Completion of a seven-story office building in 12 months using Victaulic's global solution

Modular and prefab construction is one of the fastest growing segments of the construction industry. According to Global Market Insights, the global market exceeded $147 billion in 2022, and with an average annual growth rate of 6,5%, it is expected to reach $285 billion by 2032. As developers reap the benefits of prefabricated buildings in terms of cost, speed and quality, contractors are looking for effective ways to facilitate the transition to prefabrication and maximize the benefits.

Victaulic's prefabricated solution for grooved pipe assembly technology is a perfect option for installing building pipework with the speed and quality of modular construction. This choice proved ideal for the Nova Aragon office building, located in Villejuif, a Paris suburb. This seven-story project has a total area of ​​27.000 m² and the developers, Groupe Legendre and Promo Gerim, have set a strict deadline of 12 months for the building's completion. With the schedule being a real challenge, the best option to meet the deadlines was a strategy based on prefabrication. Ultimately, installation of the Victaulic prefabricated coil on the project was completed in three months – more than twice as fast as a comparable cut and weld solution.

With time running out, the HVAC company Proclim CVC trusted Victaulic to carry out the work on time. This decision proved to be a wise one, as the company reaped the rewards of its grooved tube joining technology. With this Victaulic brand system, the tube sections have a machined groove on each end. Rapid installation on site is then ensured using the company's Installation-Ready technology. Thanks to this patented system, the fittings allow quick and easy connections between tubes and reduce the number of loose parts that can fall or be misplaced. The one-piece design allows the installer to connect tubes by inserting over the grooved end of a tube and tightening the nuts. It is a pre-assembled assembly that takes just seconds and can be completed up to 10 times faster than an equivalent welded joint.

In addition to its industry-leading tube assembly products, the Victaulic solution provided all design, manufacturing and delivery to the Nova Aragon site. Victaulic also established a bespoke project team to manage the works, which was another key to success, as Emilien Chabrier, regional sales director for France at Victaulic, explains: “We had to finish this building on time, because the developer had tenants coming to settle in. But despite the pressure, we succeeded thanks to the team that supported us. In addition to our sales team in France, we had colleagues from the design team, manufacturing team, logistics team, quality team and more who worked together. Thanks to these projects, we have a standardized process and an effective project management system. He helped us provide a seamless solution for the Nova Aragon project. »

Immediate interest from a French entrepreneur

Proclim HVAC needed to install the building's heating and cooling system and contacted Victaulic early on to discuss the pipework. It was then that Benoit Galand, sales engineer France, suggested a turnkey Victaulic solution using grooved tube assembly technology. The company had never used such a solution before, having always favored the traditional cutting and welding method, but its managers trusted the Victaulic option from the start, as Benoit Galand notes: "Once "We explained the technical process of off-site manufacturing and the fact that the tube sections are 'ready to use', Proclim CVC was immediately interested," he says. “But the company was particularly pleased when it discovered the potential time savings the system could achieve, as the site was under significant schedule pressures. In addition to presenting the solution to Proclim CVC, we also met the developer, Legendre Immobilier, and the project manager, Planchat Ingenierie, to explain the concept to them. Everyone was impressed with the solution and the experience and expertise we gained. »

Work began at the beginning of 2020 and was completed at the end of the year. While the overall construction process took 12 months, Victaulic's work was completed in three months.

A tailor-made solution to meet customer needs

For the Nova Aragon project, Proclim CVC specified a rooftop configuration of four reversible chillers supplying 8 air handling units (AHU). These are connected to 1.300 fan coils distributed over the seven floors of the building. The structure itself had a strong emphasis on precast elements, being made up of some 950 precast concrete elements, representing approximately 90% of the building's total concrete.

This information and others made it possible to develop the specifications for the pipeline network entrusted to Victaulic. The Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) division was then responsible for developing the proposed solution. VDC works with clients to provide bespoke designs using BIM modelling, for all types of construction projects, including prefabricated developments and regular cast-in-place worksites. For Europe, the VDC team works out of Victaulic's regional headquarters in Belgium, but is part of a much larger global design team of approximately 120 designers, which includes offices in the United States, in Canada and India. This structure allows Victaulic to take on projects of any size and type and leverage global design resources as needed.

With the configuration specified by Proclim CVC, the VDC team proposed a grooved pipe solution that included more than 1.300 pipe sections and more than 1.000 fittings, as well as 380 elbow fittings, 52 valves and 12 pump outlets. This included all the pipework on the roof, including risers, as well as all connections to the air handlers and chillers. Kenneth Verlinden, VDC BIM Team and Content Manager EMEA, explains what the grooved solution is all about Victaulic prefabricated welding differs from traditional weld-in-place or prefabricated welding options. “Customers benefit from real value engineering with VDC, whatever their project. We could easily design an installation that mimics a field-welded or prefabricated solution, but that would not be the wisest option. We apply our in-house technology to save space or money – or both. And we will undoubtedly save time. Thanks to the expertise and experience of the VDC team, we can design optimal solutions. Whether prefabricated or more traditional constructions, our system saves time, but it is obvious that the time savings are even greater in the case of prefabricated constructions. »

Design team delivers excellence

At Victaulic, the VDC team uses Revit® manufacturing software and has developed its own bespoke tools for working on the platform. This dedicated toolbar is accessible to the company's entire design team (more than 100 people) and integrates a prefabrication tool. Every day, an estimated 40 to 50 people across the global VDC team use Revit, so Victaulic-specific features provide additional benefits in creating bespoke designs for clients.

The use of BIM also allowed the VDC team to identify issues with the overall design of the building. The VDC team will always cross-reference their BIM model with other services in construction and design plans. In this case, she was able to identify potential problems before they occurred, as Kenneth Verlinden explains: “When you start digging into a BIM model, you always find contradictions or inconsistencies, but it's one of the characteristics we appreciate in BIM projects: It allows us to come back to the client and alert them. For example, on the Nova Aragon project we found that the air ducts had been placed where we also proposed to run our pipework. When we noticed this, we were able to adjust our design. Being able to do this really helped the client solve problems in the virtual world and avoid bigger problems in the real world. »

Once the plan was established, Victaulic's VDC and manufacturing teams then coordinated the production, delivery and installation phases of the project. Stakeholders from VDC and manufacturing, as well as warehouse and logistics teams and the local sales organization, ensured that these elements were managed to align with on-site requirements . All sections were cut and finished in the controlled environment of Victaulic's manufacturing workshop in Nazareth, Belgium, to ensure consistent quality for faster on-site installation.

Precision building sections in a fabrication shop allows for greater focus on quality than cutting sections on a job site. There are no adverse weather conditions and team members work in a comfortable, controlled environment with the best industrial equipment. Delivery to the construction site was closely coordinated, not only to the exact day, but also on time. The logistics team worked closely with the site to determine what type of delivery vehicles would be most suitable and the best position for unloading. This allowed the installation to be completed on time, but it also involved a new process that the contractor had to get used to, as Emilien Chabrier explains. “With cut-and-weld tube solutions, there is a lot of material that arrives on site and is stored until it is needed. With the Victaulic solution, this does not happen. We deliver on time, when the customer needs it. We also ensure that materials are delivered to the exact location where they are needed. In this case, we therefore delivered the materials close to the crane so that they could be hoisted onto the roof more easily. Initially, the entrepreneur was not very sure of himself, because it was a new way of working. But in the end, it was much faster and easier, and the client feels it's a much better way of working. »

Absolute confidence in Victaulic

In fact, Proclim HVAC had such confidence in the process that when the installation encountered a major problem, the contractor preferred to maintain its commitment to the Victaulic system rather than seek an alternative solution on site. The issue in question arose when one of the air handling units was positioned 2m from the original location, necessitating the use of a different sized tube . Such issues are not unusual in a construction project, but Proclim HVAC's response was quite different. While many contractors would have simply opted for a cut and weld solution, ordering a tube and fabricating it on site, Proclim HVAC wanted to maintain consistency with the Victaulic method.

So, after a coordination meeting between the client, the sales team in France and the design and manufacturing divisions, new sections were created and sent to the site. And there was virtually no impact on the schedule: “The customer knew that if they could obtain replacement prefabricated sections to accommodate the new position of the air handler, the installation would be much faster and easier. No cutting, no welding, just installing a few sections with fittings. It was great to see that the customer had such confidence in the system,” said Kenneth Verlinden.

The seeds of change

In France, construction companies have long favored cutting and welding solutions for installing tubes on heating and air conditioning systems. In fact, this history dates back to Victorian times. But Victaulic has been driving innovation across industries for over 100 years, and Emilien Chabrier believes more and more contractors in France will start using prefabricated solutions for pipelines when they understand the many benefits that they offer.

“We expect interest in prefabricated solutions to increase for three reasons,” he says. “The first is the calendar. Deadlines are getting shorter and shorter and developers want to commission their buildings faster than ever. This means more work will be carried out off-site, helping to speed up the construction process. The second reason is labor. The construction sector is under real pressure to recruit staff and this is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. This means that less labor-intensive processes are increasingly attractive to entrepreneurs. The third reason is superior quality. With less labor and increased time constraints, quality levels of cutting and welding solutions will be more difficult to maintain. With a prefabricated solution, you can standardize and industrialize your project, achieving much higher levels of quality. »

Proclim CVC is a contractor who has no doubt about the benefits of prefabricated solutions. In fact, although the Nova Aragon project was the first time the company used the Victaulic solution, they are already converted and plan to leverage it for future projects:

For Émilien Chabrier: “With Victaulic, customers don't just have a tube and fittings supplier, they have a solution and an entire team behind it. This builds trust and gets the job done faster, more efficiently and more easily. »