The team at Ty Ffynnon made great use of BIM and showcased the lessons learned at a recent CEW Exemplar event.

CEW’s exemplar programme is all about improvement, identifying and showcasing evidence of good practice and sharing it across the industry and using BIM is a key area. But not as many SMEs in Wales are embracing the benefits of BIM, they should because BIM works on small projects for SMEs just as well as it does for larger organisations and their supply chains on landmark schemes.

Flintshire County Council’s School Modernisation Strategy, published in 2009, places special emphasis on community focused schools provision. These buildings expand the range of activities that take place in a school as they seek to provide a range of services and activities, often beyond the school day, to help meet the needs of pupils, their families and the wider community. This principle underpins the provision of Ty Ffynnon and the vision for the 360 pupil school is that, working with local partners, the school can help to develop the community it serves.

Through a combination of collaborative procurement processes and a proactive, client focused approach from the delivery team this project is addressing, one of the main issues facing the construction industry at the present time, namely the application of BIM and, in this case, how locally based SMEs are responding to the challenges of implementation – and showing what can be done by relatively small organisations.

Clearly BIM is also of significant interest to the wider construction industry and this particular project demonstrates how the BIM approach supports better project delivery, efficient management of project changes, cost reduction and better performance of the asset. The outputs of this project also supported the work of CEW and the Consortium of Local Authorities Wales (CLAW) in developing a BIM toolkit for public sector clients in Wales.

For more information about the project contact the CEW team on 02920 493322 or email CEWales