Four predictions for the architecture industry in 2023

Four predictions for the architecture industry in 2023

by | Feb 9, 2023 | AEC, Architecture, Autodesk

From digital and business transformation to climate resilience and collective intelligence: what are some of the key challenges and opportunities for the architecture sector that we can expect to see in 2023? Read on to see our predictions for the industry this year.

1. Form follows performance

Buildings are required to perform in more ways than ever before–environmentally, socially, and economically. Whether it’s about improving energy efficiency, lowering carbon footprint, or density requirements, we’ll see more optimization of designs to reach specific outcomes.

New sustainability tools are on the rise helping architects reach their performance targets. Whether they’re developed in-house, or are an existing product, these tools give architects more insights earlier in the design process, empowering them to take sustainability strategies in their own hands and, as a result, lead the way in sustainable design.

Offering valuable early insights, data-driven analyses such as Spacemaker’s (pictured) help architects make informed decisions about building performance when it‘s most impactful.

This is also where vernacular architecture could potentially inspire exciting new local strategies needed in the face of climate change, from preparing for heatwaves–high global temperatures are forecasted again this year–to building with bio-based materials. This leads to new typologies at all scales, from an individual building to a neighborhood, and new ways of making buildings and cities, affecting both the process and the outcome. Think more irregular-shaped architecture or mixed-density blocks.

2. More sustainability regulations

Governments all around the world are taking more regulatory action to accelerate meeting sustainability goals and lowering carbon emissions. Rising energy costs mean energy efficiency, fast tracking the energy transition, and decarbonization will become more prioritized. Architects have a vital role to play in delivering on sustainability targets. It’s no surprise that search engine trends related to architecture, urban planning, and sustainability are increasing–for example, in Germany there’s been a reported 40% increase.

In North America, the Government of Canada enshrined in legislation its commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which means policies will be put in place to decarbonize the operations of government-owned property, mobility, and other programs. The United States’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest federal climate investment in US history, allocates an estimated $362 million for a commercial energy efficiency tax deduction and another $4.5 billion toward measuring embodied carbon in construction materials and installing low-carbon products in public infrastructure and federal government buildings.

The European Union is planning to introduce a regulation requiring worst-performing buildings to be renovated in order to double the rate of buildings renovation in the next 10 years. Currently, about 35% of the EU’s buildings are more than 50 years old and almost 75% of building stock is energy inefficient. In the UK, new regulations require that new homes and buildings must produce 30% less carbon emissions. In Denmark, life-cycle assessments for new buildings will be mandatory from 2023 onwards. In France, the RE2020 environmental regulations focus on lowering carbon emissions for new buildings, and new legislation could require all large car parks to be covered with solar panels. For architects and urban designers around the globe, integrating these factors from day one will be key to meeting new environmental requirements.

Solar panels on an urban rooftop

Solar panels on urban rooftops are helping to accelerate the energy transition.

3. Digital transformation brings business transformation

New digital, data-driven tools continue to expand the architect’s toolkit, helping them work more effectively to achieve better outcomes for their work, from sustainable design to visualization. A must for any new software will be interoperability with existing tools as well as traditional techniques such as hand sketching. Smooth workflows across tools, processes, and collaborators will be key for a successful digital transformation.

AI and automation will play a greater role in the design process by, for example, predicting outcomes and automating tedious tasks such as number crunching or sourcing data, while freeing up more time for architects to focus on design work.

New digital processes will potentially enable architects to rethink their business models such as testing new fee structures and diversifying their services. As a result, more firms will invest in innovation officers and digital strategists to ensure a cohesive approach to architecture, business, and technology.

4. Cloud-based collaboration = collective intelligence

The issues of sustainability, biodiversity, climate change, and urbanization are too complex to solve alone. Facilitating an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach connected by data results in a new collective intelligence.

Cloud-based platforms will enable better ways of communication and collaboration, allowing teams to contribute anytime, from anywhere–imperative when it comes to supporting the hybrid, post-pandemic workplace. We expect to see more and more companies embracing the cloud and cloud-based products. In this transition, hybrid workflows will connect desktop and cloud products to create smoother and more data-driven workflows.

Two workers collaborating in an office

Cloud collaboration enables teams to work across devices, and to contribute anytime, from anywhere.

In this collective environment, the shared language will be data. To ensure data is usable by everyone, the team needs to be able to access it in an intuitive, centralized, and interoperable way. We see data becoming more important in the decision-making process, helping architects reach better outcomes to solve complex societal challenges. Data will improve collaboration by boosting trust and transparency in the team and facilitating more constructive dialogues with the client, municipality, or internally, benefiting the whole project lifecycle. The result will be buildings, neighborhoods, and cities that are better equipped for what uncertainties and opportunities the future may bring.

SOURCE Autodesk, Håvard Haukeland

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The Grand Egyptian Museum, Where History Meets 21st-Century Software Modeling

The Grand Egyptian Museum, Where History Meets 21st-Century Software Modeling

by | Jan 18, 2023 | AEC, Architecture, Autodesk, BIM

The Grand Egyptian Museum lobby showcases an 83-ton, 3,200-year-old statue of Ramses II
The Grand Egyptian Museum lobby showcases an 83-ton, 3,200-year-old statue of Ramses II, part of the permanent collection. Courtesy of Besix-Orascom joint venture.
  • Constructing Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum meant meeting complex challenges surrounding safely installing priceless antiquities.
  • Laser scanning and 3D modeling were used to document the museum’s estimated 100,000 artifacts tracing Egyptian civilization from prehistory to the Greco-Roman period.
  • Realizing the complex, environmentally friendly building design was a feat accomplished using BIM to coordinate more than 150 subcontractors and 5,000 on-site workers.

In January 2018, crowds gathered in Giza, Egypt, to watch as an 83-ton, 30-foot-high granite statue of Ramses II was carted on two trailer beds from a temporary building to the towering atrium of the new Grand Egyptian Museum. The museum is set to open in 2023, more than 20 years after the late Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak laid a cornerstone of its foundation.

The 3,200-year-old statue of the pharaoh, regarded as among the most powerful in ancient Egypt, has journeyed from the quarries of Aswan to the Temple of Ptah in the 13th century BC, through a centuries-long disappearance, to an archeological rediscovery in 1820 by Italian Egyptologist Giovanni Battista Caviglia. In 2006, the statue was moved from Bab Al-Hadid square in Cairo to the Giza museum complex, where it was restored and housed until 2018 before making its way to the museum’s permanent collection.

 
 
Transporting and installing priceless antiquities has long been a challenge, but emerging digital technology has made the process much more efficient and somewhat less risky. Before it was brought into the museum, Ramses II was laser scanned to generate a 3D model—as were many of the museum’s estimated 100,000 artifacts tracing Egyptian civilization from prehistory to the Greco-Roman period, including the full collection of artifacts from King Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Cairo-based firm Orascom led construction of the $1 billion, 5.4 million-square-foot museum campus, now the largest archeological museum in the world. Orascom worked in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities and Brussels-based construction group Besix. Orascom used the laser scans to generate a set of tiny digital pinpricks (known as a point cloud) of Ramses II in Autodesk ReCap Pro. This point cloud was imported to Autodesk Revit to digitally reconstruct a mesh overlay of the statue that could be placed within the more expansive building information model (BIM) describing the entire museum.

a view of the Ramses II statue at the Grand Egyptian Museum

 

Another view of the Ramses II statue at the Grand Egyptian Museum. Courtesy of Besix-Orascom joint venture.

 

Modeling the statue’s approach ahead of time—down to inches—ensured it could be safely conveyed, in a specially built metal cage, into the atrium. There, it will live in checkered light under a dramatic formwork of latticed steel beams and a louvered, white concrete roof.

“It’s thousands of years old, so it’s a very delicate piece,” says Khaled El-Said, vice president of Orascom, who heads the company’s human resources and IT divisions. “Having the model in place helps a lot with maneuverability and installation. Also, when it’s there amid other work, you want to make sure it’s not blocking other aspects of the exhibition experience.”

Ramses II is just one element of the Grand Egyptian Museum embracing technology. Using 21st-century building modeling software was key to integrate the museum—in siting, orientation, spatial geometry, material use, environmental sensitivity, and even scale and bombast—into the Giza plateau, where it sits 12 miles from Cairo and just over a mile from the ancient pyramids of pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.

In a bid to welcome five million visitors each year and revive regional tourism, which has declined in recent years, the building will host exhibition galleries, children’s areas, a conference center with a 3D cinema, retail outlets, a library, and 10 restaurants. The largest part of the program comprises open-air spaces that include piazzas, exhibitions, and many parks and gardens. A special exhibition space will contain a 4,600-year-old wooden ship, or solar boat, which experts suggest “may have been part of the pharaoh [Khufu’s] fleet in life,” or “designed to carry the resurrected king through the skies following his death,” according to Smithsonian magazine.

“Tourism has the largest potential for growth, the largest impact on the economy,” says Osama Bishai, CEO of Orascom Construction, describing the project in a YouTube video created by Oxford Business Group. “I think it’s time for Egypt to have a great house for their civilization.”

 

aerial view of the Grand Egyptian Museum

 

The museum is oriented to align sight lines from its exterior walls to the nearby pyramids. Courtesy of Besix-Orascom joint venture.

 

Visualization, Spatial Analysis, and Fabrication

Architecture usually considers the context of its surroundings, but the stakes are higher with monuments of such historic and cultural significance. Modeled using Autodesk Revit and BIM 360, the museum’s orientation visually connects past and present, framing sightlines from the museum’s exterior walls to the vertices of the three Giza Pyramids—almost as though the buildings were born synchronously from a single perspective drawing with a shared vanishing point.

Shehab Shenouda, executive director of project methods and controls at Orascom, describes one gallery that offers a view of the three pyramids in “one homogenous picture,” as though they are a distant extension of the museum itself. It creates “a complete view of the three pyramids actually as if the three pyramids are part of the museum,” adds El-Said—and is also a technical feat that would have been nearly impossible using traditional surveying methods.

The immense scale and beveled triangular form of the museum, echoing the Giza Pyramids, was designed by Henegan Peng Architects, selected from 1,557 entries in an international design competition hosted by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and UNESCO. “What drove the unique architectural design is choosing a ray point—this is the museum,” Shenouda says. “It’s projecting out to the three pyramids from a certain point; a ray of light shining through the museum all the way to the pyramid.” A massive white concrete roof, with gill-like slabs spanning up to 130 feet in length, required seamless connections among the structural steel beams, joints, and formworks to accommodate specially mixed concrete from French manufacturer LaFarge.

“When you have a triangular shape like this in three dimensions, you don’t have a repetitive form for the slabs; each has a different geometry,” Shenouda says. “We had to fabricate the specific formwork and rebar, bay by bay. Nothing is replicated.”

outside of grand egyptian museum

 

The museum’s vented, cascading roof, built from 10 million cubic feet of concrete, helps keep the galleries inside at a constant 73 degrees. Courtesy of Besix-Orascom joint venture.

 

Using Autodesk Dynamo, the team composed custom scripts to automate the modeling of subtle iterations of these elements. More than 10 million cubic feet of concrete poured hot into asymmetrical formworks created the cascading roofline, accentuated by 100-foot-high “stilettos,” which flank the grand staircase. The ventilated concrete roof and facades also minimize heat conductivity, ensuring the galleries can be naturally maintained at 73 degrees, even when temperature on the external surfaces reaches a sweltering 150 degrees in the height of the summer heat. “Imagine the amount of energy that saves having to air condition this,” El-Said says. “Of course, there is air conditioning, but you reduce a lot the electrical load and everything that goes along with it…That’s a key element in the environmental protection aspect with the design of this project.”

The complex features an air quality monitoring station, connected to the National Industrial Emissions Control Network of the Environmental Affairs Agency, which collects data that contributes to the process of controlling pollution in accordance with local environmental protection laws. Many construction materials are manufactured and purchased locally, and mechanical equipment and electrical devices were selected based on their energy savings to meet sustainability requirements.

 

BIM and 3D Project Coordination

The project’s coup de grâce, perhaps, was the coordination of information across a team that included 150 subcontractors and 5,000 on-site workers across a nearly half-mile-long campus. BIM 360, introduced as the common data environment midway through construction, brought efficiency to a time-consuming scoping process El-Said says once required subcontractors’ models to be manually reviewed and approved by Besix-Orascom’s joint-venture in-house BIM team before the subcontractors could issue fabrication drawings. An accessible interface expedited a project two decades in the making and already significantly delayed by two political revolutions and the COVID-19 pandemic.

outside view of construction at the grand egyptian museum

 

Besix-Orascom joint venture’s team used BIM to coordinate more than 150 subcontractors and 5,000 workers on the jobsite. Courtesy of Besix-Orascom joint venture.

 

In essence, the 3D environment served as a virtual replica, or digital twin, of the physical landscape. By displaying real-time updates of “as-built” conditions in a shared, cloud-based interface, BIM 360 helped disparate teams access files and coordinate workflows. All told, the shared model recorded more than 1,000 change requests; 4,000 bill of quantities requests; 12,000 extracted requests for information (RFIs); 45,000 extracted shop drawings; and 33,000 extracted as-built drawings. BIM was also used to flag potential clashes between HVAC, electrical, and plumbing systems, reducing (MEP) installation rework orders to fewer than 5% of the total, with a minimal clash rate.

“Modeling helps with cyclic construction,” Shenouda says. “You can do procurement manually, but on a project of this scale, with changes happening on a daily basis, there are bound to be errors. Having one source of truth behind the data, and incorporating subcontractors’ changes and input, hopefully in a timely way, helps you execute effectively.”

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Mayor Adams Reveals Plans to Convert Underused Offices into Housing

Mayor Adams Reveals Plans to Convert Underused Offices into Housing

by | Jan 18, 2023 | AEC, Architecture

New York City Mayor Eric Adams revealed last month recommendations to convert underused office space into as many as 20,000 new homes for New Yorkers.

Developed by the Office Adaptive Reuse Task Force and Department of City Planning, these 11 recommendations include:

  • Expanding the universe of office buildings with the most flexible regulations for conversion to residential use from buildings constructed through 1961 to those constructed through 1990 — easing the potential conversion process for an additional 120 million square feet of office space;
  • Expanding flexible conversion regulations to all high-intensity office districts, including Downtown Flushing and the Bronx Hub — easing the potential conversion process for an additional 16 million square feet of office space;
  • Finding opportunities to allow housing, whether through conversions or new construction, in a centrally located, high-density part of Midtown that currently prohibits residential development;
  • Allowing office buildings to convert to various much-needed types of housing, including supportive housing;
  • Providing flexibility for offices to convert all existing space into housing, eliminating limitations that incentivize only partial conversions or make conversion projects infeasible;
  • Exploring and pursuing a tax incentive program to support the production of affordable and mixed-income housing through office conversions — adding to the city’s affordable housing stock without deterring other private investment in conversions and housing creation; and
  • Creating a property tax abatement program to incentivize retrofitting office space for child care centers, building on Mayor Adams’ “Accessible, Equitable, High-Quality, Affordable: A Blueprint for Child Care & Early Childhood Education in New York City.”

“With this study, we have a roadmap to deliver on a vision for a more vibrant, resilient, prosperous, and affordable city,” said Mayor Adams. “The need for housing is desperate, and the opportunity offered by underused office space is clear — we know what we need to do. These concrete reforms would clear red tape and create the incentives to create the housing we need for New Yorkers at all income levels. I want to thank the members of the task force for helping to chart the course, and I look forward to working with them and our partners in city and state government to deliver these much-needed reforms.”

“Enabling more offices to convert to housing will help us bring back our commercial districts while also addressing our housing supply crisis,” said Deputy Mayor for Economic and Workforce Development Maria Torres-Springer. “The recommendations in this report will set us on the path to achieving these critical goals, and I look forward to partnering with our colleagues in Albany and the City Council to ‘Get Stuff Built.’”

New York City Office Adaptive Reuse Study

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Autodesk and Epic Games to Deliver Real-Time, Immersive Design Capabilities to AEC Customers

Autodesk and Epic Games to Deliver Real-Time, Immersive Design Capabilities to AEC Customers

by | Nov 23, 2022 | AEC, Architecture, Autodesk, BIM

Back in September, at Autodesk University, Autodesk, Inc. announced a strategic collaboration with Epic Games to accelerate immersive real-time (RT) experiences across industries, with an initial focus on Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC).

Autodesk customers face pressing challenges to deliver project outcomes at a faster pace, at lowered costs, and with labor shortages, which require more open, connected workflows, and third-party integrations that simply work together. This joint effort with Epic Games aims to make immersive RT environments easily accessible to designers, engineers, and construction professionals, so they can deliver more innovative projects in less time.

As part of Autodesk’s ongoing goal of connecting the physical and digital worlds, the first integrated offering will be Epic Games’ Twinmotion for Autodesk Revit, delivering real-time rendering and storytelling. As Revit is used to design, document, and deliver building and infrastructure projects, Twinmotion complements the process by creating real-time visualizations for a fast, interactive design process. Autodesk intends to make Twinmotion for Revit available to all Revit customers as part of an upcoming release.

“We know our customers are looking for more visualization and collaboration experiences through extended reality,” said Autodesk EVP of AEC Design, Amy Bunszel. “Together with Epic Games, we will expand on what’s possible. In immersive environments, designers can communicate to their project teams and clients with unparalleled realism how projects will look and feel upon completion for better decision-making and outcomes.”

Epic and Autodesk have been teaming up since 2008 when Autodesk joined Epic Games’ Integrated Partners Program, enabling integration of Autodesk 3D design software with Epic’s Unreal Engine. In 2021, Epic and Autodesk collaborated to offer a new Unreal Live Link for Maya plugin, allowing Media & Entertainment (M&E) creators to stream data from Maya to Unreal in real time.

“The integration between Autodesk Revit and Twinmotion promises to deliver a truly seamless, real-time 3D experience for design professionals,” said Marc Petit, Epic Games’ Vice President, Unreal Engine Ecosystem. “We share a common goal with Autodesk, giving customers more time to be innovative. By tapping into Epic’s ecosystem of real-time 3D tools and libraries, users can spend more time bringing their designs to life and less time handling complex data and technical workflows.”

Looking ahead, the companies aim to develop experiences for customers beyond AEC, including M&E and manufacturing, bringing forth the value of real-time content creation. As members of the Metaverse Standards Forum, Autodesk and Epic Games are also driving open standards that enhance portability and integration, equip customers with immersive and collaborative technology, and deliver real value for customers.

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Cloud-Based Platforms Connect People, Processes, and Data

Cloud-Based Platforms Connect People, Processes, and Data

by | Oct 6, 2022 | Architecture, Autodesk, BIM, Cloud Services, Collaboration

workers on a factory floor

 

Cloud-based platforms connect people to processes and data in a common and open collaborative ecosystem, where work becomes more efficient and innovative.

  • Cloud-based platforms with open ecosystems help harness collaborative problem solving and innovation.
  • Thanks to the promise of unified experiences and connected tools, data, and teams, 95% of all work will be platform-driven by 2025.
  • The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC); manufacturing; and media and entertainment industries will benefit from connected and automated processes, both upstream and downstream.

Everyone has experienced some sort of disruption these past few years. I’m not just talking about the global pandemic. Climate change, fractured supply chains, inflation, and labor shortages are shaking things up around the world.

But although the word disruption has negative connotations, it also creates opportunities to do things in different ways. Disruption forces people to rethink, reimagine, and reinvent. Right now, digital transformation is accelerating, and exciting technologies are emerging. That’s led to new ways of collaborating and spurred an age of innovation.

Dr. Linda A. Hill, a professor at the Harvard Business School, certainly sees it this way. She has done extensive research on innovation, leadership, and digital transformation, and she knows exactly what helps digitally mature companies succeed. “Innovation is not about solo genius; it’s about collective genius,” Dr. Hill said in her TedxCambridge talk. “It’s a type of collaborative problem solving usually among people who have different expertise and different points of view.”

To thrive in today’s world, organizations can harness that collective genius by moving to cloud-based platforms. The best platforms are open, collaborative environments that bring data, people, and processes together. They are the pinnacle of digital transformation, and they’re on track to disrupt the status quo and change the world.

Why Cloud-Based Platforms? Why Now?

For too long, collaboration has been hampered by closed tools that lock data into proprietary file formats. Different software programs couldn’t communicate, workflows were disconnected, and people had to access massive files to search for the information they needed. These old ways of working don’t apply anymore.

On a platform, people, processes, and data are connected in an open ecosystem. Information can flow upstream and downstream for full visibility. Real-time workflows are automated and extensible. Data is granular, so people can access the exact information they need when they need it. Having a single, collaborative environment delivers greater value to stakeholders and builds resilience. And there’s no greater story of resilience than the city of New Orleans.

Meagen Williams, P.E., is the stormwater program manager for New Orleans, a place that has experienced disruption like nowhere else. This coastal city is particularly vulnerable to the stronger storms associated with climate change.

Williams, who witnessed the devastation of Hurricane Katrina firsthand, is changing how things are done and applying data-informed, innovative ideas to this historic city. Her team is reducing flood risks with bioswales, pervious ground layers, and stormwater parks. Her projects bring together multiple stakeholders—including city administrators, engineers, construction teams, and the public—and leverage historic data to design for a resilient future.

Platforms, with end-to-end solutions built on a common data experience, are perfect places for such projects. They create a unified experience, lift people out of their silos, and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. All of that happens in the cloud, far from the noise and chaos of disruption down below. At the rate things are going, 95% of all work will take place on cloud-based platforms by 2025.

Autodesk is keeping pace with this trend, empowering three key industries—manufacturing, media and entertainment, and AEC—to be more innovative, productive, and profitable by bringing everything together on industry clouds. The three industry clouds, along with a shared set of services (called Autodesk Platform Services, formerly Forge), make solutions more connected, extensible, and open.

workers on a construction site

 

Managing architecture, engineering, and construction projects in the cloud keeps teams connected with shared data, which enables seamless collaboration and as little error as possible.

Connecting People and Data for Frictionless Workflows

Connectivity has never been more important. When the pandemic emerged, two-thirds of people in the United States who could work remotely did. Now, that’s leveled off at a new normal with 45% of remote-capable jobs being performed out of the office at least part of the time (and 25% fully remote). This evolution of work requires a shift to a new paradigm. The cloud has become the new collaboration space, whether colleagues are in the office next door or on the other side of the world.

At the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) polar research station, scientists study the global impacts of climate change. Their work requires incredibly sturdy infrastructure, especially in its extreme environment. BAS has invested £300 million (about $354 million) to build a new research vessel and upgrade its wharf and facilities. The projects are complex and require careful coordination with stakeholders around the globe, led by engineering firm BAM International in the Netherlands, Swedish architecture and construction consultancy Sweco, engineering firm Rambøll in Denmark, and the team in Antarctica.

With much of the prefabrication happening in the UK, the teams must get everything ready for the small window of time they have for on-site construction between October and March. The schedule is tight, and there’s no room for error or missing parts. That’s why they’re managing this project on the cloud. Every bit of data is connected and shared, and different programs are compatible for frictionless end-to-end workflows and seamless collaboration from the far reaches of the globe.

In the future, customers like BAS will use Autodesk Forma, the AEC industry cloud, to connect the entire process from concept through construction. Over time, Forma will also enable continued transformation of building information modeling (BIM).

people working on a computing editing a film

 

Today’s media and entertainment workflows, which involve hundreds of people and hundreds of terabytes of data, require centralized asset-management systems like Autodesk Flow to maintain project continuity.

Better Asset Management in the Cloud

In another realm—the imaginary worlds created by the entertainment industry—movies contain more data in a single shot than most people can appreciate. And a film can have thousands of shots. Factor in visual effects, and the amount of data that goes into making a single film is mind-blowing.

Comprehending that amount of data is like trying to fathom that there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and 200 billion galaxies in the universe. In some cases, movie data can require a petabyte of storage, which is equivalent to 1,000 terabytes. And it takes hundreds of people working behind the scenes on multiple devices and in multiple locations to make it all happen.

Industry clouds, such as Autodesk Flow for media and entertainment, will create centralized asset-management systems where all project information can live and be shared throughout the entire project lifecycle for fluid collaboration and project continuity.

Amazon Studios, the production arm of Amazon, has a slate of several hundred original movies and television series, including the company’s biggest production to date: Rings of Power, an expansion of The Lord of the Rings franchise. The project involved 9,000 shots for an eight-hour series and took the work of five visual-effects companies.

In the future, to manage all these moving parts and enable collaboration among production teams, media and entertainment companies will use Flow to streamline all the creative workflows and deliver their epic narratives.

people working on the manufacturing shop floor

 

With digital design and manufacturing linked together by a cloud-based platform, collaborators can contribute to projects from literally anywhere.

An Explosion of Innovation

By design, cloud-based platforms enable data interoperability and real-time collaboration. But they’re also incubators of innovation. In fact, McKinsey estimates that the ability to boost innovation will generate 75% of the cloud’s value. With a common data experience, people can brainstorm and have that energizing back-and-forth that ignites new ideas. Collaborators can be literally anywhere, enabling contribution from a diversity of stakeholders with different visions.

At BBI Autosport in Huntington Beach, CA, manufacturing and innovation go hand in hand. The company designs and builds aftermarket performance parts for Porsche that are used on both the racetrack and the road. But it’s more than just a factory. This small but agile team of machinists are also Porsche enthusiasts who know these cars inside and out. Innovation is the heart and soul of this shop.

The team collaborates with designers and fabricators around the world. They iterate and prototype, using 3D printing to make their parts lighter and faster. Generative design allows them to simulate the performance of parts to test for speed and agility and find just the right solution. They do that in the cloud with Fusion 360 (which will be part of Autodesk Fusion, the industry cloud for manufacturing) to create these incredible, one-of-a-kind vehicles.

When companies streamline workflows into one data-driven experience, they become more efficient, more sustainable, and more innovative. They better position themselves to improve business outcomes and solve the world’s biggest challenges. From the top floor to the shop floor, from script to screen, and from building concept to construction, platforms create an opportunity to do things not only better but also completely differently.

 

Article written by Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk CEO

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Issue Resolution and Clash Avoidance with Autodesk BIM Collaborate

Issue Resolution and Clash Avoidance with Autodesk BIM Collaborate

by | Sep 16, 2022 | Architecture, Autodesk, BIM, Collaboration

ACC Blog - Round Trip Issues BIM Collaborate

Construction management is a highly complex and multi-dimensional collaborative effort. To execute on projects effectively, several people and moving parts all need to click and stay in sync. Issues need to be resolved quickly, questions must be answered in a timely manner, and there should be trust and accountability across the entire team.

Accomplishing all that, however, is easier said than done.

Design and construction teams struggle to find a seamless way to identify issues and circulate them to the appropriate stakeholders. Often, teams rely on spreadsheets, static reports, or third-party management solutions to gather information and make decisions.

Unfortunately, these tools and sources are unreliable and inaccessible to the wider team. They cause confusion and are ultimately ineffective for detecting clashes and resolving issues. Not to mention, the manual tasks involved with static documents and spreadsheets are tedious, time consuming, and can cause issues to slip through the cracks.

The result? Issues that could’ve been avoided bubble up to the surface later on in the form of rework — and unnecessary costs. Clashes alone account for 5% of construction spend and 52% of the $280 billion of annual rework costs are caused by poor project data and communication globally.

To address this, many companies turn to third-party point solutions to address specific problems. However, these programs usually require further training and implementation, as well as additional costs.

To make matters more complicated, the different parties involved (e.g., design firms, GCs, and subcontractors) all use different systems and platforms. The JBKnowledge 2020 ConTech report found that 63% of construction pros are using three to six more apps  — which makes integration and communication harder and limits project data usage.

All this to say that managing project issues in construction can be a headache.

What if you could address issues at the same time and at the same place, to streamline resolution?

The combination of Autodesk BIM Collaborate (part of the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform), Navisworks, and Revit makes all that possible.

Thanks to the tight integration between these solutions, issues can be created, managed, or resolved directly in the tools you work in daily, and are connected using a common data environment (CDE).

By surfacing and resolving issues in a CDE, you create a lasting history of decisions made for downstream stakeholders for future reference. It also allows multidisciplinary teams with different tools to manage and communicate about issues using a common solution.

All in all, this paves the way for a roundtrip workflow, which helps teams close the loop with any clashes or issues that arise.

Issues created in either Autodesk BIM Collaborate or Navisworks can be assigned and contextualized in either of those tools and resolved in Revit. That resolution then makes its way back to Autodesk BIM Collaborate for reporting and future project forecasting.

Let’s take a look at just one of the ways all these solutions work together.

 

 

Autodesk BIM Collaborate

Autodesk BIM Collaborate’s browser-based model coordination and design collaboration tool comes with automatic clash detection and grouping tools that help identify issues early on. The software’s UI is intuitive and easy on the eyes, so all discipline types (designers, GCs, and specialty contractors) can use the solution.

Team members can self-check their work as they go, and if issues come up, they can flag it with a location pin and add details such as the root cause, description, important dates, and clash screenshot. From there, they can assign the issue to the appropriate stakeholder.

Because multiple stakeholders can take part in identifying and assigning issue tasks, the coordination process is faster and much more streamlined. Issues and their associated models are stored in a common data environment for multi-team, product, and construction phase access to action on.

 

 

Navisworks Coordination Issues Add-In (Navisworks 2021-2022)

This Navisworks add-in connects models, views, and issues through a CDE, so BIM/VDC managers can easily create, track, assign, and resolve issues directly in their desktop application.

If a Navisworks user is unsure about an issue, they can simply comment directly within the platform. Similar to Autodesk BIM Collaborate, users can add issues and include details like type, location, assignee, description, and due date. They can then pair that issue with an image snapshot of the clash identified. Thanks to this add-in, stakeholders using the software can better contextualize the issue, resolve it, or assign it to someone else.

Navisworks also has an updated Coordination Space and Append capabilities. With the upgraded issues add-in, users now have the ability to append additional models from a Model Coordination space to their already opened set of models. This increases the efficiency of coordination meetings by allowing users to immediately update your .nwf files as new model files arrive from project design teams.

Plus, this free add-in seamlessly connects with Autodesk BIM Collaborate and Revit, so there’s no need for third-party integrations. You’ll reduce manual work and miscommunication, and resolve issues more quickly.

See for yourself by downloading and installing this add-in from the Autodesk App Store. Once installed, start Navisworks and navigate to the Coordination tab.

Revit Issues Add-in (Revit 2020 or later)

Using the very same common data environment and issues layer, architects and engineers working in Revit can scan through all the details we covered above and any additional information from the comments/history, to resolve the issue directly in the model.

This type of connectivity displays the same information to the entire project team, thus enabling stakeholders to literally stay on the same (digital) page. Stakeholders benefit from having more transparency and greater levels of accountability which result in less rework from issues slipping through the cracks.

Instead of waiting until the next coordination meeting to resolve an issue, users can continuously collaborate on models, speeding up time-to-site and reducing the expensive design iterations that occur from poor and sporadic communication.

You access this add-in from the Autodesk Desktop App or your Autodesk account. Get more info on how to use it from the Autodesk Knowledge Network.

 

 

Bringing It All Together

Autodesk BIM Collaborate, along with the Navisworks and Revit add-ins, take issue management to a whole new level.

These tightly integrated tools don’t just let you track or manage issues, they create an environment to collaborate and resolve them.

Issue resolution is tracked in Autodesk BIM Collaborate with a dashboard of outstanding issues and resolution overtime, paving the way for better management and prediction for future projects.

Plus, the entire project team can work together to resolve issues and collaborate with a “clash avoidance” mindset (as opposed to a “clash detection” mindset). This speeds up the time-to-site and reduces costly rework.

With a roundtrip workflow, issues are created in either Autodesk Construction Cloud or Navisworks, and actionable in Autodesk BIM Collaborate, Revit, or Navisworks, bringing the best of each environment to your next project.

Interested in experiencing Autodesk BIM Collaborate for yourself? Request a trial today.

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