BUDAPEST, September 19, 2011 – Liverpool, Mexico’s largest department store chain, has chosen Graphisoft’s award-winning Archicad to implement BIM in expanding its chain of stores across Mexico. Liverpool embraced BIM as a means to plan, administer and control the processes involved in the construction, expansion, and modification of its stores.
After considering both Archicad and another BIM solution provider, Liverpool chose Archicad as the BIM solution best-suited to meeting its growing needs. Liverpool’s Store Planning Team, represented by Martín A. Pérez, Fernando Parrillat and Carlos Jiménez, pointed out several areas where Archicad surpassed its rival. “Archicad allows the management of large files without the need for major hardware and infrastructure,” they said. “Furthermore, Archicad’s Teamwork function makes collaboration on even overseas projects easier to manage,” they continued. The team also mentioned Archicad’s easy learning curve and outstanding technical support by Graphisoft’s Hungarian and Spanish offices, as well as its Mexico representative, Anzix. “No other company dedicated to BIM even comes close to GRAPHISOFT in Mexico,” they added.
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In 2010, Liverpool implemented its “BIM-Costs” initiative, achieving the first integration between the information provided from their BIM models and the costs database to generate detailed construction budgets for stores. The construction budgets were generated in a record five hours, reducing the variance between the planned and the actual costs from +/- 23 % to +/-10%, which is extraordinarily good at such an early stage.
Liverpool has begun working with the last stage of their BIM initiative, which will include the consolidation and optimization of the processes and methodology for their continuous operation, integrating specialties including engineering, structural design and graphic design, and also improving the way they work in collaboration from outside their Local Area Network. A list of the benefits of choosing Archicad Liverpool already enjoys include:
- Protection and centralization of Liverpool’s Buildings’ information
- Cost reductions related to changes or omissions
- Savings of about 50% in work hours due to project modifications, and of about 90% due to revisions
- Better understanding of projects by Clients, improving the quality of their corrections and of their approvals for new concepts.
- Detection of flaws in calculations, collisions or errors during the execution phase.
- Development of elements of drawing with a high grade of programming and benefits (GDL).
- Cost calculation and quantification for the decision making, during the design process, for cost optimization and procurement.
- New and better information sources for other areas like maintenance, operations, inventories, loss prevention, etc.
- Space optimization.
- Integration of new concepts like Sustainable design.
About Liverpool
With 85 stores and 16 shopping centers in operation, Liverpool is the largest Mexican department store chain. Present in 52 cities and 30 states, Liverpool accounts for 1.1 million square meters of retail space and 315,000 square meters of rentable retail space. The company expects to open 6 additional stores in 2011.