Vancouver House, designed by Bjark Ingels, is a complex high-rise project. The unique Facade brings several challenges for the fabrication, coordination and installation. This video shows how we supported the installation team to simulate, validate and optimize the installation sequence to eliminate the potential delays on-site. Collaboration with the installation team is the key to success for that scope, and several iterations of the video were necessary to obtain the best installation sequence.

In this video we show how we helped the Icon West Construction team by simulating and validating the installation sequence of a localized but repeatable area of Vancouver Houses’ facade. Due to the complexity of the installation process we output this video outlining the installation sequence of 6 primary components: Header, bottom track, soffit, grills, cladding and unitized windows and their subsequent hardware, resulting in 17 discrete installations steps for the given system.

The appearance of the drill in the video is to indicate to the installer that there is no support floor below, due to the cantilever design of the building and therefore an additional spotter should be accounted due to safety protocols. By simulating discrete installation operations, we were able to “practice construction” with input from and feedback to the general contractor and facade contractor in advance of mobilizing. This simulation was used as a tool to identify construction coordination risks, iterate on the installation process, and communicate the installation process to all project stakeholders ultimately reducing risk on the project.

Some of the façade panels would be challenging to install using the standard sequence so we leveraged the detail model and simulation to identify and recommend alternative approaches. By having the detailed mullion profiles and facade hardware accounted for in the integrated model it was easier to identify risks and also extract information such as assembly weight to aid with the installation planning. The simulation and all suggestions made were collaboratively validated by the installation team after review of the simulation video.

Thanks for watching!

свернуть