Tailored assembly kits from Solar minimise time waste on a large building project in Norway

The price tag of around 330 million Norwegian kroner makes the reconstruction of the 25,000 square metre luxury hotel Radisson Blu Atlantic in Stavanger, Norway, one of the largest construction projects in the area.

“It’s a large rehabilitation project that must be completed within an extremely short period of time,” says Svein Kåre Tollefsen. He is the project manager running the rehabilitation and reconstruction.

In order to manage the large and complex task within the deadline and to make it easier for the fitters they use Kitbox from Solar. In short, this means that the bathroom materials are delivered in complete assembly kits to each room – ready to be fitted.

“Using Kitbox is amazing in a project of this size. The materials are delivered exactly when and where they are needed,” says Svein Kåre Tollefsen.

25 percent is wasted
At a hectic and chaotic building site, it can be a time-consuming task for the fitters to localise the materials they need. On average construction workers spend one fourth of their workday on handling and looking for materials. This is the conclusion of a study on production efficiency in the construction industry carried out by Chalmers. And this is the exact challenge that Solar Kitbox aims to eliminate. This explains Carsten Antonisen, Senior Vice President in Solar.

“We optimise purchasing and logistics for our customers so that they can focus on what they do best. Kitbox is one of the services that really increases efficiency as it literally gives the employees more hours in the workday without making it longer,” says Carsten Antonisen.

In Stavanger, Svein Kåre Tollefsen confirms that using Kitbox means more efficient workdays.

”It’s the first time that I’ve used Kitbox in a construction project, and I only see advantages. The fitters save time because they are not running around looking for the things they need,” he says and adds that Kitbox also takes away a lot of the clean-up.

The renovation of Radisson Blu Atlantic was finalised in 2017.