Beca saves three weeks of rework on the Bundarbo Bridge design project, leveraging design automation

Overview

Committed to “making every day better,” Beca is one of the largest independent advisory, design, and engineering consultancies in the Asia-Pacific Region. Hilltops Council New South Wales (NSW) awarded Beca the design package of the Bundarbo Bridge renewal project in August of 2019. The project is part of the Australian Federal Government’s Bridges Renewal Program, of which five bridge projects will be carried out for Hilltops.

The deadline to deliver the design was tight, and Beca needed solutions that would enable its team to deliver the project on time. Additionally, the design project presented an opportunity for Beca to update its processes to create an exceptional client experience. The team worked with Autodesk to pilot a 3D, parametric-based, data-centric model process, based on Autodesk® Infraworks® and Autodesk® Civil 3D®. With this new strategy and new skills, Beca saved three weeks designing the Bundarbo Bridge.

Challenge

Beca’s traditional method for designing models relied heavily on Autodesk® AutoCAD, and also leveraged Autodesk® Revit®. Though this process had been highly effective for Beca over the years, the team was concerned it would be too slow to achieve the Bundarbo Bridge design’s tight deadline.

The Beca team wanted to adopt a data-centric and parametric, 3D model-based workflow. This new workflow would be a repeatable, streamlined process that could be adopted globally across the organization—beyond the Bundarbo Bridge project team. The chosen solution would need to improve client engagement and allow for quick and informed design decision making, deepening the overall customer experience. If adoption of a new 3D solution proved successful, Beca would not only deliver the Bundarbo Bridge design on time but would also give the organization a competitive advantage by upskilling its employees to a scalable process.

Solution

The solution proposed by Autodesk began with the adoption of Autodesk® Infraworks®. With this new tool, Beca can carry out rapid, conceptual designs and visualize developing models, maintaining ongoing customer engagement. This enhanced customer experience was taken further with Beca’s existing virtual reality capability. The end-to-end integrated 3D workflow which started with Infraworks led to detailed design in both Civil 3D and Revit. With the interoperability between Infraworks and Civil 3D, Beca can incorporate detailed civil design elements as the design progresses beyond the conceptual stage.

With the Civil Connection tool based on Autodesk® Dynamo®, interoperability between Civil 3D and Revit is significantly automated with changes pushed between the two programs. This overcame the need for re-working detailed designs, creating a synergistic approach that was both time efficient and maximised the value of data across the entire design lifecycle. Mid-way through the design process, the team discovered the bridge deck alignment had shifted from the original location of the piers. Running the Dynamo script, the Beca team realigned the piers to the bridge deck in a fraction of the time it would normally take using traditional methods.

The time pressures placed on the project required Autodesk and Beca to work in an agile manner. For 15 days, an Autodesk Deployment Specialist worked closely with Beca to onboard the Bundarbo Bridge project team to the new solutions. This included both onsite and offsite support.

Success

By developing Dynamo scripting, the Beca team saved three weeks’ worth of re-design effort and successfully realigned the structure in a matter of seconds. This helped the Bundarbo Bridge team achieve the tight deadline, creating an excellent client experience. The deployment of the Civil Connection tool in these workflows is now being scaled across all of Beca’s business.

Beca’s Bundarbo Bridge project was awarded the Transport for NSW Digital Engineering Framework Connecting Smarter Award 2019. This project helped Beca to be much more efficient in its approach to bridge designing, gaining a competitive advantage with improved workflows. The streamlined process allows for efficiencies in design re-work on current projects and additional bridge projects in the future.

“Leveraging design automation and the Autodesk Infrastructure suite of products helped bring greater efficiency to the Bundarbo Bridge project. Using a data driven approach enabled greater efficiencies to be gained and a higher level of immersive client engagement.”

- Brett Naylor, Group Manager, Digital Delivery, Beca