Tectum Group collaborates on yard of the century

Belgium's largest roofing company collaborates on site of the century

Starting in August, the client and contractors of the Oosterweel connection will move into a joint workplace together. To this end, they converted the former Heder School into a comfortable workplace for their employees involved in the Oosterweel project. With the renovation of the 8,600m² roof surface, Tectum Group is already ensuring that the team can manage the site in a dry environment.

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Anyone who thinks of infrastructure works in Antwerp says Oosterweel. The construction site of the century will significantly improve traffic safety and quality of life in and around the city. A team of more than 650 experts is currently working on a unique and innovative project on the right bank. Today these specialists from the various parties involved in the project are scattered over various locations in Antwerp, close to or further away from the construction site. This will change as of August. Then the project teams of client Lantis and contractors TM ROCO, OCOTECH and Rinkoniên OWK will move to Galjoenstraat. Together, Lantis and TM ROCO converted the former Heder School there into the "shipyard shack of the century.

Logical track

Shared housing is a logical track because it makes working more efficient. Choosing to repurpose a school building is less so. "We weighed several options," opens Werner Aenspeck, construction team manager for the Oosterweel campus. "Renting existing offices or building a site village are perhaps the most obvious ones when you look at such large construction projects." Near the site, however, a school building had become vacant. "Since September 2023, the children of that school have been in a brand new campus just a few miles from the wharf. The care needs of these children - a lot of them suffer from respiratory problems or need special care - were difficult to reconcile with a busy construction site in progress. Therefore, together with the city, we searched for a new location for these children," explains Roland Van Driel of the builder Lantis. What remained was a school building, located close to the construction site, with a floor area of 9,800 m². "Pretty soon we were on the track to transform this location into yard offices. We would recover as much of the existing building material as possible, and sustainability was also our starting point for other choices," Van Driel continues.

Austere and functional concept

Once everyone has moved into the yard shack of the century, more than 650 Oosterweel specialists will work together there. They will have 644 equipped workstations - divided between landscape offices, smaller group spaces and individual offices -, 67 flex spaces, 40 meeting rooms, bell and meeting pods. Two multipurpose rooms, an auditorium and bistro complete the building program.

Archiles architects' design team weighed and weighed to come up with a budget-conscious but sustainable concept. "We respected the existing building structure to the maximum. The entrance area is accented with a steel structure and part of the exterior facades are painted to achieve a uniform appearance. Internally, we removed all the techniques and part of the interior walls. We decorated the public areas with the entrance area and the auditorium with a little more attention to appearance. The offices were conceived mainly functionally. For example, the floors are mainly finished with circular carpet tiles and the ceilings are a mix of suspended system ceilings and the existing ceilings finished with an acoustic spray plaster and techniques in sight. We set up some of the informal workstations in the corridors. The individual offices, meeting rooms, ... we built in the circular a reusable Juunoo system," says project architect Dieter Mariën.

Grand task

Several months before the start of the renovation works, the Tectum Group team already started working on the former school site. "That start went slightly differently than planned. On the weekend before the first roof works, part of the roof -some 750m² - went blowing during an autumn storm. There Tectum Group quickly and accurately provided a solution by applying new PIR insulation and waterproofing," explains Werner Aenspeck.

In total, Tectum Group's roofers applied some 2,600m² of new bitumen eni solation and the remaining 6,000m² of existing roofing received a new layer of waterproofing. The persistent rainy weather of recent months made the renovation job quite a challenge.

Fortunately, large construction sites such as the Oosterweel Campus are no stranger to the Tectum Group team. "We are at home on large industrial projects with high safety and quality requirements. Moreover, we have the clout to respond quickly to certain situations, such as the storm damage at the start of the project. So the Oosterweel Campus was right up our alley, allowing us to make our small contribution to this major infrastructure project," concludes Yves Biesmans at Tectum Group.