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The groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility of the system supplier and global market leader for building services technology marked the start of construction of a building that will become a reference project in many ways: The building on Austria’s idyllic Attersee, which has been integrally designed with BIM by ATP Vienna and ATP sustain, has a particularly impressive economic footprint: The new-build project received a record number of points according to the requirements of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) and has already been presented a “platinum” pre-certificate. The concept for the interactive Viega seminar center also breaks new ground and redefines the existing standards for training centers.

When presenting the pre-certificate during the groundbreaking ceremony Erich Benischek from the Executive Committee of the Austrian Sustainable Building Council (ÖGNI), a partner of the DGNB, praised the high technical and ecological quality of the future Viega building, which he described as a remarkable showcase project. The architect Horst Reiner, ATP partner in Vienna, emphasized the advantages of the integrated collaboration between architects and engineers at ATP: “In close interdisciplinary cooperation with the building services specialists of ATP sustain we were able to develop a highly efficient energy concept, which led to a high rating and the award of a record number of points by the DGNB.”

Seminar center will become a best-practice teaching example
During the course of the groundbreaking ceremony Walter Viegener, Chairman of the Managing Board of Viega Holding GmbH & Co. KG, emphasized the huge importance of the investment for the globally active Viega Group. The state-of-the-art seminar center also plays a special part in this: it will become part of the training itself in the form of a best-practice example. “Our practice-oriented seminars in the new building should make designers and technicians even better qualified to meet the demands of their daily work”, said Claus Holst-Gydesen, Managing Director of Viega, talking about the concept. “All the processes that run in the building will be comprehensively monitored in a way that we will make as visible to our guests as possible.”

Quality and security thanks to integrated design with BIM
The Viega building owes its high design quality and forward-looking functionality to the integrated design that has been practiced and perfected over the course of 40 years by ATP. Building information modeling (BIM) enables ATP’s interdisciplinary teams to work on a digital twin of the future building that permits them to analyze, simulate, plan, and document the building in terms of costs, timetable, and sustainability from the constructional start to the operational phase. According to Viega it was possible to optimize the new building to the extent that an energy surplus will be achieved in any average year thanks to the contributions made by photovoltaic, solar, and geothermal energy combined with the correspondingly low energy consumption. The depth of detail of the information regarding every specialist aspect of the building generated by this process was extraordinary. This all means that the three-story building, in which not only the original use requirements but also the social, ecological, and economic parameters can be addressed throughout the entire lifecycle, is an important reference project for the building industry.  

For this reason Viega is seeking not only DNGB certification but also “Gold building standard” certification in line with the government-initiated “klimaaktiv” award.