Plaatsing 449 Prefab badkamers voor BAM

The former Elsevier building in Amsterdam has been converted into ‘The Student Hotel’ where in the future students will be able to rent a room with its own bathroom. Prior to this project BAM Utiliteitsbouw, Amsterdam Region, together with Koninklijke Saan, formulated a special solution for the quick and damage-free installation of 449 prefabricated bathrooms.

The term ‘Lean Construction’ is in vogue. For construction this means, among other things, better planning and organising the construction site as well and tidily as possible so as to prevent waste, contamination, damage and accidents. Saan is being asked with ever-increasing frequency to consult in advance with the client about efficient solutions during the construction process. One of the bottlenecks during construction of ‘The Student Hotel’ was moving the prefabricated bathrooms into the building. During transportation and installation, tiles could easily fall off the walls or other damage could be caused by friction. Saan offered the solution for the damage-free installation of the bathrooms.

Saan unloaded the prefabricated bathrooms from the lorries with a TK 80 LT, then a 70-tonne mobile crane lifted the bathrooms to a kind of balcony on the façade of the relevant floor. The work was carried out on two floors at once. Here they were placed in a handling frame. In these frames designed specially by Saan, they hang more or less free, so there is no friction. The frames were made precisely to measure for the hotel for the purpose of moving the bathrooms, with only a few centimetres of headroom, to the positions marked on the floor. Because the floors of the building were very clean, the bathrooms were quickly installed by Saan staff in their places without damage. In this way Saan installed about 33 bathrooms per night.
Tasks carried out: 
- Preparation of approach to project 
- Provision of permissions and exemptions 
- Development and design of metal frames 
- Use of cranes for unloading the bathrooms 
- Inspection of each bathroom for damage 
- Lifting jobs with 70-tonne mobile tower crane 
- Horizontal movement of bathrooms on the floors 
- Adjusting the bathrooms to horizontal with a spirit level