The Finnish Building 2030 consortium celebrates its 10-year anniversary. One of its achievements is the surge in takt production across construction projects. During the 2-day seminar on August 27-28, 2026, Axel Lindberg of Haahtela presented the Node project, which showcases how takt is used in high-rise construction and how digitalized material logistics is key to its success.
My company, AE Partners, helped organize the seminar. We also live-streamed it on YouTube. I found the case study a compelling example of a smarter way to build: using BIM as a data source for material logistics, location-based material management, and strong trade contractor involvement in planning.
Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company commissioned the Node. Elisa, a local telecommunications operator, will be the anchor tenant. The architect is JKMM.
A demanding site
The Node, due for completion in 2028 in Helsinki, will feature a 130-meter-high, 32-story office tower and a lower pedestal section. The tower’s frame is cast in place, typical of Finnish high-rise construction. Takt production is used for both the frame and interior construction.
Haahtela is the construction manager overseeing the project, which employs about 100 contractors.
The site is very cramped, bordered by a bridge, railway lines, a road that runs partially under the site, and a train depot. As a result, material deliveries by truck must be just-in-time, with no extensive on-site storage.
One-day takt
The project’s takt time is one day, meaning that one work package must be completed within one day in each takt area. There are 50,000 work packages in total and 600 takt areas in the interior construction phase. The areas differ in size, making work planning and balancing quite demanding.
A one-day takt requires accurate planning and clockwork material deliveries. Haahtela uses Sitedrive for scheduling. The schedule is linked to the material management system, CALS, via an API. As a result, any schedule changes are automatically reflected in the material management flow. The site also has a full-time material logistics manager.
Haahtela started with a takt concept plan, which they later refined in close collaboration with selected contractors. The resulting takt schedule serves as the production schedule. Axel emphasized that although the schedule is carefully planned, it is not entirely fixed. In practice, it will be iterated based on the current situation. One goal is to ensure a constant workload for the contractors. That is not typically self-evident in takt production, which prefers process flow.
From BIM to MBOM
As with all projects of this magnitude, BIM is used extensively in the Node. In the enriched IFC models, components know which takt area they belong to. This enables location-based bill-of-quantities calculation, which in turn allows optimization of the workload, takt areas, and takt wagons (repeating sets of work packages).
“This is laborious, for sure, but compared to doing it manually, this is negligible,” Axel said.
Location-based material data also enables accurate material planning. You get an engineering bill of materials (EBOM) that a contractor can convert into a manufacturing bill of materials (MBOM) using GTIN-coded product data. The material is linked to the scheduled installation time, and the contractor is responsible for ensuring the required workers are on site to install the materials delivered on time.
Takeaways
According to the latest Building 2030‘s annual metrics survey, one third of Finnish projects used takt in 2025. This indicates that takt has a firm foothold in the industry and that many contractors and crews have experience with it. However, it is still less common than I expected.
Choosing takt is still not self-evident, but for the Node, it seems like a wise choice. It has repetitive areas and work packages that can be standardized. However, as Axel pointed out, it is still not a “cookie-cutter” project; a certain level of variation and flexibility must be allowed.
Another critical practice is to include contractors and trade specialists in the scheduling process. They bring hands-on experience and ideas that turn a sometimes-theoretical timeline into a production-ready plan.
In a high-rise project, the schedule becomes three-dimensional: you must also optimize the vertical movement of people and materials. On the Node site, people and materials use dedicated elevators, and crews don’t have to descend during the day.
Well-planned material logistics begins at the design phase. Seamless data flow reduces errors and helps implement the inevitable changes in an orderly manner.
P.S. Links to the Finnish video recordings are available at building2030viikko.com