An Autodesk Enterprise customer since 2013, Atkins, a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group, is a frequent user of Autodesk technologies, including Autodesk, AutoCAD, BIM tools and a mix of 2D/3D solutions.
But as the company seeks to raise its profile in Africa’s competitive design and construction market, Atkins has initiated a company-wide Digital Transformation to elevate the ‘Atkins experience’ for clients. Working closely with Autodesk, Atkins implemented cloud-based Autodesk BIM 360 Team on two of its key projects in East Africa – successfully providing the customers with simple, mobile access to up-to-date project and design information.
Customer background and goals
Atkins is one of the world’s most respected design, engineering, and project management consultancies. Together with SNC-Lavalin – a fully integrated, global professional services and project management company – Atkins helps clients plan, design and enable major capital projects, and provides expert consultancy covering the full project lifecycle. Its specialised services can be contracted from niche tasks to mega-projects.
As part of its overall digital strategy, SNC-Lavalin is focused on driving a company-wide, Digital Transformation, with the goal of realising sustainable and profitable growth through technical and delivery excellence. Additionally, the company seeks to maintain its leading status in a competitive, ever-changing industry.
Challenge
Atkins’ regional team – based in Kenya and Tanzania – is focused on developing the ‘Atkins experience’ for its clients where access to project information is a key feature, while differentiating itself from other companies in a highly commoditised market. Atkins’ approach has been to evaluate its existing ways of working; how it plans and designs; and how to maximise the use of that valuable data it already produces, rather than recreating it.
In growing its regional presence in East Africa, Atkins won two significant projects, some of the company’s largest in East Africa. These included the development of mixed-use twin towers in central Nairobi – a signature project for Atkins – and an extensive master plan incorporating a 10,000-unit, affordable housing complex. In taking on these key engagements, particularly the twin towers, Atkins wanted to push the boundary of its client relationships by utilising all available technology.
“We really wanted to engage with the clients to build a relationship,” said Bisrat Solomon Degefa, Atkins’ Head of Digital Engineering for East Africa.
“We wanted to get their input and give them a whole new experience than what they would expect from a designer.”
That meant providing clients with up-to-date design data in the form of rich 3D models – and making it all available through an easy-to-use platform they could access wherever and whenever, something that has not been available to them today without purchasing software applications and training.
The enablement of client access to project information was a priority, but Atkins needed to maximise the efficiency of the teams delivering the projects. Doing so would require facilitating team-wide communication and access to design information across geographically diverse offices in East Africa, the Middle East, India and the United Kingdom. To do so effectively, said Degefa, ‘we needed a cloud-based information-sharing system.”
Solution
From the beginning, Degefa and his team looked at all the various ways to provide simple digital access to both Atkins clients and its multi-regional project teams, but eventually selected BIM 360 Team for its many benefits. The tool allowed the design team to incorporate BIM 360 Team into its existing workflow by replacing the use of local file storage as the file-sharing method for coordinating with one another. Making the transition even smoother, BIM 360 Team was an easy ‘plug-and-play’ solution that didn’t require any heavy installations or special software, ultimately enabling Atkins and the client easy access to project design information.
Success
Since implementing the BIM 360 Team platform and leveraging the power of the cloud on the two Africa-based projects, Atkins is well on its way to defining and optimising the Atkins experience for its key clients there – enabling access, collaboration, data re-use, and accuracy and essentially reducing the time needed to develop compliant and coordinated designs. The client is now able to hold ‘live reviews’ during which multiple stakeholders, including the wider project team, can review the same rich information in real time from any location or type of device (i.e. smartphone, tablet and laptop). In fact, a productive model review session can now be done live in as little as five minutes.
Since adopting BIM 360 Team, Atkins can easily communicate 3D info to clients and give them timely access to design progress information, which is a real value-add. With the capability the platform provides – which Degefa called a ‘real eye-opener’ – Atkins can also add mobility to its list of service offerings. This both empowers its clients and gives Atkins a competitive edge in a region where it strives to make an impact.
“We’re really keen on going straight for ‘what’s now, what’s happening’ – and that includes best practice technology and processes,” he said.
“More importantly, we’re now in a really good position to take a leading role and bring new ways of working to the local region and market.”
With proven success on these two current projects, Atkins plans to adopt the BIM 360 Team platform much more widely.
“Our goal is to make all of our projects available in that format, in that manner,” said Degefa.
“The realisation that we could do it was a start, now we’re trying to make it the standard.”
By enriching BIM with mobility, the Autodesk solution allows Atkins to enhance its clients’ experience and become a more digital lead company.
