African Design Magazine ADM #34 October 2017 | Page 13

TH
36 ANNUAL
STEEL AWARDS
SCOPE AND RESTRICTIONS
In July 2014, BMW SA set out on the procurement process for the appointment
of Professional Services for the design a new roof. At the briefing session, BMW
SA confessed that they had no idea on whether it was possible to find a solution
to meet the objectives without affecting operations. Should this prove not
possible then it would require the entire Rosslyn plant to be shut down for a
period of at least six months to allow the old assembly building to be
demolished and re-built conventionally. This would have a catastrophic
financial impact on the BMW SA and their consumers.
The client's programme allowed 15 months for roof completion. The short
duration of the two shutdown periods within this timeframe eliminated the
option of conventional construction.
LESSONS LEARNT
There is a distinct difference in thought process between a client who
manufactures several hundred high-quality vehicles per day and a
consulting/contracting team who do not have the advantage of a repetitive
manufacturing process. Most civil engineering projects would be considered
“prototypes” by car-manufacturing engineers and this one was no exception.
The construction process was often regarded as “slow and inefficient” by the
client, but given the common goal of the project deadline, the differences were
not insurmountable.
Today BMW has an assembly plant which conforms to their specifications with
an assembly process that is ready to start manufacturing the new X3-series in
January 2018.
Click HERE to read further
on the restrictions applied to
the design and construction
of this roof
Click HERE to read further
on the Design Development
Click HERE to read further
on value engineering on the
BMW project by Tiechmann
Structures.