AECOM reduces project time and cost with BIM 360 family of products

Overview

When AECOM was facing challenges with project delivery time and cost, Autodesk helped the company implement Autodesk® BIM 360® Glue, Autodesk® BIM 360 Field, and Autodesk® BIM 360® Design (formerly "Collaboration for Revit"). quickly, without disrupting existing workflows. As a result of these solutions, AECOM was able to significantly lower project cost and time by reducing rework and allowing global team members to collaborate on local projects.

Customer Background

AECOM is built to deliver a better world. They design, build, finance and operate infrastructure assets for governments, businesses, and organizations in more than 150 countries. As a fully integrated firm, they connect knowledge and experience across our global network of experts to help clients solve their most complex challenges. Our work is transformative, differentiated and vital. A Fortune 500 firm, AECOM had revenue of approximately $18.2 billion during fiscal year 2017. See how AECOM delivers what others can only imagine at aecom.com and @AECOM.

Success Stories

BIM 360: Glue and Field Implementation

Challenge: Previously, field coordination and clash detection were done with Navisworks and a variety of collaborative software. A large sports stadium project has massive design drawing sizes, so initially, the project teams had no choice but to mail hard drives to other team members. Field checklists were conducted using spreadsheets and by hand, and digital photographs were used for progress reports. AECOM created a goal to optimize project delivery by bringing BIM to the field to reduce the time it takes to identify crashes and errors and to increase collaboration speeds.

A complex structural rendering of Barclays center showing the iconic curtain wall and the building structure, and used for 4D simulation of steel installation.

Solution: The Autodesk team proposed a series of awareness sessions and evaluation calls with AECOM. The team wanted to ensure that BIM 360 Field and Autodesk® BIM 360® Glue® were appropriate fits for the organization. Once AECOM began using the tool, the team saw an opportunity to add a Deployment Specialist for a nine-month period to assist in implementing the software to hundreds of projects. The specialist implemented 33 projects in two days. Following implementations, the project was handed off to the Enterprise Priority Support team who created a practice community to sustain and grow the adoption.

Success: Due to the Glue and Field implementations, AECOM achieved the following milestones:

• Reduced time for designers and contractors by 30 percent (Glue).
• Cut file-sharing time during design coordination by 70 percent (Glue).
• In less than eight months, AECOM coordinated $350 million in project pre-install (Glue).

“We used to wait until the end of the week to identify and reconcile crashes and errors, but with BIM 360 Glue, we can do it instantaneously.”

Russ Dalton, BIM Director, Americas, AECOM

AECOM Hunt had its estimating teams review four major projects where Glue and Field were used. They calculated that AECOM saved substantially in costs compared to if the company had to initiate change orders and remove work in place. This success was enabled by the project teams being able to catch errors and omissions being caught in the preconstruction phase, rather than the construction phase.

As a result of the successful roll-out of the BIM 360 toolset, AECOM now has more than 2,000 BIM 360 users.

“Due to BIM coordination and multi-discipline collaboration, our project was delivered with less than one percent rework — on a typical job, we expect to have between eight to ten percent rework.”

“Typically, on a project of the scale of the Barclay’s Center, we would spend more than nine to 11 percent of the project time in unresolved field issues that could lead to change orders. Due to our BIM 360 Field implementation, we held that to only five major conflicts in the field.”

Russ Dalton, BIM Director, Americas, AECOM

BIM 360 Design

Challenge: AECOM wanted to reduce the amount of time it takes for teams to collaborate in real-time on Revit projects in an effort to access global resources for local projects.

Solution: After listening to the customer needs, the Autodesk team deployed the following solutions.

• BIM 360 Design Piloting: Autodesk coordinated a pilot group representing AECOM’s buildings + places business line in the Americas.
• Marketing and Awareness: Autodesk worked to develop awareness with an initial pilot user’s team leveraging product marketing initiatives around BIM 360 Design's launch at Autodesk University 2015 (launched as "Collaboration for Revit").
• Corporate Cloud Strategy Alignment: Autodesk focused efforts on leveraging the pilot results to AECOM’s corporate team to convince them to adopt BIM 360 Design as a standard solution. The strategy included a productivity business case to highlight BIM 360 Design as an effective tool to AECOM’s EMIA teams.
• Communities of Practice (CoP): Concurrently to the corporate and EMIA efforts, the DSS setup a community to spread the word on BIM 360 Design success and allow for greater adoption.
• Deployment Specialist: Once piloting was complete and AECOM approved BIM 360 Design's use, a Deployment Specialist was set up to assist in broad global implementation and adherence to standards.

Physical observation of the previously executed virtual installation of superstructure steel on the Hard Rock Stadium.
 

Success: By coordinating with BIM 360 Design, AECOM saw an 18 percent reduction in design time for AECOM’s design teams. The use of BIM 360 Design has dramatically improved work sharing performance; reducing model open times by as much as two hours. AECOM has added nearly 850 BIM 360 Design users in ten months.

In addition to productivity and related cost savings, these changes have enabled AECOM to have true, global collaboration on major projects. AECOM has leveraged the success of BIM 360 Design to connect more than 135 global offices, allowing it to facilitate its integrated project delivery approach. This has allowed teams across the globe to contribute to key international projects, further reducing delivery costs. BIM 360 Design allows AECOM to utilize its global resources to solve local problems.

“What used to take us six weeks, now takes us 24 hours.”

Chris Crowe, Architect, AECOM

Images courtesy of AECOM.