozen specialised systems.
Firm Type: Main Contractor