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Collaboration at the heart of the athletes’ village

Les Gradins athletes’ village, France

Marking the entrance to the athletes’ village, the Les Gradins building will house the world’s best athletes from July 2024. Trimble talks about its collaboration with GA Smart Building on this extraordinary project using a full BIM approach.

About the Les Gradins project

The building, named for its stepped design resembling that of stadium terracing, combines simplicity of design with strong environmental ambitions.

Designed from the outset by GA Smart Building to be convertible, its second life will see it transition into a residential and office building. Thanks to a sustainable off-site approach, reconfiguration will be considerably simplified aiding its speedy conversion to a living space for the local neighbourhood by the end of 2024.

Les Gradins in numbers

  • 9,200 sqm designed by the architectural firm ECDM
  • 408 athletes and their staff
  • 21 bedrooms, 110 bathrooms

Les Gradins, named for its stepped design resembling that of stadium terracing

A specialist in intelligent sustainable buildings

GA Smart Building was approached at a very early stage in the project by the investor consortium* and is involved in various phases of the project: design studies, offsite construction, with offsite manufacture of structural elements (floors, columns and beams), façades and technical equipment.

*The investor consortium made up of Caisse des Dépôts, Caisse des Dépôts Habitat and Icade has been selected as the winner of Sector D of the Athletes’ Village following a consultation launched by SOLIDEO in May 2019.

"BIM, combined with our industrial expertise, enabled us to save precious time in meeting the ambitious objectives of the project, particularly in terms of planning."

Olivier Pellegrin, BIM Engineering Manager at GA Smart Building 

Identifying BIM requirements

  • Controlling the carbon impact of the construction and the building throughout its life cycle.
  • Schedule management - the building is designed for a world-class event, there is no way it can overrun.
  • Intensive collaboration involving several architects and engineering offices who have to deliver all their buildings together.
  • Simplified reconfiguration of the building from November 2024. Beyond this initial conversion, we need to ensure that the data is accessible, traceable and durable over the long term.

BIM figures for Les Gradins

  • 76GB of data – 3,600 files
  • 70 updates for the concrete model only
  • 105 people with access to Trimble Connect
  • 900 assigned tasks

Les Gradins 3D BIM model

Project phases

  1. Launch of preliminary studies.

  2. Collection of models from architects via Trimble Connect.

  3. GA Smart Building modelled the precast concrete structures on Tekla Structures.

  4. Production of manufacturing drawings, followed by fabrication and delivery of parts to site (by lorry or ship).

  5. At the same time, other subcontractors produce complementary models using Tekla Structures (for steel structures) or other tools that are interoperable with the Trimble workflow.

  6. Construction phase with continuous evolution of the models.

  7. Final recollement phase with the last on-site survey once construction is complete and the models are adjusted, via Trimble Connect.

  8. Handover of the building and all the documentation to Icade.

Calculation of the carbon weight of the construction, i.e. the carbon measurement (concrete and steel structure) is a huge advantage when utilising Tekla Structures.

Les Gradins precast model showing MEP

GA Smart Building used Trimble for:

Adapting to an industrial context

  • Provides advanced modelling of concrete buildings and different materials with levels of detail surpassing architectural tools on the market.

  • Facilitates the link between the model and the various industrial tools.

Collaboration made easy

  • Brings together different stakeholders and trades, including all levels of BIM expertise and on a single model, via Trimble Connect.

Interoperability

  • Addresses all the other BIM tools tools on the market via simplified data sharing (IFC) and a host of functional functional gateways.

  • Essential for the construction of dozens of buildings covering the 52 hectares of the village.

Versioning management

  • Enables multiple versions of the model to be created and archived according to the needs of the project.

"I find that Trimble Connect is the best collaboration platform on the market, in terms of file quality and usability. You can feel that they’ve developed the tool to make it easy to use, even for for non-experts."

Olivier Pellegrin, BIM Engineering Manager at GA Smart Building

Building for sporting excellence.

Building Information Modelling can be found at the heart of many major sporting events, from cleaning up the River Seine ready for swimmers, to providing accommodation for competing athletes.

Learn how France readied itself for a summer of sport, visit the Sporting Excellence website.