Tectum Group participating in the construction project of the century

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

Starting in August, the client and contractors for the Oosterweel Link will move into a shared workspace. To this end, they have converted the former Hederschool into a comfortable workspace for their employees involved in the Oosterweel project. By renovating the 8,600-square-meter roof Tectum Group ensuring that the team can manage the construction site Tectum Group a dry location.

‍

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

A few months before the renovation work began, the Tectum Group team had Tectum Group started work on the former school site. “That start went a little differently than planned. Over the weekend before the first roofing work was scheduled to begin, part of the roof—about 750 m²—was blown off during an autumn storm. Tectum Group and efficiently provided a solution by installing new PIR insulation and waterproofing,” explains Werner Aenspeck.

In total, the roofers from Tectum Group installed Tectum Group 2,600 square meters of new bitumen and insulation, and the remaining 6,000 square meters of existing roofing received a new layer of waterproofing. The persistent rainy weather over the past few months made the renovation project quite a challenge.

Fortunately, large-scale construction sites like the Oosterweel Campus are nothing new to the Tectum Group team. “We’re right at home on large industrial projects with high safety and quality standards. Plus, we have the ability to respond quickly to specific 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 massive infrastructure project,” concludes Yves Biesmans of Tectum Group.