Ruukki Construction is participating in a project to enlarge an existing shopping centre about 5 kilometres South-East of the centre of Prague, Czech Republic. When the enlargement project is completed in autumn 2017, the centre will feature 300 shopping units, a completely new and enlarged zone for restaurants and cafés with 43 tenants. There will also be a new cinema complex with a seating capacity of 2,600 and 18 screens.

Peter Cernak, head of construction at Rodamco Unibail in Czechia, pointed out that they wanted to be trendsetters and that is why the new part of Chodov will have new types of clothing shops, including boutiques for designer clothes, as well as restaurants and cafés. Rodamco Unibail is the investor company of Chodov.

Ruukki delivers the steel frame for the cinema and the steel structures for the five skylight roofs, which will let daylight into the building. Ruukki will also deliver the load-bearing sheets for the roof, and is designing the structures based on architectural drawings, using Ruukki’s own design. The investor, Rodamco Unibail, aims at reducing the number of parties involved in their construction projects and appreciates Ruukki’s ability to deliver both structures and designs.

When completed, the new extension will add 58,000 square metres of floor space to make a total of 100,000 square metres of floor space for retail purposes. The total gross floor area will increase to 255,000 square metres.

In this project, BIM (Building Information Management) is highly used and respected due to the complexity and the size of the project. BIM enables problems to be solved at the site and also gives clear real-time information about the project to all parties.