October 26, 2017

BÜRO DR. VOGEL GMBH starts pioneering project for the city of Dortmund

The BÜRO DR. VOGEL GMBH is developing a strategic approach for optimizing the early project phases of investments in real estate projects in cooperation with departments of properties and real estate of the City of Dortmund. The project was launched at the beginning of October. It develops a completely new approach for the city’s property management. This supplements the customary needs assessment with a systematic procedure for determining and evaluating the strategic options to provide for the needs. In the future, all strategic options for the provision of new spatial requirements are to be considered and examined regarding their feasibility and how well they meet different criteria. In addition, the future process will address other related aspects as well: creating greater commitment for all parties involved with regard to the schedule, qualities, quantities, costs, user agreements and the procedure; identifying and evaluating scenarios, such as types of use, duration and type of procurement.

A second question deals with the extension of the lifecycle cost approach to the definition of requirements and the planning guidelines for construction projects. The aim here is to further reduce the lifecycle costs of buildings by including the drivers of lifecycle costs in the room program, the functional program and the preliminary design planning at the earliest possible stage.

The City of Dortmund has committed itself to reducing its structural expenditure. In particular the early project phases has the biggest levers with the greatest influence on the total cost of a building’s lifecycle. The lever for minimizing construction work and building operating costs is the systematic and structured assessment and determination of requirements. Only a holistic approach to requirements planning can analyze previously unconsidered options: Is building a new structure really necessary? Is the building volume really necessary? Or is it perhaps better to consolidate the existing stock or to rent space temporarily? “In the future, we want to identify the most sustainable project options by identifying and meeting the specific requirements and thus ensuring an optimal use of resources", says Thomas Ellerkamp, head of the real estate department of the City of Dortmund.

Yet, life cycle costs and costs in the usage phase are still mostly underestimated in construction investments. The costs of use are accountable for 70 to 80 percent of the total life cycle costs, thus accounting for the by far largest part of the costs of a building. The City of Dortmund has been successfully applying the life cycle cost analysis from the preliminary design stage onwards for several years to evaluate structural variants in terms of their impact on the total costs of investment and operation. Applying the lifecycle cost analysis to the earlier planning phases and the question of the best procurement variant therefore promises further and considerable savings potential. “With this project and the systematic consideration of all strategic options for real estate investments as well as the lifecycle approach at the earliest possible stage, the city of Dortmund is largely breaking new ground", says Hauke Fischbeck, managing director of the BÜRO DR. VOGEL GMBH. “We are therefore pleased to answer these important and trendsetting questions together with the City of Dortmund and to define the necessary process in the city.”