Integrated project management | The Entrance

Projects are becoming larger and larger and also increasingly require combined disciplines. In order to properly fulfill the City of Amsterdam's request, Max Bögl surrounded itself with specialized partners during the tender phase. Count & Cooper is one of those partners. Within the integrated project team, Count & Cooper is in charge of project management and project control. Senior Project Leader Henk Jan Zoer explains what that means. 

A good start...
After the contract was awarded, Max Bögl & Partners entered the implementation phase. There too, according to Zoer, Count & Cooper has an important role to play when it comes to project management and project control. "It is important to start the execution phase of such a complex project well from the beginning. For us, especially in the first few weeks, that meant preparing a lot of documents and submitting them for acceptance to the City of Amsterdam. That demands quite a lot from an integral project team with all its different disciplines. From day one, we were keen to discuss, understand and record the working method each time in order to be able to work in a structured way on the one hand and to meet the client's requirements on the other. The former is the basis for the further course of the project. Moreover, the project management plan was accepted at once by the municipality."

4D planning
As part of project management, Count & Cooper staff provide quality, planning, risk and interface management, among other things. Zoer: "We have expertise in all management aspects, ranging from time, money and quality to information, risks and organization. Every four weeks, we also provide reports on project progress, both internally and externally to the client. We also link the time component of the De Entree project to the 3D model. This creates a 4D planning. This makes it very visual for everyone to see how the construction process progresses over time. We started using this 4D planning in the tender. It gives a lot of insight into the use of space. Moreover, it is an ideal control tool because it quickly becomes clear if components or parts are unexpectedly not included in the planning. In this way, the planning model is validated even before the first shovel goes into the ground."

The fact that Count & Cooper has been involved from the tender phase is very valuable, according to Zoer. "We take all the knowledge gained during the tendering process into the execution. This is important, because in this way the thinking behind the tender is preserved and a flying start can be made during the inception. We also dare to take responsibility for participating in the risk, even though we are not physically building anything ourselves. By doing so, we also put our interest in the hands of the other participants. And that is appreciated."