How Autodesk Platform Solutions Support the Rail Infrastructure Industry

WOUTER BULENS: Welcome, everyone to our Autodesk University class on how Autodesk platform solutions support the rail infrastructure industry. We will be presenting mostly content of technology techniques, software that is already available on the market. But also some new features that are also being presented at this Autodesk University. And, from time to time, some future insights or some things to come.

So be aware of the fact that the safe harbor statement is applicable to this presentation. The topic of today is railway infrastructure.

And as most of you in the room probably know, when you start in the railway industry it takes a couple of years to get used to the disciplines that are all applicable in this domain, the national rules that apply to this industry, the material supply lines, and everything.

For me, personally, it took about two years to become a design engineer track and after those two years I have done multiple projects over five years' time. And on every project, every time I strive to make the most ideal alignment, optimize my material supply line, make sure we were on budget and on time, and every time something changed.

Something had to be altered or we had to realign to a new situation that arose. And over the time that I was an active designer within the railway industry structure, I came away with the general conclusion, as most of you will probably already know, that railway infrastructure is an absolute definition of a system of systems.

And, originally, I was only educated in one of those systems.

So for my project, I did aim to optimize for time, so optimize as short as possible in the project design, guarantee cost, guarantee certification for security, optimize eco-friendly integration within the environment.

They do the delivery for asset manager or integrating into the general transportation system that we were designing for, taking into account the maintenance processes that we were working for and then optimizing the performance of our transportation network. But these goals are very clear for all of us.

But we're also very aware that the balance between all those different disciplines that are absolutely necessary to make the trains drive is very tricky to balance all those disciplines, take into account linear design, structural design, catenary signaling design. It's a lot of different fields that have to be balanced.

And at the same time, we are working on a living transportation network. So we don't have a linear situation between our life-cycle steps. It's not first the concept, then the detail design, then execution, and then the usage of the asset or the network. No, no, the trains keep driving on our network.

At the same time we are demolishing structures we are maintaining structures, we are building new structures. And at the same time, some of our departments are doing conceptual designs on the future.

And, of course, due to the duration of our projects, as well, the environment in which our projects, or our portfolio of projects, are active keeps changing, be it governmental rules that we have to take into account, budgets, timing, even support by local cities or the people in close vicinity to the railway line are continuously changing.

And that makes it so hard for the system of systems. Yes, the goals might be very clear. But we are moving through a moving maze where the disciplines, the life-cycle steps, and the environment are continuously changing. And this means we have to take another approach to how we design.

We have to move towards platform thinking. We have to aim for more interaction between our disciplines, our life cycles, and our interaction with the environment.

And I could think of no better example than, actually, LEGO in two parts. In the fact that LEGO blocks from day one are still compatible with LEGO blocks that are being traded today, but also just the wide range of products that LEGO has are all interconnectable, and exchangeable, and expandable.

And this is one of the goals we at Autodesk have, making our products better connected, better configurable on their own, within our portfolio of products.

But also make sure that we have a sufficiently strong connection to market standards and take the approach of being sufficiently open ended to be future-proof but also compatible with your entire design portfolio or your design environment that you're working with, so to speak.

Then, of course, why do we do this? Well, we have those monetary goals and those timing and efficiency goals. But the one thing we mostly want to guarantee is progress. These changes in the environment and disciplines, they are inevitable and they are constant. And that will not change. But our ability to generate progress is not guaranteed.

So this is why we do this. We want to detect a system of systems better. We want to grow insight so that we grow predictability. So that we get insight, we're able to predict the system of systems and then reuse this in the creation of our solutions, which we do not do manually.

We generate our solutions so that we can absolutely start simulating this system of systems, due to the nature that these changes will keep coming so our solutions need to take an evolving approach on how we move forward, thus arriving at the point that we initiate the change.

We initiate the progress. We have a more controlled environment but, taking into account, sometimes we will still fail. So we also want to fail quickly. It's still navigating a uncertain future but guaranteeing that we move forward, not backwards, or do not stay stagnant.

I hope, with everyone in the room with this problem situation, that we can all agree that the railway infrastructure, which is absolutely an example of a system of systems, that this call demands, requires platform solutions. And this is the direction we want to take together with you as Autodesk.

So this was our short introduction to our industry talk. For the next sections we will be looking at the current platform solutions, but more the foundations of our platform solutions at Autodesk.

My colleague, David, will talk you through the platform implementations and then the strategy behind them, how they are applied. And I will, in the end, do the closing of this presentation.

Hopefully at the end of this class you will be better able to evaluate our available solutions, assess our platform strategy, and how you can interact with it. Start defining processes where they are applicable for your company and hopefully implement your innovations and creativity, even better to a new level.

For those of you who do not know me, I am Wouter Bulens. I am a recent addition to Autodesk, actually. I'm currently in the role of implementation consultant infrastructure. I have over 22 years experience with AC solutions, 13 years, professionally, within the infrastructure industry, and 10 of those years within the railway industry.

And for those who know me a little bit better, I always describe myself as a drafter who became a designer who learned developing. And the last couple of years in my career, took on the role as BIM manager for a multidisciplinary railway engineering firm.

DAVID LICONA: And I'm David Licona. So I'm also an implementation consultant from Autodesk focusing on infrastructure. I'm based in Paris, France, at the moment but originally from Guatemala. And, first of all, I'm a civil engineer. So I have extensive experience on infrastructure projects throughout all of their phases, from feasibility to operations.

I used to work for the French rail owner as a project manager for rail infrastructure projects in the Paris area, where I started implementing innovative approaches in my projects, which finally led me to joining Autodesk. So I'm currently focused on mostly automation and process optimization for infrastructure projects.

WOUTER BULENS: Ah, now you know who is presenting this class for you. So let's move on to, what are Autodesk platform solutions? And what's the foundation of all our platform solutions? Well, the first pillar is absolutely our wide product range, moving from many domains from design manufacturing, AC, media and entertainment, and construction.

And speaking personally with 30 years experience within the infrastructure industry, I have used products from all of these different domains to execute my specific infrastructure projects.

And within all those years, I have always tried to choose the best product for the problem at hand and not say, we only have an AutoCAD license. So let's try to do everything with AutoCAD, or everything with Revit. Every product is optimized for a certain field and has certain features, tools that are best suited for the job.

Remember the old saying is if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. So that's absolutely applicable in our industry. One product will not cover the load.

And that's one of the reasons why Autodesk also takes the approach of trying to interconnect, in the back end, all of our products to make a seamless experience for our customers on a data level, on a user interface level between all those packages. All to support, as best as possible, your platform experience.

And as we all know, this backbone that Autodesk has developed is, of course, our Autodesk Forge, which will be running in the background of each of our products. The goal is not to develop one product to rule them all that does everything, but actually to support each product in their processes or how they are applicable to your projects.

The second pillar, which is actually the building blocks on how we create our tools and everything we make available for our customers, are our APIs, our application programming interface. I usually compare them to Autodesk LEGO blocks, our connectable building blocks of digital logic that we share with you.

Everyone in this room is actually using our APIs daily. It's just the way how you interact with them, depending on your business model or what state your project is in that will differ.

Many of you in this room will use our standard tools. You can configure them. They follow a general market strategy. And they take the approach of a product, so to speak. They come out of the box. This is the way they work. And you just optimize the configuration for your situation.

The second approach is that many of our products allow you to do scripting, be it graphically or textually. You can build your own sequence, your own logic, already, to a certain extent that is optimized for your market, your industry. And you can start building a higher level of connectivity, which is not available in the standard tooling.

Some of you have also started to create more complex logic. Why? Because you have national standards that have a whole lot more complexity because you have traded within your company your own APIs, your own logic that differentiates you in the market. But you want this interaction with the Autodesk product line.

So you have created a true product portfolio where, through the APIs, you are interconnecting multiple vendors, products, data sources to be optimized for your processes, your way of working.

And some of you in the market have also started to make use of our Forge API to develop your own services, services that you can make available to everyone within your company, whether they have a strong laptop with a lot of graphical mobility or working on a mobile device or even making your logic available to your customer and developing new business models within the market, becoming a part of the general platform strategy, yourself.

That being said, if we're looking at this, some might think that this is a scale on which we can grow. But, actually, all of us within the market, on working on the project, will have a combination of all of these APIs' uses, depending how they interconnect to your workflows.

Then, as a last pillar, we have, absolutely, the data and information, which in the end is the backbone of any digital transformation or digital work that we're doing.

We're all very familiar with the more historical and well known data containers, files, metadata, and folders, files being the proprietary formats of Autodesk like the DWG or the Revit files. But in our product line we support, as well, the general market standards like LandXML or IFC, about which my colleague, David, will talk a little bit later.

But also more general, formats are supported in our product line, as well, JSON files, text files, CSV or Excel files, all to optimize that interaction and that interconnection within this platform strategy.

And on our cloud solutions we have started using our containers, also, to uplift the metadata usage and optimize folder usage within your projects, as well.

A second category is, of course, the assets and the objects we use within our software packages to help you define the information, generate the geometry, and even define logic between the assets and the objects you are designing to then, in the end, aggregate them in more, larger models, even in the specific industry models or discipline models, or even the project as a whole to facilitate the collaboration, to trace the issues, use markups, activate reviews.

All of this are assets and objects and workflows that we support within this platform strategy.

And in the last step, more and more, as we are getting more information requirements on projects due to their BIM nature or just historical requirements from the asset managers or the classifications.

We support you in defining these classifications consisting of, again, assets' objects by your definitions or by your customers, their properties, and their interconnecting relationships. But then, also, interact to use them with our software packages, through our APIs, interconnecting and integrating them so that your staff can use these classifications in their native environments.

And in the background, making sure that transformations within these classifications are as smooth as possible, moving forward.

DAVID LICONA: So now we're going to see some concrete examples and focus on actual implementations of our platform with regards to the rail industry. We're going to first discuss the rail capabilities in our products and the investment that we've been doing for the last year targeting the industry. And then we're going to tie what Wouter discussed around the usage of the APIs with some use cases.

So let's start with the direct investment on our rail capabilities. We can actually classify it into two major categories, upgrading the existing capabilities of our products to fit the needs of rail project and adding new functionalities to fill the gaps. This is what we've seen for the last three to four years. Some examples of the upgrades is the ability to read cant data in profile viewpoint or add dynamic labeling with current information to the alignments.

More recently we've also had cant information to Project Explorer. This, of course, stemmed from specific needs from our clients to help them deliver rail tracks. Talking now about adding new capabilities, there are now new assets and objects specific to rail infrastructure. And this was kick started with the launch of the rail model in Q3 2019. Starting with platforms, rail lines, and more recently, the development of a new turnout tool and the addition of turnout objects.

Whenever these new objects have been added, they come shipped with some national standards, generally developed in partnership with rail owners. So this was the case for the rail turnout which was rolled out with the French catalog and now contains, also, a US catalog of turnouts. But these new tools also come with the ability to customize these objects with configurable JSON files, giving you the possibility to modify and create your own objects or apply your own rules.

So we have an example of how to use these configurable files to adapt to your needs in the 2020 AU Infrastructure Slam. We will provide the link on the handout. And it's really an excellent demonstration of how flexible these tools can be. So, finally, when we are expanding on [? tools ?] with new hires, there's work behind the scenes to provide the corresponding APIs and allow for the development of your own automation solutions, programs, and services.

Because of direct investment on our rail capabilities, we've had other investment areas, new products, new functionalities, new workflows that have an impact on the rail industry and the delivery of rail projects. So let's start with automation. We have Dynamo that has been around for Revit since 2013, already well integrated in building and structural workflows.

The addition of Dynamo to Civil 3D has unlocked huge opportunities to the civil infrastructure side of rail projects. What Dynamo has done is democratize the development of automated solutions because it is easier to create a script through visual programming than with a particular scripting language. We have seen growth in Dynamo for Civil 3D with over 400% growth in the last year.

What's also great about Dynamo is that it's open source and anyone can add to the existing functionalities. We see more and more users building on this with packages being added to Dynamo for Civil 3D and well over 1,000 nodes and functions being implemented by users. Of course, this is only possible if the APIs are available. That's why they are the backbone of our platform.

Additionally, we work on interoperability, building connectivity between tools and our historical products, as well as the ability to exchange data natively between them. So this is crucial for the rail industry, which, as we have seen, is a system of systems and where we have convergence between the AC industry and the manufacturing world.

We have also a strategic partnership with buildingSMART and work internally to develop IFC 4.3, which focuses on infrastructure and includes rail. We are making sure that we have a working implementation since its launch.

And our partnership with the Open Sign alliance means that we are now taking a coherent and standardized approach in building the classification of our IFC implementations. It's no longer an individual strategy from each business line but a consistent implementation all around our products.

Finally we take a look at the last element in this list. We are connecting BIM and [? JAS ?] through our strategic partnership with Esri. And this really speaks to the building of services mentioned by Wouter. We are connecting both worlds, which, of course, is essential for the rail industry because we are talking not about a single project in a fixed location, but the whole network and a live environment.

So now let's take a look at some examples. I'm going to go through the API steps and provide some concrete applications for each one of them. So I'm starting with the system tools out of the box. And we will build up, going through a script program until we reach our services example. So in the screen, we can see some images that showcase the newest functionalities on Civil 3D, mainly focusing on cant and track design.

We have dynamic labels that can read applied CAD information and display it. We have the added cant to Project Explorer. And you can actually see the new turn-out tool in action. We'll provide more links and more information on the technical workflows in the handout, in case you are interested in learning more in detail about how these tools work and what are the possibilities that they bring.

So I will not spend more time here but both Wouter and me are more than happy to engage in technical discussions after the presentation. You will have our contact details at the end.

Now, talking about the scripting with automation, so we, as the consultancy in AutoDesk have been helping our clients to develop automation solutions, allowing them to connect products and disciplines, to have systems approach, helping them cope quickly with changes, softening the impact of the custom change and adapting to the lifecycle steps in rail projects, as well as developing the possibility to generate more design alternatives so that the projects fit better their environment.

The images that you are now seeing all come from consulting projects we've done. There are far too many examples to go through them individually. We can spend a whole hour for each one of them. And I'll try to give a quick overview of some of the highlights. So we've connected horizontal and vertical projects, so Civil 3D and Revit in our platforms, thanks to the development of the civil connection package inside of our consulting team.

But we've also connected these tools with Navisworks, JS inputs, Excel files, JSON files, XML. So now I'm going to switch to an animation. So you can see, I work in Dynamo script. And I will continue providing more examples. And in this animation we are showcasing one use of Dynamo to check for the clearance by generating the rail vehicle envelope and checking for [? clashes. ?]

So besides the just mentioned [? clash ?] detection, we've also worked with clients to develop automation solutions through different BIM uses, automating repetitive tasks during the model altering, drone production, and improving quality checks, extracting [? bill ?] of quantities, applying information to assets or developing BIM for D and 5D.

Some of these success stories have been, or are being, presented in Autodesk University. And we will give the links to the presentations on the handle. These developments have allowed us to start imagining use cases that we hadn't even thought of before.

So, specifically, in rail, for example, checking for signal visibility and improving safety workflows, optimizing layouts of maintenance sites, connecting to historical databases to automatically generate existing condition models, and effectively using 20-plus years of historical drawings to come and enrich our 3D models.

Before going into the program site, I want you to ask a question for you to ponder. Have you already started on the journey to develop your own automated solutions?

So now we're going to focus on the program side with an example on information requirements and data classification. So this example comes from a rail track that maybe you'll know. It's HS2, so the high speed rail project in the UK. I'm sure that some of you watching this presentation are actually involved in this project. So in this particular case, data requirements are actually part of the project deliverables demanded by the client.

In general, information requirements have grown, will continue to grow, and eventually they will become an absolute must in all projects. For the rail owners in this audience, you know how important it is to know your network and your assets and how difficult it has historically been to do this.

Those who have been involved in the industry have all kinds of anecdotes about this discovery, discovering previously unknown cables during the construction phase, having to acquire and reacquire the same service over and over again. Searching through hundreds or thousands of files just to know what is on site. Yeah, so in this specific project we are talking of an 80-kilometer stretch with several tunnels, over 80 bridges, embankments, culverts, highways, utilities, fence barriers, all the civil works.

So Arcadis built their own classification system based on the available standards from network rail, defining different levels to describe the assets, going from chainage blocks to a particular section to specific assets, a bridge, for example, to objects in the assets, a pile in a bridge. And each object has a specific set of attributes. We are then talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of attributes in a database.

We, as of this consulting, work with AutoDesk to define and implement one of our solutions to populate and manage this data. This is a custom solution available only through consulting. But there are standard tools out of the box that can help you with this. And, of course, once the data is there, you need to check its quality. Make sure that you have the correct information.

From there you can generate, then, data insights and prepare your handovers. If you want to know more about this project, and in particular, this application, I will be more than happy to connect you with the Arcadis team responsible for this and who was kind enough to allow us to present it to you.

But, finally, we've reached the service part. I'm not going to go into much detail about the solution because you can actually see it live in this Autodesk University. And there is also a 20-minute recording session that was presented at Autodesk Rail Summit of 2020, from where I got these images.

The session is given by the product [? responsables ?] on the system side, who, of course, are much better placed than me to explain the business case, how they did it, and the gains that they obtained. I mention the Rail Summit and I will come back to this later in the presentation.

What I want to highlight now is how you can use AutoDesk platform to develop new business models for yourself and your customers on the cloud.

So in this example, Systra developed a tool using Forge to connect BIM models with GIS services and calculate the carbon footprint of any project, taking into account not only the performance levels of the design, so, the BIM side, but, also, the supply chain, the [? GIS side. ?] Of course, I'm oversimplifying this for time's sake. So you should definitely go check the [INAUDIBLE] sessions.

So now that we've seen some concrete examples, let us take a step back, again, and discuss how our platform strategy is also a customer centric strategy. So I talked about the investments in rail. What I only mentioned briefly before is that this development has you, the customer, at the heart of our development with a fundamental role defining the native functionalities in our tools.

Customers are actively participating in what we call a co-evolution approach. So notice here that I didn't say co-creation because we are not focusing only on creating new things but on improving together what exists on our roadmap. The rail inside the factory program is run by Nigel Peters on AutoDesk project site and it is focusing on track design. We have over 40 rail designers involved from across the world.

Right now it is only open for track designers and not BIM or rail managers. We'll provide Nigel's contact on the handle in case you are interested, afterwards, in joining the community. It started with annual in-person events and monthly calls and technical working sessions were added by the participants' demand. The purpose of it is to inform attendees of the ongoing development efforts, get feedback from them, and drive and prioritize the road map.

The new turnout tool that I showed before was created through this customer centric strategy. And throughout the presentation we mentioned that we are part of Autodesk Consulting. And we provided some examples of how we supported our clients to achieve better outcomes. So let me give you a little bit more information because maybe you don't know AutoDesk consulting and you definitely should.

We specialize in supporting your digital transformation through our transformation services. So we work on a daily basis with our clients, helping them meet their goals and reach better outcomes. We listen to them, their issues, and challenges. And we help them solve them by finding or developing the right solution adapted to their needs. Throughout our projects we are focused on building trusting relationships with our clients and provide value to them.

Additionally, our consulting team is made from professionals from different industries. Both Woulter and me come from the rail industry, have worked on rail projects, and thus, we can understand your [? plans ?] and why you will want to tackle something, specifically. As a consultant, we are currently engaging with the biggest design and construction firms as it is evident from the metrics provided in this slide.

We have a global team with expertise across products, industries, and markets, to work, then, as strategic advisors or technical implementation experts and help you solve your biggest challenge. So we are mainly focused on developing innovative solutions in five key spaces.

Data to insights, for example, to make data driven decisions, platform for new businesses, expanding their services such as the development of digital twins, future of work to strengthen your resilience through, for example, developing seamless site workflows, sustainability as a driver of your business, and process automation with the application of generative design, for example.

So if you don't have contact with Autodesk Consulting at the moment you can contact your representative. We have service offerings for different market segments. And we are happy to provide more information after this presentation.

And I say I will come back to the rail summit previously. So this is an event that exists since 2014, attended by the biggest players in the industry and that has continually grown, doubling participants from year to year. It is organized by Autodesk with the main purpose of connecting industry leaders. And where we highlight our rail strategy through presentations from our product teams as well as presentations from our clients with project success stories.

It's an invitation-only event and the cost of the event is covered by Autodesk. The good news is that this content is then made available for free online, as shown by the thumbnails in the slide. So you can actually watch the presentation shown here. We'll provide access to on-demand sessions on the handout.

So this year the rail summit will take place in November in Amsterdam. And as I said, this is by invitation only. But don't hesitate to request your account managers from Autodesk to be invited if you are interested in participating. This doesn't mean that I can guarantee you, you will get an invitation. But the first step is to simply raise your hand and make us aware of your interest.

WOUTER BULENS: So that brings us to the closing of this class and the open question. What would we like you to remember this class? Absolutely, we would love if you would remember.

And hopefully, you already know, yourself, from your own experience within the industry, that the railway infrastructure, or any transportation infrastructure, actually, is absolutely a system of systems that calls for, requires, needs platform solutions if we want to reach our clear goals of staying on budget, on time, better adapt to climate changes, other changes in our environment, increased efficiency for all the people that we are transporting on our network.

If we want to achieve this, if we want to guarantee progress, we need platform solutions and a foundation of these platform solutions is not looking at one product but actually looking at the best product to do the job and making sure that these products are interconnected into one platform.

That we have a supporting API system that supports you, whether you want to create or just want to create your own custom service, or just want to use the standard tools that you have, this API backbone, after all, it is becoming the age of the APIs.

And also, absolutely, that you have access to the different forms of data and that you are supported on this data level, whether it be data containers, true asset and objects within your design software packages, or your own classifications, or those of your customers that you have to work with within your projects.

If you are very interested in this platform strategy and even this merging of industries, I strongly urge you to look into more depth into Autodesk convergence strategy on which we discuss in more detail the convergence of technology, processes, industries that we see and already support within our Autodesk portfolio.

But, certainly, also, the convergence of business models and what transformations we still see coming in the future.

We will be adding shortcuts and links to this in the handout, as well. So please look into it if you're interested. If you have seen something in this presentation where you say we would love to know more on these technical specifics. Or how did this customer or this project deal with this? I strongly invite you to look into all of these great Autodesk University rail classes that have been made available this year.

Each for each connect to the general platform strategy that we have been presenting here today. And give you more detail or even better, allow you the opportunity to interconnect with other customers, the development team, or other consultants that have supported these projects and these presentations.

And, then, coming closely to the real end, I just want to leave you with the open question, where are you in regards to managing, guaranteeing that progress, despite all the challenges that we have with our disciplines are clashing life cycle steps and the changing environments? What are your goals in the current market? Are you reaching them? What are the challenges you are seeing?

And, certainly, speaking for David and myself as consultants within the railway industry, how can we help you to achieve these goals and become more proficient in guaranteeing progress?

And, certainly, as David said before, if you're interested in knowing more about consultancy or any of the systems that we have presented here, please get in touch with your Autodesk business partners. If you're in mid-market buying our Autodesk products from them, or if you have a direct connection to Autodesk, please speak to your named account executive.

Or if you want to contact David or myself, directly, here, again, is our contact information for you to take up. Then I would just like to thank you for your attention and wish you the best of luck with all your endeavors and enjoy all the other AU classes.