“Learning and continuous improvement in our DNA”, — Vitalii Melnyk, Vice President of UDP

From 2018, all projects within the innovation parks UNIT.City in Kyiv and Kharkiv and LvivTech.City in Lviv, which are part of the portfolio of the development company UDP, are created using BIM technologies. In world practice, BIM is used at all stages of the real estate life cycle — from the beginning of project concept development to the end of its operation. At the same time, the greatest added value is achieved at the stage of operation — in the period of 10-20 years.

When we started building innovation parks, our work was based on the Lean philosophy. It is, in essence, a system of continuous improvement and focus on saving resources and fighting losses. In particular, we asked ourselves the following questions:

• How to reduce the time to develop design solutions?
• How to improve their quality?
• How to avoid collisions between architectural and engineering parts?
• How, in the end, to save money?

The answer to these questions was BIM modeling.

A small pilot project of fit out with an area of ​​1.5 thousand m2 was launched, which, however, turned out to be difficult to implement in our reality: both within the team and for external partners and contractors, the use of VIM became a real challenge. Everyone wanted to see quick results.

Nevertheless, the object was realized. And we saw how significantly BIM can improve project quality and reduce time.

As noted by Olena Voskobiynyk, Acting Director-General of the Directorate of Technical Regulation in Construction of the Ministry of Regional Development, the implementation of BIM and digitalization of the industry is one of the priorities of the Ministry of Community and Territories of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. In February 2021, the Concept for the introduction of BIM technologies in Ukraine was adopted and a plan of measures for its implementation was approved and a draft law is planned to be regulated, which will regulate legal relations in the relevant field.

As for the state police, in order to accelerate the process of BIM implementation, it is necessary, first of all, to define common standards for the creation, transmission, and storage of electronic project documentation, including BIM models.
In our company, the potential of construction information modeling technologies is used by 35-40% – for Ukraine, this is a record. At the same time we managed to achieve the following results:

• reduce project development time by 30% (stage P + R);
• increase the efficiency of the team due to the close relationship: customer-designer-builder;
• reduce conflicts by more than 90%;
• optimize procurement and waste, which facilitated the implementation of green standards in construction;
• VIM has become a mandatory tender requirement in our innovation park projects.

In particular, Olena Shulyak, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on the Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development, and Urban Planning, notes that the digitalization of the industry minimizes corruption and the human factor. Ukraine has already introduced an e-system in the field of construction, which has 130 thousand documents and more than 3.5 thousand users.

If the government does not deviate from the planned path, we will soon feel the enormous potential of BIM in our own practice. In Ukraine, we are just learning to use BIM modeling: architects, engineers, customers, builders — all. But it is already clear: investments in BIM technologies are expedient and they give excellent results.

We are moving forward with confidence, and the key to this progress is the philosophy of lifelong learning, which is embedded in the “DNA” of the team of innovation parks UDP at the stage of its creation. BIM is one of the main milestones of this approach. Continuous training and improvement give us the opportunity to deepen knowledge, set trends in the development market, expand horizons, achieve ambitious goals, respond quickly, and adapt to change.

Additional information. UDP is a real estate developer managed by Quarter Partners investment company Andriy Ivanov. UFuture is the majority shareholder of UDP.