In the south of Düsseldorf, a new residential area is currently being built in the immediate vicinity of the Rhine and Benrath Palace, an 18th century rococo residence with a well-kept park and lake. The Paulsmühle district, which takes its name from a watermill, had been a large industrial area for a long time that has now been undergoing redevelopment for several years.
A total of around 550 new apartments are being built on the site, around 35 percent of which are publicly subsidized and around 5 percent in the lower-cost price segment. The Paulshöfe are due to be completed by 2028. Five inner courtyards, each with a different theme, will then also be open to the public. A boules court, playgrounds, an urban gardening concept and the opportunity to purchase a rental garden are also intended to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood.

Digital planning brings many advantages
The fact that the first apartments can be occupied as early as fall 2024 is also due to the fact that residential project developer Bonava relied on digital planning using BIM and collaboration with Xella Germany at an early stage. "In previous projects, we were able to agree on a joint, smooth process. Thanks to the existence of mature, digital processes at both project participants, the processes could be coordinated quickly," explains Sebastian Völsen, BIM Manager at Xella Germany.
The basis for the good cooperation was that BIM is used as a standard planning method at Bonava in all planning disciplines, which makes the entire process less prone to errors.
Xella and Bonava cooperated during the creation of the execution model and during execution. Checks and approvals are carried out completely digitally and with the help of sets of rules. "This allowed the entire process - from receipt of the model to approval - to be accelerated by 60 percent," explains Völsen.
The digital production preparation for the use of pre-cut large formats made of Silka XL Plus - a total of 15,000 m³ were used - meant that the number of working hours required could be significantly reduced.

Deputy Head of Production West, Daniel Gomez-Scheele:
"For standardization in its building system, Bonava has relied on lime sandstone elements, among other things, for more than 20 years. The decisive factor for the decision in favor of Xella from the supplier pool was the digital approval process for the planning elements. This saves paper, minimizes the susceptibility to errors and also reduces the amount of material and time required. Xella thus extends the range of advantages that lime sandstone elements already bring to Bonava in terms of the environment, processing, safety, time and costs, because they are produced from mineral raw materials from the immediate vicinity of the plants and then transported as dimensionally accurate prefabricated elements over short distances to our nearby construction projects."