Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield — Westfield London

In 2018, Westfield London in White City became the largest shopping centre in Europe, after being expanded from 1.6m sq ft to cover over 2.6m sq ft of retail floor area. Originally opened during the 2008 financial crisis, it was seen as a beacon of hope for the faltering high street when it attracted over two million shoppers in its first three weeks. The commercial real estate company Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) successfully turned the project around despite the poor economic climate, with Zutec’s cloud-based solutions used throughout phases 1 and 2 to ensure timely project completion.

Westfield Design & Construction initially procured Zutec to manage the handover and completion process for the first phase of the shopping centre in 2007. The Australian shopping centre operator Westfield Corporation was later acquired by European Unibail-Rodamco SE in 2018. The merger formed URW, the commercial real estate company with the largest development pipeline in the industry.

Following the opening of the retail mecca, the Westfield facilities management team found the Zutec platform to be a powerful tool for managing operations. They continued to use it post-handover to access interactive, digital O&M manuals, upload retail fit-out information and update both capital and minor works, maintaining a single source of truth for the whole facility.

Completed a decade later, a £600m retail extension constituted Phase 2, along with the URW UK head office building and Newall Court. As it was nearing completion in 2017, Zutec was once again enlisted for the handover and BIM data managementt and integration.

Early engagement between Westfield’s management team and Zutec was crucial to the success of Phase 2. To implement the software for this phase, which included the addition of 740,000 sq ft of retail space, Zutec held workshops with key management personnel.

The intervening time also saw the evolution of Zutec from an interactive folder structure for the capturing of handover data, to a fully-fledged 3D BIM model management and visualisation solution, and a repository for all BIM attributes linked to asset registers, manuals and documents.

The multitude of benefits Zutec provides helped ensure Westfield London was successfully completed on time. The platform, used for the capturing and management of all project data throughout the lifecycle, allowed operations at Westfield to have quick access to information, enhanced knowledge of built assets, a reduction in existing condition surveys and a faster reaction time in emergencies.

Zutec continues to be used as the single source of truth where any changes and modifications are recorded during the use and maintenance of the building.