2 Companies and a Wastewater Facility

ROBERT ECKDAHL: Normally, at any type of conference, when you do a presentation, it's always really customary to talk about what class you're in, to make sure that if somebody got in the wrong room that they could have an opportunity to escape. But if you saw wastewater in the course title and said, this is a class for me, I have a feeling you already know you're in the right class.

Really quick, I guess, I'd like to introduce myself first. I'm Robert Eckdahl. I'm a BIM lead at Black & Veatch in the water division there-- obviously, water.

JIM GREAVE: My name is Jim Greave. I'm a Production Services Manager and a BIM specialist at HDR.

ROBERT ECKDAHL: So what we're going to talk today about is, we're going to give you an introduction to a project that we've been working on for about a year and a half now in the Kansas City area. We're going to talk a little bit about the tradition that both Black & Veatch and HDR have, just to kind of understand a little bit about where our systems and tool sets kind of come from and the background of how it would historically work. So then we can talk about the opportunities that we found on the project working with the BIM 360 Team and the collaboration for Revit tools.

Then we'll also spend a little bit of time looking forward about the things that maybe we didn't have the opportunity to take advantage of on this particular project, but that we certainly would look at pretty closely going forward.

So why are we here? Oops. My slides are not working. Sorry. I'm having to split between my slide show on that one and this, because apparently my computer couldn't do a duplicate view.

So these are the learning objectives from the class. We're going to talk about the substantial reduction in effort to coordinate large projects using C4R. We're going to talk about the processes that pair with C4R to enhance your efficiency. We're going to talk about the geographically disparate teams, and how we can work well in a common environment, and how to interpret some of those perceived or actual challenges related to C4R in high-trust collaboration environments.

So before we get started talking about the project, one last thing I'd like to go through here. We looked at the registration for the classes to try to figure out who our target audience was with the session. So what you'll see here is that about 75% of the group here-- and this is all based off of a few days ago-- but 75% of the group here represents some sort of engineering consultant. I would say another 15% represents what I would call owners. They're municipal people, folks in the water business from a client side. And then there's about another 10% that represents the construction industry.

So I realize it's morning. And I realize that you guys have already had a nice walk from your hotel room all the way down to this area. But if we could, I'd like to do a little experiment with everybody. So if you guys would all please stand up.

So first, if you're using Revit in your workflow, stay standing. If you're not using Revit today, go ahead sit down. If you're using a document management system to manage your Revit content, something that's older than-- a technology that predates five years ago-- go ahead and sit down. That's pretty good, actually. If you're using worksets in your Revit models, stay standing. Everybody else can sit down. [CHUCKLES]

Oh. You were supposed to stretch while you're standing up, too. Sorry. No cramping in the room.

So the other thing that we're here for is disruption. One of my colleagues at Black & Veatch, he always talks about how he's a positive disruptor. And I guess I've kind of taken that hat a little bit in my daily work as well. So what I would like to do is kind of kick old concepts to the curb in favor of new ways to do-- I guess, going back to yesterday's keynote-- to do more, better, with less.

So a little bit about Black & Veatch first. We are a company of over 11,000 professionals. We have 110 offices on six continents and 7,000 active projects worldwide. So obviously, with big companies come a lot of processes, a lot of procedures, and things to do certain ways to make sure that we're minimizing our risk, and all those other-- I'm going to say the word red tape.

I know it's not that, but it's those things that keep us doing our jobs the right way. They're very important. But certainly, when it comes to large projects, especially when you have equally large teaming partners, and they have their own set of processes, procedures, and those things that keep them doing their things the way that they normally want to do them, trying to mesh the two together is somewhat challenging sometimes. And I'm sure that most of you guys are probably familiar with that.

So I'll let Jim talk about HDR a minute.

JIM GREAVE: HDR was founded in 1917. It's based out of Omaha, Nebraska. We also have over 10,000 employees currently working for us, 225 locations worldwide. We've delivered projects in all 50 states, and in more than 60 countries around the world. Thank you.

ROBERT ECKDAHL: So a little bit about this project, the Tomahawk Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility. It's an older facility-- by some standards, I guess. There's certainly a lot older out there. But it was originally built in 1955. Their current capacity is about 7 MGDs.

The interesting piece of this is that they can only treat about 40% of the water that comes onto the site. The remaining 60% of the inflow is diverted around the plant and goes into Kansas City, Missouri's treatment system for them to process it. So basically, one of their biggest expenses is paying somebody else to do their job.

So the facility is owned by Johnson County Wastewater. This is down in Leawood, Kansas. It's a suburb of Kansas City, right there by the state line. So they are close to Kansas City.

I've got a little video here. You can see the existing facility, and then the expansion footprint. It's substantially increasing the size and capacity of the plant. We're going from that 7 MGD to 19 MGD in a dry weather and 192 MGD using some wet weather technologies. So definitely a big, big change to the site coming here.

I guess a few other little things about the project-- as I mentioned, we started a detailed design about 18 months ago. We're currently getting ready for our 90% design review. And that will be starting in construction in the spring. So certainly moving along here.

So again, the reasons for doing the expansion, of course, there's increased requirements from the environmental side of the project. The client was going to have to do something with the plant, because they weren't going to be meeting regulations. And then of course, the cost of sending their wastewater on to Kansas City and some of the challenges that Kansas City has, I know that the prices and the rates were going to increase. And when you look at that over the period, certainly they recognized the opportunity that if they could handle all of their wastewater locally, that they would be able to save money in the long run.

So a little bit about our traditional approaches and traditional challenges. Kind of going back to that whole dynamic of when you have a teaming partner, such as between Black & Veatch and HDR. As we've kind of already stated, we're very similar companies. We're similar in size. We both started over 100 years ago. There's a lot of projects that we've worked on together over the years. So this isn't the first time that we've had to work together.

We use a lot of the same tools and procedures. So there is a lot of parity there. And so, with this particular project, the project team decided to split up the scope of work for the facility, vertically is what we call it. But basically, instead of Black & Veatch providing structural, process mechanical, and architectural services, and having HDR do the others, we said, OK, well, we're going to do these facilities, and you guys can do these facilities.

And so basically, within a given structure, Black & Veatch is doing their structures, HDR is doing theirs. So HDR is working on the site. They're doing the head works, the influent pump station, primary clarifiers, administration building, disinfection, tertiary pump station, the peak flow pump station. So they're really handling a lot of liquid process pumps pumping, as well as, like I said, the administration.

They're also-- they are taking lead on the architectural side of the project. There's other disciplines that we're taking lead, like on the process mechanical. So there is a little bit of direction so that it's not just-- one of the challenges with working together is making sure that we're doing things consistently. I guess I'll get to that in a minute.

But this vertical split, on the outside, makes it sound like it's really easy, right? We're not having to work in each other's files. Because they've got their facilities, we have our facilities. But the reality of it is, is that it actually makes it a little bit more difficult. Because we have to make sure that we're using the same doors, and the same content, and the same pieces as they are. So the vertical split is certainly interesting.

Both of us have been using Revit for a number of years as a primary authoring tool. So that really wasn't a challenge for us. In fact, it's kind of nice when you walk in your meeting to kick off the project and say, OK, how are we going to do this together, and you're like, all right, we're both on board with Revit, and that's a good starting point. So we got the check in the box for that.

We both have quite extensive experience using what I'm going to call legacy document management systems. So with this slide, the point is, is that there's all these little nuances between every single solution that's out there. And originally, I thought about putting names of different document management solutions on here. But the reality is, is that if I missed one, somebody would have raised their hand and said, well, what about that one?

So I thought that maybe this was a better thing. Because again, we're talking about how are we managing and controlling the data, and how are we exchanging that data. To some extent, when I'm working, I want to work in the environment that I'm used to. I want to work in the folder structure that I'm used to.

And frankly, I'm sure that the folks at HDR feel exactly the same way. They're familiar with what they're working in. And we all kind of want to do our own thing. And so then, even with those legacy document management solutions, there's still that, like, well, we can work in our file, and you can work in your file. And then we'll transfer them over to here, and then we'll do that back.

And that's not document management. And that's certainly not collaboration. That's a scheduled-- all that is, is a headache for a BIM coordinator or a model manager to have to go through and make those transactions on a regular basis. And let's face it, that's-- well, let's get to that in a minute. Oops.

So I already mentioned the consistency piece, especially where we have drawings that we're doing for one structure, structural mechanical process, HVAC, plumbing, architectural, and then they're doing the exact same thing on their structures. And in an uncollaborative way, the way that most projects I've seen in the past work, the two or three days before the submittal, all of a sudden you see PDFs and you're like, what? They don't look the same.

Trying to make sure that you have consistently appearing drawings, to make sure that information is captured. And let's face it, the drawings are not the most important piece of the elements that we're doing anymore. It's all the metadata that's in there behind the files. So if your Revit parameters are different, you're not going to have-- it's certainly not going to give the client any confidence that you have a collaborated, cohesive project, if some parameter has a different parameter name. So managing the processes, and the templates, and the content, and all that stuff, those are all key challenges using legacy solutions.

Producing deliverables is equally challenging, constantly having to export out Navisworks files when you actually do go to print, or publishing PDFs and making sure that there's a place where you can find those, and managing that. In fact, even just working with bulk uploads sometimes can be rather difficult, even if it's just a simple PDF.

A little bit more on templates and content. It's certainly so important to work with the same elements so that we're all using the same parameters and getting the same results.

So the opportunities for disruption here. I'm going to back up here a second. So before we started this job, before we started the detailed design phase, we did go through a project definition phase. We did use the legacy workflows to develop some introductory Revit models to kind help understand what the scope of the project was actually going to be. So this is before we had a contract to do the detailed design.

The challenges are obvious, right? So when we started doing the detailed design phase, we sat down and we looked at it, and we said, OK, we've been looking at this collaboration for Revit, the BIM 360 Team solutions. This would be a good pilot project. Worst case scenario, if it doesn't work, we can just take it back and do it the way we have been doing it. There wasn't a whole lot of risk if we got started and realized that it wasn't going to work out for us.

So some of the technologies we started with here, we've got ReCap Pro showing here. Most of the facility you saw is getting completely demolished and replaced. What we do have is the influent pump station, and then the existing digester complex, are going to be substantially renovated and reused. In this case, these digester buildings have been mothballed for 10 years. They're not in use.

For those of you that really understand the water/wastewater stuff, you shouldn't have water on top of your roofs, your floating roofs of the digester. But they've got a bunch of water on it just to make sure that, that seal isn't broke so that the air doesn't get out. So the only thing that we're reusing, other than the structure itself in this, is some of the floor drains and roof drifts. Otherwise, everything else is going to-- I mean, all the electrical, all the plumbing, everything is getting all just gutted and stripped out and repurposed.

So using ReCap, I realize this isn't quite as direct with BIM 360 Team and C4R, but I really love this slide, because it shows how you can take the scan data from ReCap, use it as a basis to model that existing structure, and then when you isolate it out, you have a good footprint. So in this case, where we're gutting almost everything, the structure was really our key piece that we wanted to be able to capture for our drawings going forward. And I think this slide really conveys that really well.

So here's a view inside that building. It's kind of hard to see, but it's kind of dirty in there, a little nasty. But the key to this, though, is that-- so we go out and we collect the data. We use it in Revit. But publishing it to ReCap 360 is where there's a tremendous amount of advantage for our design team that may not be able to have the accessibility to that large data set of a point cloud.

So we publish the content to ReCap 360 and provide access to that to the design team. And everybody is really happy using that stuff. And I'm going to come back to that a little bit more and talk about the ReCap 360 stuff.

BIM 360 Team, the convergence of the project data. This is actually a slide, or a section view, through the solids building that we're going to be building there. Having all of the information, all these working files together, where it's accessible and people can actually use, the large model viewer is tremendous.

Just a second here.

So as we're working with BIM 360 Team-- and I mentioned some of those attributes, let's call them, of legacy document management solutions-- the way I look at BIM 360 Team with C4R is like taking the shortcut. It's keeping things simple.

I must have clicked off my--

So instead of having to go through some other solution, or some other add-in, when I want to work in it, I go a File Open. I mean, that's keeping things simple. That's removing all those other things. Everybody working in Revit on this project is accessing those things, all those files for the project, doing the same File Open command. And it doesn't matter where they're located. It doesn't matter which team they're on, which side of the project scope they're working with. It's the same way.

Plus, we can use worksets. So to be completely truthful, I guess it took me a couple of days to see the true value of worksets. Because we were so ingrained in old processes, where we would break up the files by discipline. And so when I had to work on a file, basically I was using the file structure, how our models were separated into multiple files, as a workset.

So when we started using the BIM 360 Team and putting things on worksets, it's kind of like, oh yeah, you know. And it's funny, because we were sitting in the speaker ready room yesterday and I said, oh, we should probably talk about worksets. And the guy in front of us turns around. He's like, you can't do a presentation without talking about worksets.

So I think that, for those of you who sat down earlier because you said you weren't looking at, or you weren't using, worksets, I guess I would ask the question, is it because the solutions you're using to manage Revit prohibit that use, or devalue the use of it. Or maybe you should take another look at it, because they're pretty powerful.

So yay. Forgot that side was in there.

So I mentioned, going back to ReCap, going back to the 360 panoramics, the renderings and things that you can do with Revit there, as well as ReCap 360, the large model view access, to BIM 360 Team, where you're able to view your Revit projects, they're all in different locations. So the slide is "where in the cloud," because trying to find them, for somebody who's not really that fluent-- I mean for a BIM coordinator, you know exactly where to go, and you can just jump right to it. But for the hundreds of other people working on the project, how are they supposed to find where their content, or that piece of it?

So what we did is we created a SharePoint site that basically has some thumbnails on it that you can click on and go to it. We'll take the time here to show you some of that, if I can get this to jump across. This is where it's really fun not being able to see this on my screen. In fact, I'm just going to apologize for turning around here.

So if I wanted to see the models and drawings, I just click on the link. I can see all of our various facilities for the project. Click on the solids building. It's a pretty big model. There's a lot of detail in this. We didn't talk a whole lot about level of detail, but you guys all know how that can be challenging in any.

So old processes would have meant that we were constantly publishing Navisworks files out of Revit. And then somebody was having to make sure that they were getting updated on the NWF file on the side of the Navisworks content. And then other people were having to find that file in that document management solution. And then it's like, on and on and on.

And it's like, here, look, there's a link. You can click on it. You can open the file. And as long as the BIM coordinator's doing his job and publishing it from C4R to BIM 360 Team, it's current. And instead of just having access to the model, we have access to all of the hundreds of sheets that are related to this model.

I picked a very boring sheet. Well, maybe it will load faster.

But having that ability to just go back and look at this stuff time and time again-- our legacy workflows say that we need to go to PDF all the time. Because that's how the engineers and other people are consuming the information, is that they're looking at Bluebeam and trying to do scaled dimensions off of that. And it's kind of like, why? We have access to this tool. Do we really need to have updated PDFs on a daily basis if we can just look at a live view of the model?

So some of the other things. I've got here the laser scan data I mentioned. We've got it right here. Again, even though it's using a different portion of the 360 site, anybody can come out here to the model and click on it. So these are just using the shared links that are available through here. I've picked probably the worst possible scan location to show you. But anybody can go up here and look at the data set.

They can do their dimensions. And it saves a tremendous amount of effort trying to go back to the site. Even though we're kind of lucky on this case, the project's only a couple of miles from our office, that's usually not the case. And so to make another trip out to the field to collect a bit of information can be rather time-consuming and costly.

We have a button here for 360 panos, where we've captured those already, and we can share those to the project team. This one is actually using Power BI. And I've already got it open here as a dashboard for quantity. So I can look at how much concrete we have in the slabs, and see it by facility and how that's changing dynamically. Again, the SharePoint portal allows us to capture a variety of sources of cloud data to able to give that access to anybody on the project team.

Can't quite see where the button is. That wasn't it.

So one of the other interesting opportunities to this is the Autodesk Shared Reference Point Utility. I guess I should have asked for a raise of hands. Who's using C4R now? A few people.

So one of the things that came up as we first got started with using C4R with this project was that we used to use the Publish Shared Coordinates to force the coordinates back into all of our models. That doesn't work with C4R. You can acquire coordinates from another model, but you can't push it. So we started using the Shared Reference Point Utility to manage the location of all these structures on the site.

I think I may have forgotten to mention that there's 34, I think, 34 different structures on this one site. So in a campus environment like that, it makes it a lot more challenging to locate all those things.

But what I really like about this tool is that it puts the location of the buildings, how the site is actually orientated, back into the hands of the civil design team, to tell me where that building exists rather than me trying to take it and import the site plan, and hopefully the outline of the building matches the outline of the structure. I mean, you guys ever have that happen, where you're like, [SIGHS] is this supposed to be that side or that side? How do you align it into the square that's the wrong size? This really puts that back into the hand.

So I didn't go through a lot of documentation about how we did this. But we export a plan view that has a symbol on it. So when we export that, the civil guy imports the 2D plan view into the site plan, locates it, uses the shared point, creates an XML. And that allows-- from Revit, you can import-- using this tool, you can import that XML as a known point. And then you set that is the current site. And boom, you're done.

If the site designer moves a building, he updates the XML. It's not exactly blowing concepts here, right? It's very simple. But it's also very, very accurate. In fact, I'm a bit astounded at how few times we've had to make changes to it through the duration of the project to this point. Because it seemed like usually we'd be moving these buildings around on the site, nudging them.

We're not we're not talking about moving them across the site very much. It's usually, OK, we needed to move it three feet to the left. And you're kind of like, oh, come on. And using traditional practices, that would have been a lot of more cumbersome work to unload or redefine the shared reference point. And it's just like, this is really slick and easy.

So the biggest key to this, and a why, if you look at the forums, I think a lot of people aren't aware of it, is because it's kind of hidden. To get this Shared Reference Point Utility, you actually have to go to the Civil 3D Productivity Pack. So the Revit-- there's two installs. There's a Civil 3D install side of it, and then there's the Revit install side of it. Both of them are under Civil 3D, not Revit. So that is a big, big key to being able to find those.

One of the other things that we've introduced with this project is Imaginit's Clarity product. Anybody familiar with it? The one guy from Black & Veatch in the back. So everybody raise your hands again if you are doing C4R.

So all of those tasks and processes that get really mundane, Clarity does a pretty good job of being able to export NWCs, FBXs. Really, I mean, all those mundane tasks that a BIM coordinator would have to go through. Printing PDFs-- I mean, I'd like to say that we were at a point where we could just rely on the large model viewer to show sheets. But the reality of it is, is that we're not there yet. And certainly, a client is not going to take a deliverable that way. So we're going to have to still get to the PDFs.

And so with Clarity and the task-based tool set that's there, it can handle a lot of those things that just-- and you can set up schedules, and just have it run when you want it to. You can have it triggered where you can do it on demand. And I love to be able to say that I have not printed a PDF from Revit for this project in at least a year.

And then the other piece of that, too, is exporting those DWGs just for the sit team. So I don't want to have to go through and do that manually myself. So this tool can export those views out. We actually, on this project, we're exporting out a 2D view that allows the site team to locate the building. And then we're exporting out a 3D view so that they can see where all the pipes and everything else that's connecting, and make sure that everything's lining up well.

The other piece of it, and this is actually, probably the biggest component of it that allowed us to make BIM 360 Team and C4R our working environment for Revit-- and that's that we're able to use Clarity to archive our Revit files back to our legacy document management solution. I mentioned earlier that we all have these processes and procedures that are all there, designed to keep us from harming ourselves. They're risk management tools.

Well, our risk management tool says that we need to store our content in that document management solution. So by the essence of Clarity, we're able to make C4R our working file. And then, at the end of the day, it will archive it back into the document management solution. So we're not violating our own standards and procedures. We're still able to have that instance.

And it also works well with versioning and things. We can also do some other things to be able to make sure that we're keeping a historical record set that's easy to access, as well. So Clarity has been, and certainly is, a key contributor to the success of this project.

So some of the continuous improvement items that we have here-- Unifi. So I mentioned, like at least three times already, that content, and sharing that content, is so critical to being able to have that consistency in the drawings. At the start of the project, unfortunately, we didn't have access to it.

So guess what we had to do. We had to take all of our content and bundle it up-- it took three separate zip files-- and then load it up and our document management system so they can export it back down and put it in their solution. And hey, we're using the same content now. But that's a lot of extra work.

So since then, we've incorporated Unifi. And if we were to start this project over again now, I can guarantee you we'd be sharing that content. We would always have the same catalog, that single instance of that family that we would want to use. And I'm not going to start going on a sales pitch for those guys, but we would have done it.

The next piece is the Autodesk Plant 3D P&ID Cloud Collaboration tool. Unfortunately, a year and a half ago, it wasn't available. Now it is. Definitely would have been in there.

And then kind of going inside with that, the P&ID Modeler for Revit, we think that there's no equal opportunity there to save us time from having to constantly change the tag numbers. I'm sure that you guys don't have that kind of issue, where it seems like every time you get the tagging system set, they say, oh, no, no, we need to reverse-- the pumps need to be tagged the other way. And you need to go back through and do that. Well, certainly, things like that will provide great efficiency for us going forward.

So some of the value here. I really wanted to, when we first pitched this class as an option here-- which by the way, I mean, I'm thinking, wastewater, how many people are we really going to get in a class about a wastewater plant? And so I'm really, really excited about this group. I wanted to come up with some sort of really cool ROI numbers and stuff. And frankly, I'm not sure how to do that, really. But I do have some ways where I can show some of the value that we've gotten here.

What you see here is a map. This is locations that we've had project team members working on this project. So really, places all over the world here. And I have not heard of a single person that has had a different performance expectation throughout the project.

Other solutions, you find out that the folks across the world are having some sort of latency issue or file corruption related to it, and things like that. But with C4R, everybody, no matter where you're located, is getting the same service, the same level of standard there. And that's tremendous.

Value engineering happens, right? So this project went through a huge value engineering stage here. And even though we started off the project with the expectation that I would have my models, Jim would have his models, even though it was the same project, we would kind of work in our own environment a little bit. But then value engineering comes along and says, you know what, if we make that common wall of construction between the disinfection basin and this filter basin, we're going to save like $13 million or something.

And so then all of a sudden, what was two separate facilities became one. And we're like, what's up? We're going have to work together now. You know what I mean? It's like, we're going to have your team in the same file as our team at the same time. And at first, it's kind of like, well, let's see how this goes. But it's actually been-- we've had a few hiccups. I'm not going to say that it's been completely issue-free. But it's been pretty dang good.

I mean, we've got-- I bet we've got at least 10 to 15 different people on our side working on the filter complex on the front. They've probably had similar numbers on their side working on the disinfection basin. And there's actually a [? pew ?] pump station up on the top there. But we've had a lot of different people from a lot of different trades, a lot of different disciplines, working on this one model file. And it's gone well. So I think that's a huge amount of value in itself.

This is my favorite one as a BIM coordinator. We kind of went through-- this is just representative of the BV side of the scope here. But with the files that we have, our legacy system, we counted out what we would have normally broken those files apart-- 72 different Revit files. Instead we have 14.

So for me to have to do any type of updates to the documents, or the Revit Project Standards, or to any type of the view templates, or any of that stuff, for printing, or any-- I haven't had to print, because I got Clarity. But any of those tasks that you have to go through and open up every single file and run something on it, I have a lot fewer because of C4R.

So I mean, like I said, I would love to have a great number of hours, like, we saved 32% of our-- I just, I don't have those numbers to give to you. But certainly, there are ways where we can see the value produced by it.

The other thing is user feedback. We started working with this project in C4R. And all of a sudden, everybody else wanted to use their project in C4R. The users were starting to use it. And they're like, this works really well. It wasn't like something that, three days into it, they saw the value in it, or they saw the benefits of it. It was instantaneous, that day one they were like, why aren't all of our projects this way? So all of our new projects are this way. Let's make that clear.

So I want to go back to this, just because one of the things that is always key to me as a user is that, if I'm wanting to use the tool, that makes my day, that makes my life, so much better than if it's something that-- it's like a mild irritation. You kind of just scratch at it. You know, nobody likes to work with that mild irritation if there's some quirkiness of a solution.

It's not going to stop your day, but it just, it makes you do this, or it makes you do that. Or it's just like, you start trying to develop the work-arounds to make it more efficient for you. And you know, well, if I click these three ways, this way, and then do that.

And you get kind of used to working that way, but why do we do that? Why don't we just try to-- like I said with the File Open, let's keep it simple. Let's just, File Open. It's synchronize, close. You know what I mean? These are all very simple things, not with a bunch of extra manipulative ways of trying to geek out the system and make it work the way you want it to work, kind of thing.

So again, kind of going back to some of the things that we've talked about here-- we did want to leave a bit of time here for some question and answer. So does anybody have-- I say question and answer. What I'm really hoping is for some conversation. And we've already got two hands up. I am going to have you speak into the microphone, because the class is being recorded.

AUDIENCE: Knowing what you know now, is there any case where you would use separate models for disciplines at any time?

ROBERT ECKDAHL: I would like to say no. In theory, I think we find that there's better collaboration in the one model. A really good example that comes to mind is our pipe penetrations in the walls. So we have a wall pipe that has a void that cuts out the wall, makes a hole there. So then, in our historical legacy workflow, the structural team would have gone in and edited the wall profile, or added a round void, a cylinder void or something, to represent that hole.

If we were to separate those out, then we wouldn't have that ability for the mechanical process wall pipe to cut the hole dynamically. So every time it moves-- you know what I'm getting at. Somebody is chasing the other person. And it's not quite as clean that way.

So thinking of that, I'd like to say no. But I've also learned not to never say no entirely either. There might be some scenario, but I can't think of an instance where I'd really want to do that.

We had another question on the side here.

AUDIENCE: Thanks. So you mentioned Revit files. What have you been doing with DWGs for sharing, like Civil 3D files, any DWG files you would have for--

ROBERT ECKDAHL: So the DWG format, all of our site content that isn't using Civil 3D, that is actually still being executed through our legacy solution. So I think that the future will look very positive for that. I'm not sure what all you can talk about with that kind of stuff.

But the fact of the matter is we've already got a P&ID for collaboration for BIM 360 Team that's commercially available. I would really, really, really like to see Autodesk develop that same kind of technology for Civil 3D, for InfraWorks, as well. There's certainly some value there. Do you have anything to add to that?

JIM GREAVE: No. We're kind of in the same boat there. Our AutoCAD DWG files are on our legacy document management system as well.

AUDIENCE: So this whole transformation, I understand that your engineers and 3D modelers see the benefits of it quickly. How did the rest of the organization-- your project managers and your specialists that are not used to 3D content and navigating around-- react to it? And how did you manage that?

ROBERT ECKDAHL: I guess I don't need this mic, do I? That's a really, really good question. So we mentioned earlier that we've both been working with Revit for quite some time. So our design teams were already kind of used to having access to 3D models to be able to view. What they didn't have access to before is the ability to find and access this data from anywhere.

So I'm going to tell you a quick story. We were about a half mile down the street having lunch at a sub shop, I would say probably about four months into the project. So we had a fair amount of these models started. Certainly, they didn't have the level of detail we have now.

But we're sitting in a sub shop eating lunch, and the project manager walks in. And he's like, pulls out his phone, and he's like, check this out. It was the accessibility to that data that he was really excited about, the fact that he could be sitting in the client's office, and he didn't have to have some Navisworks guru to be able to show the client a model.

He could just open it up on his computer and say, well, yeah, this is what we're looking at. And this is why we made these choices. This is why it's important to you. And he could do that from his phone, from his computer, from his tablet. And it didn't matter where they were at, they could all get access to that stuff.

We've got a question in the back.

AUDIENCE: I've got a few questions.

ROBERT ECKDAHL: Oh. Sorry. I turned it off. Here you go.

AUDIENCE: Thanks. My first question is, are you wedded to Revit now?

ROBERT ECKDAHL: I'm sorry. What was that?

AUDIENCE: Are you wedded to Revit? So are you fixed on Revit as a solution, given that Plant 3D is becoming more collaborative? And with every water/wastewater project, it starts with process design. And there doesn't seem to be a sync between the PFD, P&ID, and layouts in the Revit-type solution.

ROBERT ECKDAHL: That's a really good question. Personally, I really like using Revit. I wouldn't give an absolute there, but I don't see us necessarily making any massive change over to our teams technical capabilities that they've already learned with Revit.

I guess from my side of the fence, I'd like to see some of those other tools become more interchangeable with Revit so that our architectural team and the structural teams, the teams that have been using Revit for a longer period-- when we started using Revit at Black & Veatch, it wasn't an entire shift of every single discipline. We started with just the architectural and structural. Because Revit was really good at that. You And as the MEP content became, and the MEP tool set became, more profound, it became easier for our mechanical process, and the mechanical teams, to start using Revit it.

So I guess my thoughts on the Plant 3D is it's really great for the plant side, but it's not really great for an architect. It's still not the silver bullet that slays all the dragons. It makes it great for that, for the process side.

I think that the P&ID pipe modeler could be a small bit of an introduction of that, where maybe there is more of a-- I know that right now that the solution is geared to only go one direction. I would like to see it go both directions. But give it time, I think.

Do you have other questions? You said you had multiple, right?

AUDIENCE: That was it.

ROBERT ECKDAHL: OK. Oh. Question up here. I'm going to catch the guy in the back so that I don't have to keep walking back and forth.

AUDIENCE: Thank you very much for your presentation. I see, also, a lot of benefits just flowing by. So what I'm missing is-- probably you can say something about it. Let's say a new process cost a lot of hours and so on. How many hours does it take extra to implement this? And can you say something about the difference between the traditional way and the new way?

ROBERT ECKDAHL: Do you mean the difference between legacy storage solutions and C4R--