How easy can life be for the architect?

Incorporating an elevator into your design can now be done with unique easy planning tool

Is it possible to generate a complete proposal literally at the push of a button that describes in detail how you - as an architect - can include an elevator in your design plan? With all the necessary specifications! And, even down to the design of the cabin. Yes, this is possible. Schindler Liften launched a Planning & Design Tool earlier this year. Speaking is Maarten Bijl, Product Manager at Schindler Netherlands. "By using our tool, you immediately get certainty about the vertical transport you want to integrate into your design, in terms of transport capacity, dimensions and appearance."

The editors of Archicomm were able to take a look at how the tool works at Schindler - the latest version will go online in December - and fair is fair: the credo "a child can do the laundry" definitely applies. Life for the designing architect is indeed made a lot easier. 

Maarten Bijl explains that with actual dimensions, lifting capacities and speeds, you can fine-tune your planning much better in just a few minutes. "Even an experienced architect, that is, a professional who has worked with the challenges surrounding vertical transport before, gains additional and useful insights by using the tool. Or, he can test whether his own elaborated ideas are correct. But the architect who has never before had an "elevator challenge" on his drawing board can also use it. He will then at least know for sure that his planning around the installation of elevators is off to a good start."

Variables

Schindler Plan & Design allows users to design an elevator based on all possible required specifications. In fact, the system chooses the best conceivable elevator for you, based on the variables you enter. "By 'variables,' you can think of, first of all, the type of building. Then you can enter how many users of the building there are, how many floors there are (to be) built, whether there is a basement, how big you want the elevator to be etc etc. You name it: in a logical step-by-step plan within the tool, the architect or designer is guided in a very simple way to the final goal: knowing where he stands!" Maarten explains that within the tool a plan can also be configured for escalators. 

Schindler Plan & Design is free to use. "So anyone can get started right away," Maarten says. "If you eventually want to save your plan, we ask you to register. After that, added possibilities arise. For example, in the project cloud you can retrieve the drawings, BIM files and renders of the cabin interior, but you can also save your own documents to keep everything clustered: easy for the overview. A quote can also be requested from there with one click."

"What I'm also very excited about myself is the ability to also have contact with the contractor, for example, through the system," Maarten says. "By sharing the project from the cloud, they can look right in."

Funnel

According to Maarten, the system is also "accessible and understandable" because pictograms are used a lot. "For example, if the elevator door opens to the left, an illustration further clarifies this. There simply cannot be any misunderstandings. The pictures explain the definitions. It's really low-threshold and depending on what your variables are, you get into the tool ever closer to the funnel on the way to the intended end result."

The Planning & Design Tool takes the architect step-by-step through the design process.

Of course, Schindler did not go overnight to design, develop and also get this tool live. "We already had a tool but it wasn't complete enough. We continued to build on that. Also with the help of user feedback, we came to this final result."

Privacy

One important aspect, of course, must not be forgotten and ... has not been forgotten. And that is privacy. Maarten concludes, "We understand very well that we - as Schindler - also have to radiate trust and prove trust. If an architect uploads his project into the system and enters various data, he can be 100% sure that this data is also safe. Nobody can access it. Our legal department has paid a lot of attention to this and rightly so: after all, every architect wants to develop the most beautiful plan - and integrate the best solution for the required vertical transport - and then he has to be sure that everything remains trusted within this cloud."

Schindler Plan & Design can be accessed via the "configure" button on www.schindler.nl