Building Tomorrow: Advanced BIM Solutions for Infrastructure Projects

JUSTIN TAYLOR: Welcome to this class at Autodesk University 2024 on Building Tomorrow: Advanced BIM solutions for Infrastructure Projects. Our agenda today begins with a very warm welcome to you all and a huge thanks for your time in joining this session. Hopefully, you're going to find this interesting, thought-provoking, educational, and inspiring. After a quick who am I and why am I presenting to you, we will then look at the current industry trends and take a short journey through the history of CAD.

It's important in this session that we set the scene and understand where we've come from and the issues that we're dealing with now, and where we need to get to and how we can help you get there. We're then going to take a look at the new Autodesk outcome-based solutions before closing out with a quick Q&A. So I'm Justin Taylor. I am the AEC Solutions Product Manager at Autodesk. We won't talk about how old I actually am, but I've been around in the industry for quite a while now, as you'll see when we come to the history of CAD.

But in my previous roles, I was being a Principal Sustainability consultant and also Principal Construction consultant at Autodesk. Sustainability is very close to my heart. And I'm both Green Star and BREEAM New Construction certified. And a few people have referred to me as the Swiss army knife when it comes to work. I seem to be the go-to person when they don't know who else to go to.

But that's all good. It's all good. I'm here to have fun and share learning. And yeah, thank you so much for joining me.

So I'm going to start with this slide. Interesting times, I think we can all agree that we definitely live in interesting times, maybe a little bit scary, a little bit exciting, but I think it really sums up everything. But why do I say it, particularly in this session?

Well, I'd like to ask amongst you who has read the Autodesk State of Design and Make report. I highly recommend it. It's an interesting coffee break read. I'm going to highlight a few key takeaways from the report, which are very pertinent to this session today and why I believe we live in interesting times. The first insight we're going to look at is that the industry has a positive outlook. Let's start with the positive.

Leaders feel their companies are far more resilient than they were a few years ago. They're also more digitally mature and making meaningful progress on their AI journeys. I will come back to this shortly.

In 2024, the report highlights that cost control is the top challenge that businesses face, closely followed by upskilling and talent retention. Sustainability has also become a key priority for most of us, which is great news. But leaders and experts say that just having the latest software and implementing it is not enough to drive effective change, not just buying the latest gimmicks, the latest software, the latest technologies, the latest hardware. So what does it take? What do we need to do?

Also, the ability to work with AI has emerged as the top digital skill that organizations are looking for. This is closely followed by digital design skills and software development and programming. Industry professionals say these skills are essential to unlocking the digital transformation. But let's just back up for a couple of minutes and talk about the business challenges highlighted in the first couple of slides.

To understand what is happening with digital transformation, we need to take a short journey through the evolution of CAD. Pre-mid-20th century, it was manual drafting. I don't know how many of you started on drawing boards. I certainly did when I was at college. And it wasn't well.

Early computational tools started in the 1950s. They were very, very high-end, mainframe, incredibly expensive, and not open to the masses. It wasn't really until the 1970s and 80s was the development of computer-aided design systems that we recognized that were affordable. I remember when I was at college learning AutoCAD, alongside learning to manually draft. So that gives my age away a bit, I guess.

I call them the glory days. It was a revolution for me. There was an undo button. And I could copy and paste geometry. It then develops in the 1980s to the 1990s of the really popular CAD systems that we recognize. And they're still around today, AutoCAD, et cetera.

And in the 90s to the 2000s, we had saw advancement in specialization. I don't know if any of you remember the days of AutoCAD Architecture or Architectural Desktop, as it was called. And prior to that, it was AutoCAD with ABC, where we started to develop the very early concept of building information, modeling, and generating 3D objects that understood what they were and how they should behave and relate to each other.

Again, it was a huge step forward. And it took a while to embed. But now that building information modeling is part and parcel of all design in the AEC space these days.

In 2000 to the 2010s, we saw integration of computer-aided design with other technologies, such as GIS. And the 2010s to the 2020s, the modern era and future directions, we saw a rapid expansion of building information, modeling software. And visual programming started to take place. So things like Dynamo came onto the market. And today we'll start with AI and advanced automation, and again, we're going to expand on this in a moment.

The State of Design and Make report also indicates a high percentage, 78%, 79% of companies are confident that they're making the right decisions around AI. They agree that AI will enhance their industry. And they will agree that AI will make the industry more creative. 66% agree AI will be essential across the board in two to three years. I think it needs to be a bit higher, but that's the feedback from the report.

Another way of looking at this is the linear transition. So traditional design, hand drafting, and CAD, 2D CAD, AutoCAD, it was about capturing designs. As we moved into the era of building information modeling, it was about managing and coordinating information. And we saw Revit parametric modeling, Dynamo, visual programming and early option generation. Now we're with AI, and we're looking at design optimization and machine learning with solutions such as Forma.

Back in the days, though, it was thought by many that CAD and BIM would cause job losses. In practice, this wasn't the case. We evolved, and we adapted to new workflows and possibilities. And we produced better designs. These technologies allowed us to spend more time ensuring the designs we were creating were as optimal as possible, the best we could deliver.

Today we see an approximate time reduction of around 50% in completing the same amount of work as back in the 1980s, 50% reduction, which is staggering. However, as I'm sure you're aware, it's not always good news. We look at the glass half full, half empty. But according to my new best friend ChatGPT-- hands up who loves ChatGPT. I imagine there's quite a few of us in the audience.

This rapid development of software came with a price tag. And I'm not talking about the actual cost of purchase, I'm talking about the cost of knowledge and digital skills. Let me explain.

So back in the 1980s, when we moved or transitioned from the drawing board to CAD, it was a one-to-one relationship. But we had to learn a new piece of software. So we trained as a designer or an engineer, whatever. We did our professional qualification. Plus we had to learn how to use a piece of software, and we had to keep it updated.

And as the updates came out, we wanted to keep abreast of all the new functionality that came out. But it was a good price to pay because my drawings now look the same quality as those that were far more skilled than me on drawing boards. However, as we progressed in the 2000s, the average designer was then using two to four pieces of software on a weekly basis. So that's learning two to four pieces of software on top of the professional qualification and doing your job.

In the 2020s, it's 6 to 10 pieces of software that the average designer is using on a weekly basis. That's a lot of software. That's a lot of balls that we're juggling on top of keeping up to date on all the professional qualifications, the new concepts that come out, et cetera.

We will look again at how we at Autodesk and our partners are going to help you overcome this. But before we do that, let's just talk a bit more about the AI world. It's reckoned we have about 5 years until AI has truly changed our world, which incidentally is about how long it would take a company to become digitally mature. Now think about your organizations, your current digital maturity, and the number of designers who need to be upskilled. And hold that thought.

AI can be a great help. It can automate tedious and difficult tasks. And it can to be the creative people you want to be. For example, I doubt many of you trained as a civil engineer with the dream of spending your days checking building codes and regulations. And there's a great quote here from Damir. "AI can automate many tasks and free up creative people."

That's what I just said. But let's take a quick look at just how quick and automated these tasks can be. Here's a simple video, showing scripting in Dynamo used to automate the placement and sizing of counterfort walls and then the placement of the barriers along a carriageway. And as you're watching this, just think how long this would take to do manually.

In fact, it was that quick. The video is almost over. So once the Dynamo script has been written, it's pretty much instantaneous.

The second video shows Dynamo being used to automate the placement of rail sleepers and also overhead power lines. And it takes into account, not only the curve of the track, but the rise and the fall. It's rule-based, so it understands what it needs to do and where it needs to place these objects.

Another great example. Pretty good, I think you'll agree. Now this is all great stuff. But as I mentioned earlier, change is happening faster and faster. Companies have fewer resources who can react to these changes, and there is little time to learn what the changes are or how they affect the business. Our ability to keep up with all of this is reaching the zenith.

I think that slide summarizes how many of us feel trying to keep up to date with everything. But this is why we're developing outcome-based solutions at Autodesk. Outcome-based solutions are a roadmap to support you on your digital journey. They help balance the time and the resources you have effectively provide by providing a logical, structured path forward. They help mitigate the chaos that's going on around us, the noise.

For FY25, these, highlighted in blue, are the current solutions that we are building out or have built out that support the infrastructure, design, and construction space. So you can see we've got site feasibility studies, renovation, adaptive reuse, a hot topic at the moment. LA 2028 games is all about renovation and adaptive reuse of current infrastructure, design collaboration, flood risk simulation embodied and operational carbon management, asset commissioning and handover construction, safety management, and BIM for road and highways, which we're actually going to take a deeper look at in a couple of moments.

But we're also looking at the convergence that's going on out there. So this slide presents a way of looking at our solutions and how we're supporting convergent industries, in this example, integrated factory modeling. It combines solutions from both architecture, engineering and construction, as well as design and manufacture to present a holistic approach to a particular design requirement.

The solutions themselves comprise of four sections, firstly, a positioning deck. This allows us to talk about the story, as it were, allows us to position the overall solution and get across the problems so that we have a baseline understanding and agreement, and also talks about the value that we can offer in terms of this specific solution. We then have a technology landscape, and this is divided in between a list of core products and an expanded technology landscape which can add additional value.

We then look at stages and workflows, where we have the high level stages and supporting workflows with supporting videos, showing the Autodesk software doing that particular stage. And then a more granular look at the individual steps in a workflow to help us plan and implement training and implementation programs with you. And then finally, there's a planning and execution section. We're creating a live document that lives with you. So it's a training tool, It's a upskilling tool, it's a planning tool, it's a project management tool, but let's take a look at BIM for Roads and Highways in a bit more detail.

All of our solution decks start with a navigation slide, which are dynamically linked to make life easy. If we click on the positioning deck, as I said, this talks about the solution. It talks about the problem that we have. And in the case of designing roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels, it is a difficult environment, balancing safety, managing traffic flow, minimizing environmental impact, staying in budget. It's a tough challenge. And that's where the Autodesk solution, in this case, BIM for Roads and Highways, comes into play. It enhances the efficiency, improves collaboration and supports better decision making throughout the entire life cycle of the road and highway design project.

We understand the challenges in the industry, efficiency, collaboration, decision making, lack of standardized practices. Software interoperability and data management is a problem, disconnected technologies and data. So we want to build up a relationship, build a trust partnership with you.

We look at research. And we might all know what's happening in our industry, but it's always good to look at what research bodies like. In this case, the Highway Transport, Health and Social Equity report states, the future of highway design relies on data to create safer, more efficient, sustainable transport networks. Highways are evolving to prioritize equity, safety, accessibility, comfort for all users. Data from smart infrastructure and connected vehicles.

And again, the AI is coming in here. We know it's happening. So how do we address this? How do we help you address this in the design of roads and highways?

Well, the solution itself is an advanced, integrated approach that utilizes detailed 3D models to enhance the planning, design and construction. It also includes the same approach to bridges and tunnel designs, as well as other structural elements which support the road networks. It manages design and project complexity, helps reduce errors and rework, and reduces overall design time.

Why does this matter? Well, we know you're looking for a competitive advantage. You want to expand services maybe, build better relationships with your clients. You will improve efficiency and scalability. You want to grow your business. And you want to be market leaders as well.

You want to use data-driven insights. We talk about how much data is being created. Being able to access that data, utilize it, review it and provide predictive assessments is the key to our future.

All of our decks talk about sustainability as well. And we weave this as a message through all of our decks and all of the products that we do. So the ability as you're designing a road and highway bridge and a tunnel to understand things like the embodied carbon, the operational carbon, all of this, we build this into the solution decks as well.

Depending on the particular solution, we also understand there are different project delivery models around the world. With roads and highways, we talk about Design-Bid-Build, Design-Build, Job Order Contracting, Turnkey. There's a whole list of them. In this session, we're just going to focus on one, which is the Design-Bid-Build.

We understand the process of Design-Bid-Build, the advantages of why you go down this route. But we also understand the issues that it can bring, the regional variations that can add complexity to the top of it. So the solution is built in a way that we build out these project delivery milestones or stages, as we call them. So we're starting with preliminary design, moving into schematics, into design development, before going into construction documentations. And that is where the solution ends and hands over to the bid stage, and then see the project gets built.

So the typical stages for Design-Bid-Build, preliminary design, schematic design development, and construction documents. And we're going to look at those in the stages and workflow section in a moment in more depth. I'm going to flip through the Design-Build so that we can save some time. And moving on through the positioning deck, looking at the key components, we understand need to do spatial awareness, environmental analysis, geospatial, data integration, watershed analysis, stormwater management, traffic simulation. All of these things go into the design aspect of roads and highways.

We believe we can connect your data. We believe we can connect your teams, and we can connect your workflows. And that is on our trusted platform, the Design & Make platform. The positioning deck also includes key statements from customers that we've worked with. So you can see here a great example where 20% is saved in the project design time by implementing these solutions. We have additional case studies for you to look at and share within your organization and more in-depth examples.

But let's look at the technology landscape. So we've gone through the positioning deck. And you're now saying, well, we're in a meeting, and it's a case of OK, so what software are we actually talking about, what product? It's not about a product. It's about a portfolio.

And in this case, the core products I listed out, docs for your common data environment InfraWorks aggregate data and evaluate and iterate design options, Civil 3D for comprehensive detailed design, Revit for infrastructure from concept to construction documentation with parametric accuracy, Inventor, designer bridges and tunnels through 3D modeling and simulation analysis tools, Max for visualization and InfoDrainage to design, analyze, and create sustainable cost effective drainage systems. This is what we believe is the core requirement for designing roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels. However, we've also listed and expanded technology gap, a technology landscape, where we can include tools such as Autodesk Workshop XR for doing virtual reality walkthroughs, the ability to bring in LiDAR data or drone photogrammetry through Autodesk Recap.

The examples I showed earlier with the visual programming in Dynamo, again, these can be added in. And they all help to add value overall. Let's look at the stages and workflows now.

In the positioning deck, there were little colored bullets that highlighted the key stages throughout the project. These are now referenced in the first part of the stages and workflows deck. Here, we list out the stage. And we list out the core workflows that go to support that particular stage.

So in conceptual design, we talk about feasibility studies, understanding the existing ground data, early conceptual structures, traffic analysis, the current traffic analysis and the predicted traffic analysis. We look at the watershed, conceptual drainage, et cetera. Stage 2, schematic design basic systems layout, further development of structures, initial cost estimates. Stage 3, design development, detailed specifications are finalized. We detail the structures, constructability reviews.

Each of these slides is also supported by a short video, which showcases the Autodesk software doing just that stage. Now these decks, as I said, are designed to be used in presentations and workshops with you. You can use these decks and share them within your organization to spread the knowledge and awareness, even to upskill new users in the current Autodesk technology and the capabilities.

Just going to play this video, and I'm going to drag the timer across so that we don't spend too much time watching this one. But here, you can see Revit being used to develop the bridge design. Information is then put into simple 3D. Carriageway has been built out. As I said, each of these high level stages has a supporting video that goes along with it.

The second part of the stages and workflows is where our consultants or our partners' consultants will sit with your teams, your team leads, your BIM managers, your IT, and they will go through the stages. And they will look at the actual software and the key steps to deliver on a workflow. This allows us and yourselves to develop a training and implementation program and understand your current maturity and what needs to be done.

So here, you can see the same stages are listed. But we now have hyperlinks through to the workflows. So if I click on one of these, Stage 1 conceptual design, existing ground and contextual data, here we see the use of Revit, InfraWorks, and Civil 3D and the steps that are taken to generate the design concepts. And as I flip through the slides, you can see each one of these is built out. And as I said, list the software and the key steps to deliver on that core task.

You'll also notice that we link to other solutions. So earlier on, I showed you the solutions that we're building out for FY25. We talk about The watershed analysis in roads and highways design. It's high level, but we have a fully built out deck, which goes into a lot of detail around the flood risk analysis in its entirety. So these decks interlink with each other to provide an overall supporting collection as it were, to give you the capabilities to design what you need to design. Just split through a couple of those.

The final part of the deck is the planning and execution. And we thought long and hard about this. In the past, we've had many documents when we've engaged with customers. And managing these becomes an additional weight, as it were. So what we've done now is we've combined all of this information into a single deck. So it's a live working document that we can build with our teams, with our partners and with our customers.

So the planning and execution section, that's the things like the initiative summary. We list out sponsors, the solutions, the outcomes we're looking for. The metrics, how are we going to measure success? How are we going to measure the value that this is delivering?

What risks are there? We look at a broader program scope. Maybe we're looking at BIM for Roads and Highways at the moment, but maybe you also want to look at the site feasibility studies, the embodied carbon, the operation, the renovation and adaptive reuse. Our account teams and our partners can help you build out a 1, 2, 3-year development plan to improve your digital maturity.

We then have the initiative timelines where we can break down the individual stages. Again, they're all color coded. We can break down the individual stages by week, by month, and deliver on the training programs or the consultancy. The stakeholder governance, the risk register, and the delivery milestones.

So that's my presentation finished. I sincerely hope you found it of interest. If you'd like to find out more about our outcome-based solutions, you can either reach out to your account team at Autodesk or to your Autodesk channel partner.

I really hope you found this insightful, informative, interesting, and I really hope you want to reach out and investigate a joint journey with us with these solutions. And with that said, I thank you very much for your time. I will close out my presentation. Thank you.