ASSA ABLOY Project Specification Group, a unit of ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions UK & Ireland, has partnered with ColladoCollins Architects to leverage the benefits of its Openings Studio™ BIM software to make significant time and cost savings on the former Shredded Wheat factory project.

The project, a thriving new commercial and residential development based in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, will consist of over 643 units and more than 7,100 doorsets. Encompassing a sensitive refurbishment of former Shredded Wheat factory buildings, the project is part of a huge development that includes over 1,200 units in total.

Using ASSA ABLOY’s Openings Studio™ software, ColladoCollins has been able to save weeks of time and manpower when specifying and managing ironmongery schedules for the project.

Openings Studio is a BIM software tool that was developed to significantly improve the process of door scheduling, visualisation and more. Users are able to focus on the design, installation and management of door openings – all within an information-rich environment.

Specifying as many as 7,100 doorsets can be an extremely time-intensive task. Using traditional methods, information would be provided in countless separate schedules and documents, which would require a Revit operator to manually create and update, with someone else to then check for errors.

Then, as the project develops, information may become out of date and therefore require individual doors to be flagged up and re-sent for advice. The time and manpower that goes into this process is not only inefficient, but also ineffective, with the prospect of human error still a prominent possibility.

For these reasons, ColladoCollins began to work closely with ASSA ABLOY Project Specification Group to integrate Openings Studio with their own Revit model, allowing the firm to be able find all the relevant information and ironmongery schedules in a single place, delivered in one document.

Martin Russell, Project Leader at ColladoCollins, comments: “Moving to BIM was a natural progression for us, and as market leaders, ASSA ABLOY was the obvious choice to assist us.

“Utilising the advice from Eric Spooner, BIM Manager at ASSA ABLOY, as well as the Openings Studio software itself, we have managed to free up our team from tirelessly working through door hardware schedules. This means we can focus on architecture and aesthetics, knowing the specification and integration of the ironmongery is in hand and will seamlessly feedback into the project within the allotted timescales.

“The information and advice provided by ASSA ABLOY has vastly improved the integration of door hardware within the former Shredded Wheat Factory project. With a project of this size, sharing information can be quite a task – from large file sizes to sourcing relevant information. The prompts from Openings Studio make transforming information clear, concise and generally easy to follow."