The LEGO Group’s most environmentally sustainable factory to date
Project facts
- ClientLEGO Group
- ChallengeCoordinate and oversee complex, large-scale construction activities to meet challenging time schedule and safely optimise quality, efficiency and sustainability.
- LocationBinh Duong province, Vietnam
- SolutionAlongside multi-disciplinary supervision, high and low-tech solutions ensured progress in every area was visible and could be tracked, enabling highly effective coordination and focus. The project was completed faster than any previous construction of a new LEGO factory.
- Date2022 - 2025
The challenge
The LEGO Group’s vast new factory in Binh Duong province, southern Vietnam stretches across 44-hectares – equivalent to 62 football pitches. It is the LEGO Group’s sixth factory worldwide and its second in Asia. Using high-tech equipment, it produces bricks with 1/10th of a hair’s width precision and has been built to support long-term growth in the region. LEGO Manufacturing Vietnam is the LEGO Group’s most environmentally sustainable to date and will run on 100% renewable energy by early 2026. The majority of the factory’s energy needs will be met through on-site rooftop panels as well as through a nearby energy centre that utilises rooftop solar panels and battery storage solutions.
Haskoning provided construction management services for the project. The challenge and complexity arose out of the enormous scale and tight time frame. It involved around 200 subcontracting teams, 4,500 construction workers and more than 15 million working hours. Key challenges included ensuring diverse teams worked efficiently and effectively together to achieve ambitious targets across measures including safety, compliance, sustainability, quality, and timing.
The scale of the project meant we needed to think outside the box, moving beyond conventional approaches that deliver on smaller sites.
The solution
Project Director Bart Lemmens: “We pivoted from a conventional approach to introduce high- and low-tech solutions so we could effectively manage and coordinate large numbers of people and disciplines. Visualising data on a central dashboard was a key intervention which gave us real-time information about the project status from every area of the site.”
Data was collected by all the consultants and contractors day by day. It was shared centrally to indicate what was on track, where activities were lagging and risks developing. Daily meetings were held with leaders from every area of the site prior to commencing activities. This controlled safety procedures and ensured progress was followed meticulously. A broader perspective was provided by 3D fisheye cameras on helmets and camera footage synched with the BIM model to create what was effectively a virtual reality twin.
The result
The project was completed faster than every previous LEGO Group factory of similar scale while maintaining a very high standard of finish. Sustainability was embedded into the design and integrated into the site operations. For example, construction waste was collected into seven streams to be recycled, upcycled or processed in a sustainable manner. This allowed more than 90% of the waste to be diverted from landfill.
Project Director Bart Lemmens: "Our management approach combined a close focus on daily tasks with a big-picture view enabling us to also look ahead and ensure we would have everything in place at the right time. This was particularly important for integrating schedules with delivery of high-tech production equipment and the need to work as a system with buildings and utilities in place.
It is a great achievement to build a production facility of this size - 150,000sqm - in such a fast way. Success comes through building effective teams from different stakeholders.
