Description
Key Learnings
- Learn how to improve project and process management in CAD-BIM transition phases with Autodesk tools.
- Learn about customizing Autodesk Docs to work with different projects and contracts simultaneously.
- Learn about implementing strategies to CAD-BIM transition in sanitation companies.
- Learn more about AEC Collection tools uses for sanitation sector.
Speakers
- LGLamara Brenda de Barcelos GomesEnvironmental and Sanitary Engineer graduated by the Federal University of Goiás (UFG). Currently manages the area of BIM Management and Project Standardization at "Saneamento de Goiás” (SANEAGO), a Brazilian mixed economy company responsible for basic sanitation in the state of Goiás.
- MEMarcela Rodrigues de MagalhãesCivil Engineer graduated by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and MSc in Civil Engineering - Sanitation and Environment also by UNICAMP, with the thesis " BIM and LCA Integrated Application for the civil contruction solid waste prevention". Currently working with BIM Management and Project Standardization at "Saneamento de Goiás” (SANEAGO), a Brazilian mixed economy company responsible for basic sanitation in the state of Goiás.
LAMARA BARCELOS: Hello, everybody. Welcome to our industry talk, Autodesk tools, customization aids, BIM implementation in sanitation company. My name is Lamara. I am an environmental engineer currently engaged in BIM management and project standardization at Saneago. Saneago is a Brazilian mixed economy company responsible for providing basic sanitation services in the state of Goias.
MARCELA MAGALHAES: Hello, everybody. My name is Marcela Magalhaes. I am a civil engineer also employed at Saneago within the same area and I work with Lamara.
LAMARA BARCELOS: So our learning objects for today are share our experience in BIM implementation in Autodesk Docs, learn how to improve the project and process management in CAD-BIM transition phases with Autodesk tools, learn about customizing Autodesk tools to work with different projects and contracts simultaneously.
First, we want to provide some context about the state of Goias. We are located in Brazil. When you think about Brazil, the first thing you usually associate is the beach, Caipirinha, but this is not Goias, unfortunately. Goias is a state located in the central western of Brazil right in the middle of the continent so no beach. Our economy is mainly based in agriculture and farming.
We also have ecotourism activities with lots of nature and waterfalls, for example. And we have small cities such as this one shown in the picture called [INAUDIBLE] with a population of around 1,100 and also big urban centers such as the capital Goiania where we currently live with almost 2 million people.
So Saneago covers 95% of the basic sanitation in the state of Goias, serving 226 out of 246 municipalities. Around 97% of the population is served with water with around 20,000 miles of water network. Sewage service covers around 6% to 7% of the population with an average of 90,000 miles of sewage network.
Let's talk a little bit about Brazilian BIM legislation timeline. The first Brazilian federal government action towards BIM implementation in the country happened in 2017. In 2019, it was created by decree number 9983 which established the National Strategy for BIM Dissemination in Brazil, the strategy [INAUDIBLE] and established its management committee. In 2020, it was created the federal decree number 10,306, which determines the implementation and used an engineering service developed by the federal public administration.
Also worth mentioning is the new bidding law, law 14,133, which indicates preference in BIM adoption or similar or more advanced technologies and processes in bidding for engineering and architectural works and service whenever appropriate to the object of the bidding. Despite the hiring process in public companies such as Saneago, it is not governed by this law. This is an indicator that there may be new legislative changes in this direction in the future.
Another important law in the Brazilian Basic Sanitation scenario was the new legal framework. It established expansion targets for the public cooperation agreements that are between the concessionaries and the municipalities, and also established universalization targets for water and sewage coverage by the year of 2033.
This is the current situation of water services. In Brazil, it is 82%. In Goias, it reached almost 98% of the goal for the 2033 is 99%. For sewage services in Brazil, 55% of population has access to sewage services. Meanwhile, in Goias, it is 67%. And the goal for 2033 is 90%.
At Saneago, the BIM initiatives-- it started in 2018 with the first AEC collection acquisition. Then, in 2019, we had software courses focusing on BIM softwares for the project team. We expanded the use of the softwares. However, it is always good to remember that only the new technology is-- it's enough to implement BIM.
So in 2020, we started working to build a BIM culture in corporative level. We established the strategies for the following years-- also had training and discussions in the BIM culture in corporative level. And we did some benchmarking with other sanitations company and expert consulting companies in Brazil.
With the expansion of Autodesk Docs use, we acquired more license in 2021. Also in 2021, we hired a consultant to make a diagnosis of BIM maturity at Saneago in order to understand the current workflows and the scenario about technologies, people, and policies.
In the same year, we had training and develop of a template using Civil 3D for sanitation networks, such as water and sewage pumping pipes and sewage interceptor. It generated pipes profile automatically. Adopting Civil 3D roadmap design tools, it was the start customizing the use of Autodesk tools for BIM.
In 2022, we hired the first projects with 3D modeling. Meanwhile, architectural projects for administrative buildings were being developed in Revit.
This year, that was a major restructuring of San Diego's project team. When it was created, the BIM and Project Standardization Unit, a team dedicated exclusively to implementation of BIM in the company-- and that's our team.
First, we standardized the design process, updating design manuals, the standard designs definitions and workflows creations. Also this years, we had actions concerning survey technology, such as use of point cloud data, laser scan, and photogrammetry for topography survey. Finally, that was the consolidation of Autodesk Docs as a tool for designing document management.
Now my colleague will present a little bit more about Autodesk Docs.
MARCELA MAGALHAES: Thank you, Lamara. I'm going to give a brief introduction about Autodesk Docs for those who aren't familiar with this solution yet. It is a cloud-based common data environment that provides document management and control to the entire project team.
The main characteristics of Autodesk Docs that made us choose this tool for our company are unlimited cloud storage, and that's very important because the documents that are shared in BIM scenario requires big space, and not all of the computers could support it-- also, document traceability, history, and versioning-- that's very important in a large company such as ours, and with a lot of stakeholders involved-- permission controls in which you can customize the kind of information each member has access to according to their role in the project-- easy document sharing via links that you can generate and customize their access for either members or non-members of the project according to the situation, and finally, you can gain scalability in projects, having faster processes.
A little bit about theory-- common data environment, CDE, is a digital repository where the product information and documents are concentrated and managed, allowing everyone who is part of the project to access them. In this way, by concentrating the data, the team members will access all the necessary information from one single source, improving communication and collaboration between project stakeholders and reducing errors and duplications. This image on the side illustrates different stakeholders accessing information from one single place. That is the CDE.
The ISO standard for BIM provides the following CDE workflow for each project. It is composed of four quadrants, as shown in the picture. And the project navigates through those quadrants during its lifecycle.
First is a work in progress. Once it's approved by the in-house design team, it moves to a shared environment, where it will be verified with the project team and the client. When the design is authorized, the documentation is then published, being available to be used by a tender process, costing, contractor, manufacture, construction, and build. Once the project is finished, its history is documented in an archive.
And how does Autodesk Docs facilitate the CDE structure? Let's suppose you must design a water treatment plant. First, you create a project environment in Autodesk Docs for this object, represented by this little blue symbol there. Then you create folders inside this environment-- represent each of the CDE quadrants. As the design is developed, it navigates through these folders. And that will happen in other designs, too, for different objects, such as treated water reservoir or a sewage collection network.
In summary, you have lots of little CDE workflows inside each project environment for each object that you're going to design. At Saneago, we ran some tests using this structure. But it was getting very complex in our case. And I'll tell you why.
The main challenge we faced that-- were that we have 226 cities served with water and sewage. From those cities, 61 of them have regular expansion yearly target contracts-- so targets that change year by year, the change-- they are updated year by year. Also, we have a very vast project portfolio with a span over 10 years that we need to analyze, check what can be used and what should be replaced or complemented.
And at last, sanitation is a very complex field with a lot of different project typologies, considering the particularities of each city we serve, going from designs of small administration office to robust infrastructure, like water dams for reservoirs.
So considering all of those demands, to plan them, we analyzed each city separately. Our board of directors, assisted by the technical areas, analyzed the expansion targets and generated an individual ID codes for each target. Each of these codes targets-- coded targets-- they can represent one or many units that must be designed, tendered, built, and put into operation until a specific date.
So each target was associated with a course of actions and a deadline. For example, by the end of 2023, we have 70 expansion targets that were completed. That resulted in 103 ongoing design projects, 176 future design projects, and 80 concept studies that we have to developed. And that's a total of 360 projects that will become a total of 260 projects inside Autodesk Docs.
So when we started the conventional way using Autodesk Docs, which we have a different project environment for each expansion targets, here's a precise animation of what happened in our heads when we started using it for all of our 360 targets. So we adapt Autodesk Docs in a way that makes sense for our specific context. Here, we have the CDE structure. We decided to use a different Docs project environment for each CDE quadrant instead of each design object.
The first step is a work in progress. We tend to hire most of our designs. But a few of them are elaborate by our internal design team. Regardless of where the design is elaborated, once it's in condition to be reviewed by Saneago project team, it is shared in the environment called Projects Under Development.
Here, the model is review as many times as necessary using Autodesk Review, Annotation, and Versioning tools. Once it's approved, it move to environment called Project Portfolio using a Docs tool called Bridge. In this environment, it will be budget. And all of the additional documentation needed for the construction tendering process will be developed.
Then the tendering process will happen. And we will move the-- to the stage of construction management. In this environment, it will be delivered at the as-built models and the documents for the finished construction.
Once the construction is finished, the final as-built models and the documents that are shared in the environment called Technical Records, in which the operational team will have access and use it to feed their asset management-- this environment is also very important for future designs, yet to be elaborated, as it is a source of updated information about the current situation of the existing water and sewerage system in the city that is imperative for elaborating new designs.
In addition to those four environments from before, we also have two supporting project environments in Autodesk Docs, Topography, BIM and Standards. The Topography environment is where we store and share all of the topography surveys, especially the ones using aerial photos and point cloud data that are very heavy. They are divided by cities, allowing us to reuse in other projects and construction of a solid topographic base for the whole state.
The BIM Standard project is an environment similar to a toolbox for the design process. It's where we share all the documents and policies that the designers, both internal or external, will need doing their work, such as project manual, documents and models, standard projects, and also some tutorials on how to use Autodesk Docs itself. It's also where we share important documents for managing our internal design teams and preserve the knowledge, such as recorded courses, document models, workflows, and normative instructions.
Only employees of Saneago have access to this environment. But the documents in the folder marked with this little symbol there are automatically synchronized with the project environment called Projects Under Development, the first one in which the designers have access to.
This is the folder hierarchy for Projects Under Development. As explained earlier, it's environment for managing the projects elaborated by different design companies, and also designed by internal teams. The designer uploads the content once it's ready to be reviewed by Saneago projects team. It is divided in two main folders for the field and project files.
The folder Project Files was a standard folder in Autodesk Docs conventionally used for sharing finished designs with the construction team. It was a folder that every member of the project could access. At Saneago, we use it-- folder in a different way. We use it to share standard documents for the design companies. It is automatically synchronized from that environment, BIM Standards, that we mentioned earlier.
The folder Project Files is where we store the project deliveries and share with Saneago design team. It is divided by cities, allowing us to access every expansion project in progress for each city. Since sanitation involves urban aspects, starting the projects from one [INAUDIBLE] city together improves communication between different design teams that are working in the same location, but in different designs. For example, it is important for a designer that is working on a sewage treatment plant to know where it is planned to be the water intake system for the same city to avoid water contamination.
Here is just a detail on how expansion targets are organized in our project environment in Autodesk Docs. As I said before, they are divided by cities in a folder with the city name. Then the folder is divided by water and sewage system. Inside those folders, we have folders with expansions ID targets, their names, and some standard folders inside. There can be more than one target for the same city. And this is the same code that we introduced earlier that is used to follow the projects developed from their beginning until the end.
Here is a video illustrating Autodesk Docs use. Here's the project under development. And here are the [INAUDIBLE] file and the project files with the cities divided by their names. For example, we'll open Goiania. And here is the folder for water system and sewage system. SAA is water. [INAUDIBLE] in Portuguese.
Inside the folders, we have the ID codes for each target we have. So all of those are water targets that we have to reach our project that we have to deliver. And all of those are sewage projects.
So I just showed an example on how is this specific project for sewage treatment plant. You have inside all of these folders that are standard for every ID code-- and this is a preliminary treatment project that we uploaded here just to illustrate how Autodesk Docs can be used to see and view many different kinds of documents. This is an example of opening a Navisworks document. But it also opens [INAUDIBLE], opens CAD, opens PDF, Word, Excel.
And here-- just showing just some basic tools to illustrate a little bit for those who aren't familiar with Autodesk Docs. You can view the 3D model. We can rotate it, zoom in, zoom out. And also, there are some annotation tools that you can use. We have also some review tools. You can make some sections in different directions. So you can see all the levels of the construction.
Here's another example of the sideways section showing. So you can have-- analyze the whole structure in 3D, looking at the inside parts. You can also measure some things. Here's an example, measuring those two windows or measuring this roof over there, and also just zooming in to show a little bit of some tools that we have. One of them is to show the information of the properties of these fiberglass materials, showing the properties that it was inserted by [INAUDIBLE] on it. So this is just an example to illustrate how Autodesk Docs can be used to view 3D documents.
And that was the files project. Now, for the field project is where we put the standard documents, as I mentioned before. So here's the project manual and then the standard and patterns. Then we have some templates and some procedures.
Illustrating the project manual, we open some intake project manual. Our project manual is divided by different disciplines and project. And here, it shows that it's-- they're all synchronized automatically from that other project called BIM and Standards, the one that I mentioned right in the beginning.
So here is just illustrating how you can see the file, the PDF file. In Docs, it show its pages. You can read it. You can make annotations, comments. And if you click in this indicator that shows where it comes from you, you will the other project that is BIM and Standardization.
This is in Portuguese. [PORTUGUESE], the same thing. And here we use a similar structure to the traditional one. This first folder is Under Development-- is where we put the standards that are being developed inside only the BIM Saneago's team-- so why they are not ready to be shared with everyone. And then when we put in the Publish folder is where it can be shared with everyone. Here, you can show the permissions. Everyone can see it.
Here, we have exactly the same folders as you saw on the project files. And just to illustrate it, here we have the intake system manual. And it shows that the files with this name-- they are synchronized and updated automatically to Projects Under Development.
So going back to Projects Under Development, we have the following permissions here. Everyone-- focus is everyone, everyone can see and download those files. So everyone that has access to this project can see and download those files.
But the project files, the one that has the designs itself-- they have permissions according to the function of the person inside the company. So these are all functions that they have inside the company. And the designer companies that are hired-- they don't have access to all of the folders. They have access only to specific folders, like shown there. This is the designer company saying they can edit only this folder. And they can't see projects that they are not working on and they're not interested for their work.
Going back to the BIM and Standardization project, we have models, patterns, procedures, and trainings. And we put in folders with the names of the trainees we had [AUDIO OUT] Projects Under Development folder. And these are all the documents, everything that we wanted to share with you about using Autodesk Docs.
In summary, this is the CDE workflow that we developed for Saneago using Autodesk Docs. With this structure, we were able to meet our expectations in use of Autodesk Docs. We also managed to get around the issues that are particular to a concessionary company in an initial BIM stage, such as ours.
Perhaps in larger projects, we will see the need to work in a conventional way on Autodesk Docs due to its individual complexity. But this is structure set up for the current situation-- suit us right now. And we are evolving with this as we evolve with the BIM implementation and maturity in the company.
Here are suggested steps for those who are planning on implementing Docs in your company. First, it is important to know that-- your current situation on BIM maturity to understand the current workflows and scenarios about technologies, people, processes, and policies. For that, we hired a consultant company, as Lamara shown before.
And we recommend you-- highly recommend you to hire a consultant company so you can use their expertise in this area so you can make less mistakes while you are implementing BIM in your company. Then you build your BIM workflow based on your diagnosis and the BIM implementation you want to achieve. Ideally, this should also be accompanied by a BIM implementation program prepared with the help from BIM expert as well.
Meanwhile, you should study about Autodesk Docs-- watch some courses, videos, and also read Autodesk manuals. There are a lot of interesting materials on Autodesk website. At Saneago, we had a mentoring program from the company MCR that we hired with ACE collection licenses. As you learn about Docs, we recommend you to actually play with it, play along. As you become more familiar with this tool, more ideas on how it can fit for your business will appear.
It is important that you run some initial tests with your workflow and Autodesk Docs before making it official to the whole company so you can see its limitations, improvements, and critical points. We have a saying here that is "stress the process, not the people." We also suggest that first, you try to use a conventional CDE workflow for Docs and, according to your experience, you adapt these folders and projects to your situation. Docs is a very flexible tool.
The most important thing for getting the best of-- out of Autodesk Docs is have clear standards. Again, have clear standards. Otherwise, it will become a big mess.
One important tool we use for this is the project manual. Also, we have some normative documents that state standard procedures and officialize our workflow. And before we implement Autodesk Docs, we organize our house. Saneago already had a project manual and some standard documents based on Saneago's long years of experience.
So we got this documents and updated them to be more objective, specifying how project deliverables should be made, how will be the naming rules for each document, the document formatting, minimum project content, and folder organizations inside of [INAUDIBLE].
So the whole manual was thought on using Autodesk Docs as a tool to manage all the design projects. But it doesn't matter how pretty standards documents you have. They won't work if no one knows about them. So it's important to train your team on Autodesk Docs and engage people.
At Saneago, the solution we have is that we were having online meetings every two weeks with the whole design team to talk only about standards, Autodesk Docs, and BIM. And it was a very, very important moment where people shared their experience and doubts while we presented the advances we have on BIM implementation.
From this class, we wanted to share with you our experience on BIM implementation and how Autodesk Docs was an important tool in this phase. We're not saying that you should use exactly our Docs workflow. The important thing is to first create your BIM project workflow for your situation and then adapt the folders and projects on Autodesk Docs in a way that suits your needs. And just remember, the most important thing for getting the best out of Autodesk Docs is have clear standards and procedures.
That's what we prepared for today. I just wanted to highlight that the work we had shown here today is a result of commitment and hard work of not only Lamara and me, but the entire project team at Saneago. So we wanted to give a special thanks to all of those who helped us develop our project manuals and Autodesk Docs workflow. Thank you.
LAMARA BARCELOS: And we still have a lot of work to be done. So hopefully, we will be here again in the future, presenting more positive results. I hope you enjoyed our class. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.