The emergency services examine accessibility in Slussen with VR

Accessibility audit

This week, an initial meeting was held to review the accessibility of the emergency services in the Slussen project in Stockholm.

Modern VR technology was used to quickly familiarize the emergency services with the layout of the new Lock. Since the project's design and production are model-based, drawings are not available as in a normal project.

When people who do not use 3D/BIM models regularly in their profession need to access information and geometry, the models must be made available to them as well. We have solved this with VR review, where the emergency services walk around the models and experience the facility immersively in 1:1 scale with VR glasses.

The emergency services were immediately given a clear picture of the facility and had immediate comments on the stairwells, ladders and clear ceiling heights etc.

Had this meeting been carried out in the traditional way, with plans and a few sections, the comments would not have been made so quickly and the design would have had to be changed at a later stage, where the changes would have had greater consequences and thus cost considerably more to remedy than now.

Unfortunately, the same scenario would probably have occurred even if they had to deal with CAD/BIM/Coordination models. Walking in stairwells and getting the feel of the escape routes, slopes of stairs and intrusion of installations on free spaces etc is most effectively done by actually moving in the spaces virtually.

For those of us who have been working on this, it was a tremendous confirmation that this is the right tune, to see people who have neither seen the facility before nor used CAD/BIM software, running up and down stairs and through corridors that they have not done other than participate in the design for the past year. It was very inspiring to see!

Interested in the transition to BIM, starting to use VR for coordination/review or digitisation with laser scanning/drone scanning?

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