About the Velodrome

Jakarta International Velodrome is constructed for the 18th Asian Games in August 2018. It is a permanent, fully enclosed venue with a Union Cyclist International (UCI) standard timber track designed by track specialist Ralph Schuerman. Program and cost were critical to the delivery of the Velodrome, with a compressed two-year design and program, and a budget of $40m, half that of a typical UCI standard Velodrome.

The challenge was taken on by the contractor ES Global, a global leader in temporary venue construction, with Cox Architects and Mott MacDonald providing the necessary design expertise to deliver this challenging brief.

One of the challenging aspects of this project was the reuse of existing stock components for the roof structure of the Velodrome, already successfully used on a number of temporary buildings projects in the past, most notably the London 2012 Olympic Shooting and Water Polo venues.

Design workflow and BIM collaboration

This project was the perfect example of Efficient design processes using digital technology, and BIM collaboration. Both were essential to the success of this project, especially because the design team was spread across five counties and three continents, and the flow of digital design information had to be seamless to remain on the program.

Mott MacDonald set up a common data environment using ProjectWise software, to which all of the design team, including the architect and contractor, were able to access and share their digital design information. By using the same common data between the models, this also reduced the risk of potential coordination issues that could lead to delays on-site or increased costs.

Autodesk products were used for the architectural and structural design of the main structure, and REVIT was used as the central platform and data management tool, to exchange information between different analysis models. By using the same model to derive these analysis models, Mott MacDonald enabled truly integrated design, for example, the integration of air supply ducts within the structure, which also doubled up as acoustic baffles.

IDEA StatiCa took an important part in this collaborative workflow, and with the help of the BIM links with Autodesk products like Robot and REVIT, the flow of information was seamless and saved a lot of time and effort.

Innovative design with IDEA StatiCa

Innovation was essential for this project, as there are few precedents for the use of the modular design in long span, complex geometry sports venues. This required not only innovations in the design process but also in the services that Mott MacDonald provided. This included steelwork connection designs, temporary works design, and erection analysis, which are not typically part of the building design scope.

As digital technology was central to the provision of these services, the use of IDEA StatiCa as an innovative finite element software to analyze and design complex, earthquake-resistant connections, helped significantly to cut down the number of modifications to the existing steelwork components when compared to traditional design techniques and thus saved time and money, but more importantly facilitated the reuse of pre-engineered elements from the London Olympic venues.

The BIM links with Autodesk products that are integrated into IDEA StatiCa, helped even more in achieving faster design workflows: the joint configurations were imported from Autodesk Robot, (meaning the member cross-sections and orientation, and the forces), and then they were designed and checked in IDEA StatiCa. The design details were feedback in AutoCAD, where the detailed model and drawings that are necessary for the installation were created.

Watch our webinar to see how this connection was modeled & checked

The complete workflow of modeling, loading, and checking of this connection has been presented in one of the Connection Wednesdays series of webinars on 29/11/2017.