Daycare & Housing: PLANFRED in Germany

A brand-new building on Siegfriedstraße, made up of two structures built in a wood-hybrid method — a combination of solid construction and timber construction — with a wood facade. On the ground floor of the first building, many children spend their days at the new daycare center, with 14 apartments built directly above. The second, somewhat smaller building houses a neighborhood center on the ground floor, with five more apartments above. The outdoor area includes a children's playground and a gathering space for residents. This year, the City of Detmold also took part in the Tag der Architektur (Architecture Day) in North Rhine-Westphalia with this building.

The feeling was right from the start

Before the City of Detmold started the project, the team wanted a tool to make everyday work easier — especially documentation. Until then, everything ran through correspondence, file notes and a server folder. That was time-consuming, especially with staff changes or when someone new had to get up to speed. It was also hard to get reliable data from external planners.

After some research online, Ursula Rücker, an architect in the City of Detmold's civil engineering and property management team, reached out to PLANFRED: "The contact with PLANFRED felt personal. I also had the sense we could work well with the platform, since support was available. The interface looked user-friendly and intuitive."

No more excuses

In day-to-day project work, the benefit shows up mainly in communication with external planning partners. "Just notifying everyone that something has been uploaded already helps," says Rücker. Statements like "I never received that" are easy to clear up, since it's always traceable who received which plan and when.

The tool has also proven useful for plan reviews. Instead of asking around who has already checked which plan, Rücker can see at a glance who still hasn't submitted their review. That's a clear advantage, especially when working with external offices.

Reference project: Siegfriedstraße

For the "Neubau Kita Siegfriedstraße mit Nachbarschaftszentrum und Wohnen" project, PLANFRED was used continuously from the project start in 2019 through completion in 2026 — by the client, the planners, and the key trades on site such as structural work, timber construction and steel construction. The platform wasn't used directly on the construction site, but by everyone working from the office: for plans, documents and plan reviews.

One sentence that sums it up

Asked to describe PLANFRED in one sentence, Rücker says: "A user-friendly, no-nonsense program that supports everyday project work."