{"id":2963,"date":"2024-07-22T17:47:52","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T12:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/?p=2963"},"modified":"2026-02-12T13:01:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T13:01:19","slug":"role-of-bim-in-the-renovation-of-iconic-heritage-structure-battersea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/role-of-bim-in-the-renovation-of-iconic-heritage-structure-battersea\/","title":{"rendered":"Role of BIM In The Renovation Of Iconic Heritage Structure – Battersea Powerstation UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Building Information Modeling aka BIM plays a cavernous and significant role in renovation and refurbishment projects, especially in large scale projects.  Renovation of existing building structures are undertaken for heritage building with an intention of maintain these buildings for tourism, conservation of historical evidence and regular maintenance of the structure. These buildings act as a landmark of recognition for any particular city or nation due to which conserving these buildings are imperative.<\/p>

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The word “Heritage structure” not only covers religious or palatial structures but it also covers older hotels, Government Buildings, Railway stations, airports, bridges, tunnels, power stations, plants etc. All these structures that are old showing damage in internal or external structures, which are a landmark to this particular location or nation are proposed for renovation and classified as “Grade II” structures. Battersea PowerStation is one such iconic Grade II structure located in London, UK.<\/p>

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Introduction to the structure<\/strong><\/p>

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Battersea Powerstation is a “power station structure” that was constructed in the year 1930. It was active as a power station until 1980. It was instrumental in generating power and electricity supply to some verry important locations in London including the Buckingham palace. After substantial functioning and power generation, by the year 1964 the PowerStation started to show signs of deterioration of the building which also led to a major power failure in London city. This closed down the center subsequently and later was classified as a heritage site listed for renovation and conservation.<\/p>

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The renovation then started in the year 2012-13 and now it is open for public with shops, theatres, eateries etc. The older outer façade and the structure has been retained owing to the heritage status (Grade II), but the redevelopment has opened new avenues of revenue generation and has transformed the closed power station to an iconic landmark in London. Let us talk about how the power station got transformed into an iconic landmark and discuss the involvement of Building Information Modeling in the entire process of renovation.<\/p>

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Renovation process of such a complex structure<\/strong><\/p>

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Renovation of Battersea PowerStation was a major decision and posed lot of challenges owing to the heritage status (Grade II) and the limitation that come with the status. Majority of the structure had to be preserved especially façade to maintain the status of Grade II. Finally post the approval and decision from planning body, the redesigning process started. Surveying the existing structure was the first step and also the most important part of the entire process.  Laser scanning of the building using Leica, as per the information available in the “Laser Scanning Forum, close to 1 TB worth point cloud data was processed and later used for building a 3D BIM Model. This scanning process and Scan to BIM Modeling process<\/a> was completed by Architects along with detailed analysis and with new design intent.  Design analysis, Demolition and New construction all had to be planned with finesse and lot of caution. Finally based on the government mandate, the entire re-designing process started on BIM platform. Conceptual designing was performed by the consultants using Revit Software right from the consulting stage till the As -built stage, thus creating a complete one stop shop for all project related information.<\/p>

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Design Stage<\/strong><\/p>

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The scanning was accomplished for the power station leading to an extremely dense capture of all construction details, damaged internal structure, wall layers, chimneys, movement areas, plant rooms etc. This scanning process made the entire redesigning process simpler than the manual process as it provided direct visualization of the existing structure instead of performing manual surveying.<\/p>

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Consulting Stage<\/strong><\/p>

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Design consultants started with creating the 3D Model with the existing structure. This model was created using Point cloud data of the existing structures. The BIM Model was developed in three phases which consisted of Existing, Demolition and New Phase construction. All the basic details were inculcated in the initial consultant’s model with the areas that required complete demolition. The areas that were to be retained were very clearly outlined and new design phase consisted of upgraded design intent.   <\/strong>New design intent included shopping zones, Eateries, small modular apartments, play area and so on. The Façade structure was retained which beautifully complimented the renovation.<\/p>

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Development Stage<\/strong><\/p>

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Development stage consisted of detailed fabrication stage 3D BIM Modeling with Fabrication drawings and LOD 400 stage model. It also consisted of construction timeline and simulation (4D BIM), schedules of construction materials\/Budgeting (5D BIM) and also 6D\/7D with progress. Implementing BIM in the entire renovation project became instrumental owing to the scale of the PowerStation and the complexity of the structure. There were a lot of clashes between the existing structure and the new structure indicating quite a few design changes in the Architecture and structure discipline. Major challenge was to coordinate the new MEP Service routing through the existing structure that was not going to be demolished.<\/p>

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Building Information Modeling played a pivotal role in seamlessly completing the consulting development and as built stage of renovation process. We will be discussing more about the BIM Coordination stage and As-built stage in another continuation blog of the same segment. Lot of hard work has been put in with lot of boundaries pushed while performing BIM Coordination of the project<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>

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Trivia<\/strong><\/p>

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The project of renovating this unique iconic landmark PowerStation was awarded to Architect Wilkinson Eyre and Engineers Chapman BDSP in the year 2013.<\/p>

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Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>

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Point cloud surveying and subsequent conversion of the scan to 3D BIM Model makes the renovation process seamless. Architects, Engineers and BIM Coordinators can work collaboratively by integrating renovation, reconstruction process with BIM. While Scan to BIM Modeling helps in analyzing the existing structure and determining the amount of refurbishment needed in these structures, BIM Coordination helps in identifying design discrepancies and limitations right at the initial stage thus allowing the project to function under a specific budget or construction time. 4D and 5D help in identifying the timeline and budget respectively. Every stage of BIM has significant role in the renovation project which cannot be disregarded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Building Information Modeling aka BIM plays a cavernous and significant role in renovation and refurbishment projects, especially in large scale projects.  Renovation of existing building structures are undertaken for heritage building with an intention of maintain these buildings for tourism, conservation of historical evidence and regular maintenance of the structure. These buildings act as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"featured_image_2":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4576,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions\/4576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teslaoutsourcingservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}