4 years with BIO4

BIO4 is the name of the new biomass-fired block, which will be the final piece in the transformation of the Amager Plant from coal-fired to sustainable energy. HOFOR, the client, owns the Amager Plant and supplies district heating to 600,000 Copenhageners.

HOFOR’s vision for the project is to make a decisive contribution, to enable Copenhagen to achieve its goal of becoming the world’s first carbon neutral capital.

Jacob Toft-Jensen is the Business Manager for Energy at Artelia and has played a major role in the project from when the tender was prepared in early 2015. As Jacob points out, BIO4 is a project that largely matches the professional DNA of Artelia.

“Our work at the Amager Plant goes all the way back to the reclamation of the land, when the first power station block was built. We have designed all the block buildings out there – blocks 1, 2 and 3. So we are, of course, happy to see the completion of the station.” says Jacob.

A well-oiled machine
Energy-generating plants can rightly be said to be one of our core competencies. You only need to look at BIO4’s neighbour, Amager Bakke, to find another Artelia project. Jacob points out that it has been a great advantage to be able to draw on the experiences from a complex construction project of the same magnitude:

3D, drones and laser scanning
The project also has a very ambitious schedule, which requires innovation. The first step was a drone flyover of the construction site, during which photos were taken with such a level of accuracy that they could be used to calculate the volumes of earth. As Jacob explains, it is undoubtedly the new technologies, and 3D design in particular, that have made it possible to navigate this complex process:

“A detailed 3D model is extremely valuable when you have a project that continuously increases the level of detail and generates changes that require important adjustments. Everyone has been obligated to deliver to the aggregated model, which Artelia has been responsible for assembling. When there have been discrepancies on the site, for example, the supplier has been able to use laser scanning to give us a point cloud, which we could then enter into our 3D model and imme-diately see the consequences.”

Working on site
One of the engineers who has had a close relationship with BIO4 is Johannes Steffensen. He started out as a new graduate in February 2015 and had thus only been employed for a few months when Artelia won this project. Initially, the job only involved designing concrete structures. However, as the project progressed, he went to the construction site to oversee the casting of many cubic metres of concrete.

A dynamic day
BIO4 is also one of Denmark’s largest construction sites. When the level of activity was at its peak, there were over 1,000 people on site at the same time. Johannes notes how helping solve a large, complicated puzzle makes for a dynamic work day.

“Roughly speaking, you work from A to B in the office. You have a target that you need to meet. On the construction site, of course, you also have a defined task, but urgent tasks arise all the time and you need to deal with them immediately. It could be a dewatering that is not working, a delayed delivery of concrete, or something completely different that could possibly delay the project. This makes for variable work days, where you also learn to act independently,” concludes Johannes.