Professional management for the arts

Not only architectural demands rendered the Museum of the Arts Stuttgart an extraordinary project. Drees & Sommer project managers, next to schedule and cost management, were confronted with many further challenges resulting from the building's central inner city location, existing tunnel and high technical standard.

Challenges in terms of traffic could not have been any more complex: with ongoing operation with ca. 30.000 vehicles a day, the federal highway B27, "Planie", and its tunnel had to be coordinated with the overall project. Material suppliers were able to reach the building site via few routes only. On the site itself, there was little storage room. Numerous neighbouring building sites and a high density of existing gas, water, electricity and telecommunication mains in the area Kleiner Schlossplatz/Königstraße rendered coordination of construction processes a Hercules task.

In later stages of construction, the project management team had to reconcile a multitude of technical trades. The project manager's work was strongly influenced by technical requirements regarding the climate of the building, which had to be ensured in order to securely and safely house Stuttgart's works of art. With comprehensive coordination of schedules, they ensured façade construction, for instance, of the glass cube, but also assembly of the light ceiling in the exhibition rooms or the lighting art in the foyer all going according to plan.

Basis of organisation management was the computer-animated progress simulation enabling plastic mediation of complex construction processes. This enabled all project participants to see the building site section in which respective measures such as traffic routing, demolition or construction had to be realised. During the planning and construction phase, constructor, planner and executing companies exchanged the latest information by means of the internet-based project communication system (PKM). Whether plans, visualisations or images from the building site recorded by webcam - the latest stand of construction could thus be accessed by all involved and anywhere by means of simple mouse click.

Trendsetting management methods and the experience of Drees & Sommer project managers facilitated completion of the work according to the targets of the constructor, the city of Stuttgart.

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