BIM design of steel structures by DESCON for ​IKEA’s new office building in Malmo

IKEA’s new office building is under construction in Malmo, Sweden. This contemporary and modern building meets all BREEAM requirements. Building consists of two blocks, connected with each other. The total building area is approximately 13,200 m2 and the total volume of the building is roughly 76,000 m3.

Engineering work of the project was split between two different engineering offices. Lithuanian Engineering company „DESCON“ was responsible for the structural design of the prefabricated and reinforced concrete and steel structures. Peikko supplemented the design with steel and composite structures. The whole building was modeled using Tekla Structures. DESCON team faced challenging tasks when combining different production and engineering solutions. Almost all necessary drawings for fabrication and construction were successfully produced with Tekla Structures.

The project has been the largest BIM project for DESCON. Combining different materials and profiles from different engineering offices was challenging, as well as guiding the modeling process of other engineers and subcontractors. Different stakeholders had different version of Tekla Structures in use, which caused some additional difficulties. Tekla BIMsight and IFC models were used for combining and fitting models together.

One of the most challenging structures in the project was 12-metres tall tree layer precast concrete wall, which was challenging to model and analyze structurally. The size of the element caused some troubles also for transportation and installation.