Conducting the Orchestra: BIM360 for Standardizing a Decentral Organization

MATHIAS NALL: Hi, and welcome to the class Conducting the Orchestra. This class is about how to standardize the use of BIM360 in a decentralized organization. Big organizations can be decentralized and siloed, and standardizing across organizations like circle can represent vast challenges. If you compare a big organization with an orchestra, then the musicians must be allowed to play their instrument with freedom, so they don't break the creativity and joy of playing.

With the help of Autodesk consulting, Sweco has managed to get multiple countries and business areas to playing together, try to achieving the right balance of a structured approach to design management, but leaving room for local adaptions. Now we want to share how we got the orchestra in tune, following the score, but protecting their creative freedom of our musicians.

This presentation will be about implementing BIM360 in a bigger scale, in a decentralized organization. The agenda for today starting up with the Introduction and Background. And then Governance and Framework, Objective and Key Results, Initiative Development, Value and Outcomes.

So my name is Mathias Nall. I'm a Digital Development Lead based in Sweco Sweden Stockholm. I've been working at Sweco for the past 16 years, and most of it at Sweco Architects in Sweden. I have a background as a building engineer, and I have also been using Revit since 2004. And I also have experience of using BIM360, both internally in different projects, and together with customers.

Nowadays I'm focusing more on business development and digitalization. I'm also responsible for all the different activities Sweco Sweden has together with Autodesk.

And with me today, I have Mehdi Mouhab from Autodesk. And the two of us will guide you through this class. Could you please present yourself, Mehdi.

MEHDI MOUHAB: Yes. Sure, Mathias. Thank you, very much. So I'm Mehdi Mouhab. I'm a business consultant within Autodesk. I joined Autodesk 13 years ago.

I have almost 20 years experience in AEC industry. And I initially joined Autodesk as a technical consultant and became a business consultant. We are helping basically, our major customers to apply BIM methodology standards and refine their processes. That's it for me. Thank you, Mathias.

MATHIAS NALL: OK. Thanks, Mehdi. So now a short introduction of Sweco, and then a brief background of why we kick this off together with Autodesk in 2020.

Sweco plans and the science communities and cities of the future. The result of our work will be sustainable buildings, efficient infrastructure, and access to electricity and clean water. With almost 20,000 employees in Europe, we can offer our customers the right skills for every context.

We were founded in 1958. Sweco is based on the [INAUDIBLE] vision of the combined architecture and engineering company. The idea is to bring different perspectives together to solve the challenges of our time. We carry out over 50,000 assignments in 70 countries every year.

Sweco is the leading consulting company in technology and architecture in Europe. Sweco offers a wide range of services in architecture, building construction, installation, infrastructure, water and environment, project management, energy systems, IT for community development, and industry. We are 17,500 experts across more than 100 disciplines. And our ambition is to help our clients solve any challenge at hand, no matter scale or location.

This is a view of how Sweco are organized. The head office is in Stockholm, Sweden. Sweco has a decentralized approach to digitalization, which means that the business areas drive their respective work with digitalization by themselves. However, as a global company we will benefit from scaling competitive solutions worldwide.

Every business area is divided into divisions. And with a decentralized organization, each division has its own standards and ways of working. Therefore, it can be difficult to implement core standards in a large organization. Improving the efficiency and productivity within the digitalization is a key priority for Sweco group.

So now, I will also mention something about the challenges or pains that we were facing during 2020. The world slowed down, but the utilization accelerated faster than anyone could have predicted. This is how the weeks in March and April can be summarized for some perspectives.

Many of us moved to our home offices. And with the technology that we have in Sweco, with on-premise servers for different offices, made it also harder but foremost slower to work. Even if we hadn't suffered from COVID, we would have had to do this work anyway. Now it only went faster because of so many of us moved to our home offices instead.

I have pinpointed some of the challenges that we have came across when we started to work from home. We have multiple platforms for storage and on-premise servers. We had collaboration between divisions and locations, external collaboration with customers, and project loading time when they were working from home, and remotely access both profiles and licenses to the design tools.

For a few years now, we have working in a systematic way with digitalization. There are today a number of tools in place that we use in our processes and collaborations. We saw that this was the right time to utilize the potential that the cloud solutions gives us.

So why cloud solutions? And why move product to the cloud? As I mentioned, in Sweco we have a number of tools in place to help us in our daily work. There are different cloud solutions for different purposes. Just to mention a few, we are working with solutions from Esri, Bentley, and Trimble. And of course, Microsoft and Office 365, as well, which is infrastructure in Sweco.

Today we are going to focus on BIM360 from Autodesk. So why BIM360, and what does it solve? Actually, it doesn't matter where we are.

You can always go to have a quick access to large project files. And you can review or comment the design directly in BIM360. You can invite external users or clients in your project, and can go through the model and do markups from a web viewer. This is just a small selection of what you can do.

So I would like to mention something about the governance and framework that they created. To support increasing adoption of BIM360 in Sweco, we and Autodesk created and executed a BIM360 adoption support program. The project had the overall goal to make it easier for projects throughout Sweco. This was made through deployment support and project support materials. Having identified the value of using BIM360 during a proof of concept, the decision was made to implement the solution globally at Sweco.

For that we established a BIM360 governance cross border with certain stakeholders from key countries. For each country we had the product manager and the regional engagement council. For this engagement, we worked with Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, and UK.

Now that's over to you, Mehdi.

MEHDI MOUHAB: Thank you very much, Mathias. So I will continue with the framework that we have a plan.

As you can see, we went through different steps. The first step was to define Objectives and Key Results. I will talk about the OKR approach, these Objectives and Key Results approach, a bit later in a few slides.

But we went through, first, a workshop defining the main objectives-- what Sweco, as an organization, is trying to achieve. Then how to measure the results were, to define those key results. Then we identified actions.

We went to different workshops per country to define what are the necessary actions that needed to put in place to achieve those key results, and ultimately contribute to the main objectives, collectively defined. From that we identified different cross-country initiatives that we have prioritized. And then we assign a team, a dedicated team, to work on each of those initiatives. Of course, a steering and guidance approach have been put in place with regular meetings, country-based meetings, and also initiative-based meetings, which means cross-country.

So the overall approach was first to do those steps about the OKR approach. And then here, in the middle, you can see the different initiatives that have been identified, coming from Standards to working on the Value and ROI, Tracking and Reporting communication plan. So this is the cross-country initiatives.

But at the same time we had some country-based meeting, where we did, for instance, for some countries an awareness around BIM360 for the management level. We also developed some templates to allow some local customizations, and some, yeah, some local customizations.

So if we go through the Objectives and Key Results that we have applied, this methodology went from 1999, around 2000 basically. And it has been implemented from Google. And then we had some followers like LinkedIn, Oracle, and then now Amazon, Dell, as you can see, Netflix.

A bit of definition. So the objectives is a statement of a broad goal, usually qualitative in nature. So this is why what it was important to bring all the country together, to agree on what are those main objectives to target. And then, in opposition, the key result is a statement that measure the achievement of given objectives.

So we went through also, this brainstorming to identify, OK, what can we put in place in terms of tangible measure that we can track over time, to be sure that we are on the right track, and that we are working towards reaching the main objectives?

So the Objectives Identification-- five countries, as Mathias said, were represented. So we went through the brainstorming. And we identified, by voting with the attendees, the top four objectives, which were improve design collaboration and coordination, improve efficiency, improve client satisfaction, and upskilling staff.

From those four main objectives, we identified then, the key results. While an objective is inspirational, the key results need to give a clear direction on what to do and how to do it.

Following that we went to the identification of Actions, country-based actions, and Initiatives. So we went through five different workshops, which were country-based, and we tried to figure out what are the necessary actions that each country have to put in place, knowing the difference of level in terms of maturity using the solution, or in general, approaching BIM. We went through those different, specific workshop with each country. And we identified some actions.

Then from the action, we went to a clustering exercise. And then as you can see here, here is that list of the nine different initiatives we went through. And the following slides, we will go a bit in detail on each of those initiatives here.

Initiatives Development. So a bit of a Solution Development Structure that you can see here. We have put in place a governance structure to assist Sweco as an organization, to develop this global solution.

So we vertically, it was supporting meetings for Initiative Owners. And horizontally, it was also a regular meetings, but country-based level, because we understood that for Sweco, as a big organization, we needed a kind of common ground in terms of standards. But also, each country has its own local practice. So it's a fight between standardization and customization. So the method that we applied I know both basically, to define a common ground, but also to enable each country to have some specificities.

Now I will go to each of those initiatives in detail, to share with you what have been developed. So the Standards. The standards what we have developed here was about first, the principle of ISO19650 compliance. Many elements around Sweco Standards, like Roles Definition, RACI Matrix, Folder Structure.

We worked also, on the Approval Workflows and the "How To" with some recommendation on how to work with Revit and BIM360 and also Civil3D and BIM360. So we have some screenshots here about all of the documentation that have been produced by those teams, that have worked on each of those initiatives.

So as a conclusion on this initiative, here you can see the major benefits. Though the major benefits for Sweco was a level of compliance with the ISO19650, standardization of roles. Because before this engagement, the roles were really not defined in the same way for each country. So in the hub, in BIM360 hub, we had many, many different roles defined. So it was a kind of standardization now, for the role. The approval processes, naming convention, standard folder structure, and also folder access management per role, have been defined through this documentation.

The second one was around the Tracking and the Reporting. It was really crucial and important for Sweco to be able to track out of the usage of BIM360, to be able to report at different level. So a report for IT about the global token consumption report, token consumption per project, and also external consumption for billable purposes.

So the major benefits was tracking token consumption at different levels, for different purpose. Mathias will go through a bit more in detail, when I will hand over to him.

One other initiative was around the ROI and Value and so Use Cases identification. So we went through different meetings to be able to identify what are the list of use cases that we are targeting, and where BIM360 is playing a role. Metrics identification, role-based benefits per use case. What were the customer, what are the customer benefits?

And we went through one analysis around time spent per role before BIM360 and after BIM360 that has led to this view of the redistribution of hours. Using BIM360 you are saving, and users are saving, hours. And here it was a proposition of how to redistribute hours on added value.

So major benefits. So use case identified savings, identify savings and understand how the work can be redistributed to focus more on added value tasks.

Here you have another screenshot about a bit in depth analysis on the time spent without BIM360 and with BIM360. So we went through different workshops to identify really key metrics to get where we can gather information, and also to project ourselves on the usage of BIM360. So, yeah, a bit more bigger view on how we redistribute the time for one role specifically. But we did that for all the roles that we were considering.

One other initiative was around the Training Plan. A really important topic, the training plan. So what are the roles targeted to receive a specific training? What are the other available trainings that Sweco had, because Sweco launched BIM360 a while ago?

So there was, they had access internally on some training, so we wanted to understand where are those training? What are the format? What are the description? Where are they stored? So a list of available material, training type, storage location.

And then, what we have defined here is a role-based training program, which was really critical for Sweco to understand, if I hire a BIM modeler tomorrow, what are the necessary training he has to follow to be efficient in BIM360? So we have these training modules per role, for the different roles that have been defined by the team.

So the major benefits was an understanding of what are the possible training available, and their format. Manage the training content-- so a unique storage have been defined as a global SharePoint. Standardized or role-based training program. And understand the effort also required per role-- this one is really important to be able to build this training program.

The next one was around the Communication Plan. So everything that have been developed through this engagement needed at one time, one point of time, to be communicated. So we needed to understand what are the groups that we are targeting to receive a specific information at a specific, with a specific frequency?

What is the content that we need to consider to distribute as part of this communication? What are the channels that we can use to communicate the specific contents? So we have developed and documented, the team have developed and documented, all of that in a formal documents.

The major benefits of this one for Sweco is being able to identify all the targeted groups, content, and channels to communicate. Identify the channels owners, so it's also interesting to identify owners for each of those channels. And the frequency set-up for each communication type. So this was around communication.

The next one is around Wishes and Blockers. So we have worked with a dedicated team on this one to be able to distinguish, what is a wish, the difference between a wish and blocker. So there was two different streams, right? And we have defined a gatekeeper, so we are allowing each end user to enter either a wish or a blocker. But we wanted validation inside Sweco, as an organization, to validate that this is a wish, or this is a blocker, and we can escalate that to Autodesk, to Priority Support, or the Development team, because it's valid.

So here we have a process that has been developed for each, for the wishes. We have a process for the blockers, also. And then also we have some templates to use when you submit a blocker or wish. You have a Word template to use. If it's a blocker, for instance, you have to identify how many users are impacted by this lack of capability. And then also we developed a tracking tool to be able to track the progress on each of those developments, with the development team, for instance.

So major benefits was the clarification between what is a wish and what is a blocker. Identify key people, which are country-based, to validate those logs. And also the value to have a single point of contact with Autodesk, Priority Support, and the Development team. So this was around wishes and blockers initiative.

The next one was around Project Roll-Out Protocol. So this one was really important also, because we wanted to clarify the ordering process. What is the process to be used when you order a new project, when you have a new project starting in BIM360.

So we had like a link accessible to go to a project setup wizard. We were sharing also the prerequisites. Do you have, do you have the right prerequisites to activate the project using BIM360 and Civil3D, and also additional recommendations specifically around Civil3D. So all of the prerequisites have been documented and communicated to the team.

And the major benefits were a clear process on how to order a new project. Also to clarify, the access to a project setup wizard. And also being really clear around the prerequisites to comply to, or to be aware of, before ordering a new project.

One thing, one additional thing also when you order a new project, you need to identify what are the necessary services within BIM360 that needs to be activated. So this is why the project result is really important.

The next one was on IT Assessment and Requirements. So the team has worked around the IT assessments. How to measure bandwidths. How to raise a ticket.

Also around the requirements-- account access, cloud sharing enablement, software and disk space requirements, system and hardware requirements. Also around the files-- the supported file, limit per folder, the file size. And also how to archive-- the archiving process for a project.

So the main major benefits for this was a guidance, a clear guidance on the bandwidth measurements, the minimum IT requirements for BIM360 usage, and also clarify on BIM360 capabilities, and communicate that to the end users, and also having a clarity on how the archiving process works.

The last but not least, the Support. The support was the last initiative that I will be talking about. So around the support, there was different work streams. One was around the issue categorization. It was important to identify, depending on the issue that you have, which channel, which support channel to activate.

So we clarified also how does work Autodesk Enterprise Priority support with sharing the issue severity and the EPS map. And we were also some placeholder to be able to identify user, global super users, or global super user groups, within the documentation.

So the main major benefits was a clarification on Sweco IT support services. What is a role basically, of Sweco IT. It's not-- Sweco IT is not supposed to reply to a specific feature issue. It was just to enable the team to activate a project.

Issue categorization, documentation on the different support channels that can be activated. Documentation of Autodesk Priority Support process, and also something around user groups that have been defined here.

So around Value and Outcomes. So now that you have a clear view on the different initiatives that have been developed, just I wanted to share with you, what were the main output from this work.

So we generated two documents. Both of them are stored on the Global SharePoint that have been created during this engagement. One document is a BIM360 Global Implementation Plans and Methods, where everything that I showed before is documented in this document here.

And the second document was a template for a country lead to use. And basically this template, which is country based, got links to the global documents. And so it's allowing each country lead to customize basically the global standards, the common ground that we have defined, to be able to customize that for local usage.

With that, I will hand over to Mathias, to talk a bit more about the value.

MATHIAS NALL: Thank you, Mehdi. During the initiative tracking and reporting, we also started to dig into some data that we exported from the BIM360 database, or hub. The result of the data extract was combined and published in different [INAUDIBLE] reports.

The report tells us when the projects are created, and we can also see how many projects we have active or inactive, or maybe archived on this vehicle hub, or filtered by country or division. We can also see if their projects are stored in the US hub or in the EU hub.

This is used to see the progress of starting new projects within Sweco. This was six months ago, and the next step is to use Forge to automatically extract data from the different hubs, and then combining it with internal data from the Sweco core via our own API solution.

And the second report tells us a bit more about the usage and the consumed tokens in a specific month or for a specific user. For example, we can now filter out external users in the project and then summarize the tokens that that person has consumed in different modules. In that way we can have the basis for invoicing the upcoming month, for example.

I would love to show you some more from these reports, but it is real data, and it can be sensitive to show. But I think you get the idea just looking at these two reports that I showed you.

We want our musicians to have their creative freedom and play the instruments they want to do. And when the Sweco team is conducted in the right way, we design cities of the future. On the screen we can now see a project in Hainan, China. It is 500,000 square meters and includes hospital, school, retail, and housing. The project was developed by 50 architects and engineers from Sweco in Sweden, Canada, and Shanghai. The use of BIM360 and other cloud solution was the keystone here.

If you want, you can read more about it in one article that Autodesk, where you can find in Autodesk Redshift.

So closing off, here's some quotes for the follow-up survey that we did. And you can read them by yourself, but it was mainly positive comments. It was really nice that we could combine different countries and work together, finally.

Me and Medhi, we'll also say a big thank you to the Sweco team. Without your input and commitment this would have been impossible to accomplish. So thank you, very much. And thanks for listening.

MEHDI MOUHAB: Thank you.