CRUX Engineering BV was commissioned by COD, together with Van Rossum Raadgevend Ingenieurs BV, to carry out various geotechnical consultancy activities for the RAI Hotel project, including the building pit, the pile-foundation design and a risk analysis for the environmental impact.

With 650 rooms, Nhow Amsterdam RAI is the largest hotel in the Benelux. The Rotterdam-based architectural firm OMA, owned by Rem Koolhaas, drew inspiration from the commercial tower on the forecourt of the RAI regarding the design of the 91m high, 25-floor hotel tower. The hotel consists of large blocks, which are rotated in relation to each other.

Controlling and mitigating environmental influences is an essential part of this project, as the RAI Hotel is being built in the triangle that will be confined by the Europaboulevard, the A10 ring road and the Amsterdam RAI complex. Within this area, the metro tunnel of the North/South Line will also be located on the west side of the hotel. This forms the connection between the Europaplein and Station Zuid.

The 2 underground layers of the hotel are executed within a steel sheet-piling pit. The sheet pile walls will be placed on the side of the metro tunnel under a strut position of (10:1), parallel to the piled foundation of the tunnel. For the design of the building pit, calculations were carried out using both D-Sheet Piling and PLAXIS 2D.

The piled foundation of the hotel consists of a combination of compression and tension piles. The deformation behaviour of the foundation construction for this project was investigated by CRUX using PLAXIS 3D and utilized by Van Rossum as a starting point for the structural design.

The outcome of the design and the risk analyses were coordinated with various asset-owners and subsequently translated by CRUX into a control-measuring plan and monitoring plan, with the latter including the determination of signal and intervention values. In accordance with this plan and commissioned by COD, CRUX carries out the measuring monitoring of the construction, in order to monitor the design in the execution phase and proactively control and manage its impact on the environment. The construction started in September 2016.