Let's Tackle Geotechnical Headaches (and Save 28% in Costs): Freedom of Residency and Interoperability with Civil 3D

KIMBERLY NORTON: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today, We're going to be talking about tackling geotechnical headaches. And the good thing is that we're going to be talking about, yeah, there's the geotechnical headaches. But also, what are some solutions around that? So really excited to be part of AEW and here with you all today.

So now we're going to introduce ourselves first and let you know who we are before we jump into these geotechnical headaches. So just to begin, I'm Kimberly Norton. I'm the commercial manager at Fugro on the GeoDin team. My background is in the start-up environment and business development-- so bringing new software to market. And I joined this team a year ago, and it has been really exciting. First off, working with such a great software and team, and really bringing it forward to new markets. And with that team, I'm very fortunate to have worked with Devrez. Devrez, let me hand it over to you so you can introduce yourself here.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Thank you for the kind words, Kim. My name is Devrez Karabacak. Excited to be here, and welcome, everyone. And while Kim brings commercial expertise, I bring in more technology and geoexpertise to the team. I'm a product and delivery manager for GeoDin since about a year, but I have about 12 years of geodata acquisition experience and technology development within Fugro. And prior to that, I worked in various data acquisition technology, R&D, and lasers, and some sensor developments in the past-- in a past life.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Great. Thank you, Devrez. And before we really start digging in on the geotechnical side, both with GeoDin as well as Autodesk and Civil 3D, first, let's start with telling you all more about Fugro. And there's no one better than Devrez. He's been here quite a bit. So Devrez, please, let's talk more about Fugro.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Thanks, Kim. We're world's leading geodata company. We're the largest one out there. We're about 11,000 people operating in 55 countries. Our headquarters is in the Netherlands, where we're both based in, actually. But we are quite globally distributed as footprint. We have a large presence in the North America offices, as well.

We have about 60 years of geodata experience overall. And our mission is to create a safe and liveable world. And we work in key societal challenges that we're all experiencing-- climate change, urbanization, growth in population, and having more and more connected devices, and society being engaged. We work across three sectors. Typically, most of our clients are based out of these three sectors. It's mainly water sector, energy, and infrastructure.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Great. And, Devrez, tell us, where does GeoDin fit into this?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah, perfect. We develop technologies in all sorts of geodata acquisition. So GeoDin being a data management software package was something we needed to develop to manage our own data. So Fugro, as overall, works in acquiring and understanding Earth. And we do that through acquisition from satellite technologies, whether that be remote mapping, all the way to being on the ground with trucks and actually doing the drilling, digging, and sample removal.

We sometimes do airborne scans. We sometimes have unmanned surface vehicles floating the oceans and even doing some underwater robotics sampling-- repairs, sometimes, in some cases, or mapping overall. We remove samples often. We send it to our laboratories around the world for more technical analysis, if needed.

And we essentially tie all of that data together to form a digital understanding of the subsurface that engineers, like the ones in this audience, can then take forward and design their constructions and the interface between the structure and the soil. And that's sort of where GeoDin sits, right, forming that underground image of Earth?

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, no, absolutely. It squarely fits there. Thank you, Devrez. It's nice to get that overview of Fugro and GeoDin. Now let's shift this a bit and get back to the task at hand in the presentation and talk about, first off, some of these headaches. And I'd love to get an idea of who can relate to this. I imagine many people can. So let's start with the first one. "Is this all the data that we need?" Of course, that is a big question. I mean, Devrez, I know you've certainly experienced this with your background, right?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: For us, we always want to have more data, of course. But there is a point where you need to say, this is the right data, and that's all the data that I can gather feasibly and reasonably with my budget, and cost, and time. So indeed, making sure that you use your site investigation budget optimally and getting that to focus on the data that you actually will value and use is key.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, it really is. Let's go next. "I feel like a dinosaur. Why am I still processing PDFs?" And we'll talk more to this later. But it's definitely a headache, and it's certainly still prevalent. Today, we've heard many of you give us this feedback.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah, receiving a PDF is the worst thing for an engineer because you essentially have this data you can read and look at, but you can't do much more than that in terms of analysis. It's sort of locked onto a virtual paper, essentially. So it's not that valuable in a sense when you're trying to automate your design and do analysis of your structure with the ground information being there.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Right. "Not again. New ground insights keep derailing my design process." Another one, right? When you don't have it early, and all of the information in view, it comes in dribs and drabs. I imagine that can be very challenging.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah, indeed. I think there's nothing worse than having to go back. And we all hate reworks and redos, right? You don't want to go back and start from scratch because you just found out that the area in which you were designing your infrastructure is actually not the right spot. And there was a more optimal spot just over around the corner.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Right, exactly. And if I only-- "If only we knew this before we started designing." I know that's a big one.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: --not just designing the structure. It can sometimes be designing your site investigation plan. There's been various times that, we've been asked to go back and take a new area of samples or do more site investigation in a new area because, actually, the design area was not going to be the one that was going to be picked, and they decided to shift it. So again, going back, costly and really delay-causing.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, no, exactly. So let's shift. So we're talking about these frustrations. Let's talk about what we're going to cover as we dig in today with our presentation. So number one, the importance of geodata. Really, we're going to spend some time talking about this and giving some examples of where it might not have been fully considered, and has not gone well, and there's been some significant impacts.

Beyond that, we're really going to be focused on having that single source of geodata. And also, interoperability will be a big key. And we're going to leave a lot of time for Q&A, of course, as well. But first, let's dig in on the geodata side and the importance of geodata in infrastructure design.

And we're going to start with this quote, which still surprises me, even though I've seen it many times. "We'll likely spend more on infrastructure in the next 40 years than we have in the past 4,000 years." I mean, that's 100 times acceleration. And yeah, it seems like, OK, 4,000 years is a lot of time. But I mean, when we look at the acceleration, it really is eye-opening.

There was a McKinsey report that said the world needs to spend about $57 trillion on infrastructure by 2030. We're almost in 2025. So let's just say this is five years out. And indeed, this is a huge investment that needs to take place in just a little bit of time. Devrez, is I'd love to hand it over to you as we dig into geodata and its importance. And let's give a few examples throughout the years and what might have gone wrong.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah, indeed. I don't think you can build that much without understanding Earth properly and understanding it effectively. And we have, as a society, made mistakes of that in the past. I mean, the most iconic example, I guess, is the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.

It's leaning, and it's now famous for its lean. And it's not actually leaning before even the structure was completed. That's why it has a curved silhouette, actually, because they started trying to correct it during the end phase of the construction. And there's been numerous studies on what went wrong there over the years. And it's now commonly agreed that it was the lack of the engineers understanding the soil profile at the tower's base and accounting for or designing for the ideal foundation that would carry the massive weight of stone that was going to be put on it.

A couple of years ago, two decades ago or so, they did a study on the boreholes. And the geotechnical analysis on the ground was done as part of the efforts to. understand the challenge, and even correct it. And, well, of course, the borehole model in this case was 830 years too late to understand the initial [INAUDIBLE] to fix the initial foundation. So they are now trying to fix it by working on it now. And they've spent already $30 million and still counting to keep it from falling over and creating a catastrophic incident and a loss of such an iconic structure, of course.

But interestingly, 1,000 years later, we're still struggling. This one is closer to home here in San Diego, I guess. But in San Francisco, there's the Millennium Tower that was recently finished. And within the first decade, it already leaned by 29 inches at the roof level and sunk by 18 inches. That's massive for a structure in the middle of the city.

And again, the cause and the correction lies in the ground, understanding the ground, and fixing the structure, and coupling it to the ground safely and securely. The cost so far has been about $100 million and still counting, of course.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Wow. I mean, it's staggering when you look at these numbers and then also the span of time. 1,000 years, right? Almost 1,000 years later, and we are still dealing with the same issues and really showing that importance of geodata. And let's continue to talk about cost. Obviously, this is something that you highlighted on both of those slides, Devrez, in the examples.

But you can save up to 28% just by being-- not having that overrun. Because even when things are in time, we're seeing that cost is associated. It's 28% in overrun. Devrez, can you guide us on why is this? What's causing that overrun? And also, where the biggest opportunities?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Indeed. This cost overrun is actually if you catch it in time and try to correct it during your construction phase, right? And geology and excavation is a major cost factor in any infrastructure project. The graphics on this one are from a recent study on journal of innovation and management, and they looked at, in this case, tunneling projects. And this is a statistic that was drawn from 35 countries and 158 tunneling projects. So it is a global issue, not a one-off incident, an isolated event.

And it was the biggest cost factor by far. I mean, of course tunnels are the most impacted by geology. But you can take this across all types of infrastructure projects because the ground is essentially your hindrance to your business objectives, in that sense. You're always building on ground.

And when they did a survey with the people involved, the project managers and the site engineers, they all identified more site investigation as the number one cost-saving opportunity above procurement and above client-stakeholder management. So that's where you could have won the most for your bang for buck, in terms of investing some more time and effort to get it right on the first go. And when they did, the interviews, insufficient information about the ground was identified as the most recurring theme by all the engineers saying, that's where things got-- went off rail.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I remember you saying this to me, which really resonated, that it would be easy if the ground was certain. That would make all of our jobs easy, but it's not. It's definitely not-- which I think does kind of parlay over very well to these next examples.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah. So far, we've talked about cost, of course. But it's not just the monetary cost. There's a human life cost associated with sometimes catastrophic failures. The examples so far did not fall over. But there's a lot of structures that actually do catastrophically fail, not because of lack of maintenance, but just because of the ground conditions changing or not being accommodated for enough in the design.

Here are three examples. In this case, I picked transportation examples where vehicles were trapped under rubble or fallen over during catastrophic failures of roads in three countries where you actually expect that the building codes are the most stringent in a sense. And yet, it still happens. It happens more than we would like it to happen.

About a third of all structural failures in infrastructure are linked, these days, to subsurface and geotechnical aspects, actually, based on a study from the European Geotechnical Institute. And that's actually quite a shocking number.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yes, it is. It is a shocking number. And it's sobering, too. And I think it's a good reminder that we're not just talking about cost, we're not just talking about time-- and yes those things are important-- but we're talking about human lives. And also we're talking about the environment.

As we shift over here, another key element, there's a positive or a bonus here, right? If we can get this right, less overengineering can really cut emissions. And I think that's really important to highlight here. And, Devrez, can you help us to understand, from your expert point of view, how much construction contributes to greenhouse gases?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Now, the graph you see on the right is from a UN study, which obviously is spending a lot of time in understanding and tackling climate change, right? And over the past five decades, the percentage of CO2 emissions that actually come from just concrete production-- obviously, concrete is the main contributing factor to constructions, right? And it's staggering. It went from about 1% to above 10% these days.

And putting this in perspective, during the same time period, think about how many more planes, and cars, and trucks, and ships are operating around the world. They have gone up as well, yet the percentage of emissions from cement production has obviously outgrown those and become an important contributor here. So it's quite a staggering amount that's there. And one can think about how to reduce this by using concrete more efficiently and effectively.

We are always talking about gas efficiency or miles per gallon efficiency in engines. But are we sufficiently talking about how much cement is being used in foundations? And could we optimize that by understanding the ground better and avoiding overengineering when it's unnecessary to do so?

KIMBERLY NORTON: No, absolutely. It's something we can be taking into account much more. And I think that goes well, too, in giving an example around this.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Indeed. The London Olympics was very cautious about this a couple of years ago. And they did a case study about it after the fact on how much the ground investigations had saved them in terms of their carbon footprint for the Olympic Village. And they were able to show that, geotechnical testing has allowed them to reduce their pile lengths by double digits-- in some cases, by a quarter. And that is quite a saving on-- and when you think about it in terms of material costs, as well as, of course, the construction costs and the time costs of it. So there's a lot of potential role and for geodata analysis and geodata accumulation can play as we try to reduce our footprint of carbon emissions on Earth.

KIMBERLY NORTON: No, for sure. And talking about this, giving these examples-- let's dig into, now, how hard is it to see what's beneath the ground. Let's shift a little bit and dig into that piece.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Indeed. Why are we getting it so wrong for so many centuries, right, even though we all agree it's important? It's because geological variability can be very high, even over short distances. If you just think about a valley, which may have sediment accumulation over millions of years through rivers, or cutting of rivers into rocks, or having landslides, it could be a very interesting and diverse geology, even in just one valley. And you could be encountering that geology as you try to build something in that area, whether that be a bridge, a tunnel, or a crossing.

So having that complexity that has accumulated there for millions of years is a big uncertainty in any area. And just looking at one point in your area is not going to cover your whole area. So you have to really be doing a detailed study, which can result in a lot of data, as we will see in a few minutes. There's also increasing ground risk because of denser urbanization. It's not just the geological formations changing over time, but the fact that we have an ever-growing denser grid of tunnels, pipelines, cable routes. And you have to navigate those things as you're building your next structure on top, not to punch a hole through some of the existing structures out there.

And then the third challenge is, of course, you're making these critical decisions of where are you going to put the legs of your structure, where your support foundations are going to be, and how your layout in that area you've been given to design something on when the least about the ground in that area. It's the time that you haven't been to the site possibly, or you haven't started digging yet. And yet, you're making decisions about the site. And that's so hard to correct later, even if you catch it at the design phase.

And if you catch it in the construction phase, we've seen the overruns. And if you catch it at after the construction, we've seen the repercussions thereafter. So correcting these and getting more insight earlier on has so much impact for downstream of the life cycle of the infrastructure.

KIMBERLY NORTON: No, it does. And I think it's a perfect topic now that we will dig into, is how do we deal with that? We know there's a lot of uncertainty with the ground. So what are we proposing here to make it better? So as we shift over, there's two key areas that we're really going to be focusing on in this presentation. And that is really looking at single source of data and interoperability-- those two key items.

And let's give you a visual here to fill you in more about what we're talking about here. So, Devrez, please dig in because I think it's really important to say how these two things fit together. You have interoperability. You have this single-source data. Let's talk about the vision here and how things are moving forward.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah, this is a simplified view of a very complex process, of course, of an infrastructure life cycle, right? You typically start with a feasibility planning. You're given an area, investigating whether it's even feasible to construct in that area, go through a detailed design phase, a final design phase where you really model your soil structure interactions and your construction. That then takes place, and then you monitor the ground as you build. Is there a subsidence? Is there sinking already? Is there movement happening?

And then throughout the operation, of course, of many decades, typically these structures [? live ?] [? in, ?] and there could be a lot of changes in the ground conditions. Water table may be shifting. There may be tectonic shifts. There may be ruptures. So you have this very long lifecycle of-- and a complex process. And you need to start your single source of geodata which you can use throughout this life cycle early on.

And you can do that by collecting all of the information in one source, in one big database early on. And you can keep adding to it because you will find out more and more, as you go through this process, as you poke and drill, and as you remove samples, you send them to the laboratory-- as you dig for your construction and encounter, maybe, layers you didn't encounter during your site investigation. And over time, as you monitor it, you may record changes in the ground. And this enriches this database that can be used and referred to as make decisions during the design, construction, and even maintenance stages of your asset.

And what we found was GeoDin and Autodesk, when we started having these conversations with our colleagues, has such complementary roles to play in this lifecycle where, early on, ground data collection is a big part of what GeoDin does, and it's so strong. And Autodesk and its portfolio of products are so involved and in the conceptual design, whether it be [? InfoWorks, ?] or Civil 3D, to detail designing in Revit, and thereon. And we found that these two platforms are actually, throughout the lifecycle, interchanging and can have many touch points of data exchange as you move through this complex process.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, no, for sure. And let's talk about that, too. Let's really dig in now into that single source of data and the importance of that. So we're going to do a shift here because this is a perfect time to actually introduce GeoDin. You heard us talk about it in the beginning that we're on this GeoDin team. And, really-- talk about it a little bit through these slides, but want to give you a little bit of the history.

So those headaches we talked about before that so many of us have experienced in the field, the same for our geoengineers. So 30 years ago, same problem. They could not find the solution to solve their headaches, where they wanted to put all of this geodata. So the geoengineers created GeoDin. So that's where it was born. And as you can imagine, after 30 years, it's evolved into a very robust database management system.

To date, we have over 15,000 projects-- I would say upwards to 2.5 million borehole logs or more. And then, two, we have had the privilege of working with so many key players in the field. You can see a list of them here. Many of you are also here in the room. And that is really what's made GeoDin what it is today and what continues to evolve it into the future.

Because, Devrez, as you've said several times, things change throughout this process in design and as you're collecting the data. Things also change with time, right? And that is something we've been doing with GeoDin, is really adapting along the way. And now providing a little bit more insight. Now, Devrez, did you want to add something there?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: We move a bit faster than the geological time scale, but yes. [INAUDIBLE]

KIMBERLY NORTON: That's a good add. That's a good add. So yeah, let's actually show you a bit of GeoDin. And first, with GeoDin, it's where of course, it's that central database. So when we think about that, you're able to store all of that borehole data, which is really important. So all that log data goes into one location. We have full data compliance with 11 international geotechnical standards.

And I think what's really very important, besides having that repository, is having an instant and clear view of your data. And there's a lot of possibilities here within GeoDin. So please know we're only highlighting a few due to time, but we're going to do that in the next few slides to really show you not only GeoDin as a database, but what it can do visually and within the reporting. Devrez, do you mind explaining a bit what they're seeing on the left of the screen here?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Sure. The geodata often starts with a tabular data format, which is what you're seeing on the upper left. In this case, this is a in-situ measurement of penetrometer testing. Some of you may be familiar with it, where we push a rod, and we record, and the table shows, actually, a recording data point every 2 centimeters. So that's how much granular data we get from some of our in-situ tests. That's a 2-centimeter resolution over many, many meters of testing.

So you start accumulating these large tables with many parameters, whether that be, in this case, the load on the cone penetration test, or whether it be friction levels, sometimes water pressure levels, electrical conductivity. We sometimes remove samples and send them to laboratory for further analysis of the stringed elements. And all of that data sort of comes in as tabular format into the database.

And then the geotechnical engineer sort of can have this one place where they can manage this data in a reliable, robust manner, analyze it, and actually do some more compute on it, and make some calculations, which is what you're seeing on the lower left-- make some decisions on what those layers identified are. This is sandy clay. This is silt. This is rock of type A. And they can assign even some parameters to it in, terms of density, hardness, whatever is the sheer strength, et cetera-- whatever it is that they need on that.

KIMBERLY NORTON: No, that's great to highlight. Because as we go into this, the next slide here, it's we really want to talk about an example. Because for myself, I love-- it's wonderful, I'm very visual. And I also like to understand, how is it applied? And so this is one of our many projects that we've worked on, but it was a national power line in Germany.

So it was taking energy from wind, from a-- renewable energy from the North Sea and the North of Germany all the way down into Bavaria, into the South of Germany-- over 700 kilometers. So about 435 miles of cable. And of that, I think it's important to note that Fugro oversaw 100 of those kilometers.

So 100 kilometers, and you have many other companies bringing in their geodata. And that's where GeoDin was serving as that single source, that single database where everything was being collected to include over 8,000 soil samples. And so it-- obviously, a lot of data coming in through this project, a lot of energy generated. Devrez, please add in more.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah, indeed. This power line is a massive one for, actually, the transition of clean energy that we're all going through. And this power line, in the end, will power about 10 million homes in Germany, linking them all to an emission-free power farm in the Baltic Sea, as you mentioned.

The important parameter in this one was, of course, finding the suitable depth to bury this cable and finding a suitable route for it. And a couple of key things are important, like you don't want to dig into very hard rock, and you want to make sure that thermal dissipation of this cable is making sure that you can pump as much current through it with the best cable design.

With 10 million homes being powered through the line, you can imagine the massive amount of electrical current you have to push through, which is inevitably going to lead to a heating of the cable and thermal dissipation factors-- are some things that we test, for example. And we can store it in GeoDin and plot those as a parameter for the engineers to decide on which route to take for optimizing their first-- the construction phase, as well as the operation lifecycle.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, no, and let's actually take this into visualization. I think it's important that we're showing you a lot of what can be collected, and on the databasing side of things, if you will. But now we have more capabilities within GeoDin that help to save time and engage with [? geotechs, ?] and it allows that visualization to show reporting and, really, more of the storytelling on that side of things, too. So you can really understand what's going on beneath the Earth. Devrez, I'd love for you to go through our few examples here in the visuals and how it applies here.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah. This is, again, from the same project. You can see here some graphs on the left where decisions have been taken based on laboratory results or observations in the field about what the layers are, what their thicknesses and depths are, and where they start and where they end, and what type of layer they are.

We also store in our database sample photographs that may be taken on-site, which is very valuable for the engineers because they can't always be on-site, and there's such a big route. So they get all these images from the field, and they can compare them and contrast them. And from the images they can tell what type of ground they are likely to encounter during the construction phase.

And on the right side, you also see some of our in-situ tests, as I mentioned. Those graphs that you see on the-- the colorful graphs on the right side are showing our CPT concentration test results, where we record multiple parameters simultaneously at 2-centimeter resolution, as I mentioned. And based on those parameters, they can do parametric calculations-- the lower left corner shows that-- where they can classify automatically, based on the parameters, whether this is likely to be a clay, likely to be the specific sand type, et cetera.

And those classifications are then stored per depth. That's those colorful bar charts that you're seeing in the lower report. And then they can add annotations to it. As a geotechnical engineer, they look through that and say, OK, based on these observations, they can add notes to it. So all the text that is in that.

And what they turn this into is reports that are very insightful to the people, the designers that are taking this and designing their route-- the cable route, for example-- or designing their foundation, and whatever may be the case. So these are essentially large reports. They get readily available to them. Most of them are actually auto-generated from the database based on our templates, which are customizable.

KIMBERLY NORTON: No, it's great. And let's show a few more with the heat map visualization and also cross-sections.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah. So reports only go so far, Of course. There's a lot of ways to visualize such a rich database. Heat maps are a good example of that. You can generate one based on whether that be elevation, or water content, whatever is the parameter you're interested in. And you can turn that into a heat map and say, OK, I want to avoid this zone completely. This ideal zone for me is the green zone, and I'd like to work in that area.

And of course, cross sections are critical for foundation designers and excavation activities. So you can combine these things into-- on a GIS layer. And then you can say, OK, through this line, I'm going to operate. And you create an artificial slice of that in the database. And you create this report which sort of says, based on these observations, these are the layer thickness variations you would expect across that line you just created on your map. And these cross-sections are very resource-- useful resource for the foundation design aspects.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah no, and it's really, Devrez, all about connecting everyone in the value chain visually, correct? That's a big piece of this.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Definitely.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Right. OK, well, let's talk about this. Now we've really covered that single source-- the importance of that single source of data. But now I want to dig in. And let's talk about, how can we connect the single source of truth to actual design programs? And how do we get designers to the geodatabase? So let's talk about that a little more.

And what we're going to do here is we're going to start with that seamless data integration. So let's look at interoperability. But before we do that, Devrez, let's talk a little bit more about GeoDin and why this is very natural for us.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Yeah. From day one, geotechnical engineers that started GeoDin-- and we've taken this as we go forward, as well-- we want to make sure that GeoDin's is an independent database that can be used by various stakeholders throughout the design lifecycle and operating lifecycle. We recognize, early on, that every engineering firm has their own way of working with the data. They own selected software packages that they'd like to interoperate with and use in the design.

So it's in our DNA, and we put it out there quite black and white on our website, as well. Your data is yours forever, and freedom in data storage, and resiliency. This is our key commitment to being an open platform, much like, actually, Autodesk is an open-- quite an open interoperable platform.

What does that mean in practice? That means that you can put your rich database in any type of storage that you prefer as a company based on your security policies or your data residency requirements. That could be a locked PC, your local PC. It can be your company network and on-prem server system, or it can be a cloud-based system that you are operating, or managing, or even outsourcing, if that's your choice to do so.

That also means that we would like to give you the ability to ingest legacy databases because we know how valuable they are. Acquiring geodata is a very costly and expensive exercise often. So if you can avoid doing some of that by using preexisting knowledge of a site, of an area, go ahead. Let's ingest it, and let's combine it with the latest data into one big, richer database.

So we've released recently a conversion tool, for example, from [? gINT, ?] which is a widely-used product that's no longer being supported, to convert their databases into GeoDin databases that you can then take and store as you please. It allows you to easily import this and automatically map the data structure in the legacy tool to the new structure. So it allows you to give a second life to that data, if you will. And we provide ability to customize the data fields during the ingestion process to your company's data format needs.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Yeah, no, great. Devrez, thank you. Indeed, that is a key theme for us, is that interoperability piece. And let's look at this right now and how it works today. As we shift over, and showing the status quo, what does that exchange look like. When we have our geotechnical engineers here and we have our civil designers, right? Are things crossing very easily?

The answer is no, and I think many of you listening would agree with that. That is not currently the case, but there's a lot of hope there. But as we look at current state, unfortunately, there's a lot of siloed data. We have our geotech team on this right side here. And yes, they're doing-- they're collecting that ground data. They're building everything together. But sometimes they don't know fully what's being built. They may know it's a bridge, but they don't know all the parameters around it.

Then when we look to the other side with our design team, they know what they're building, but they have that uncertainty of what's beneath the ground. And right now, that communication back and forth is-- it's through PDFs. It's through emails. And Devrez, as you said before, a lot can be lost in a PDF. We all a lot can be lost in an email. So really looking at this pain and really wanting to alleviate it.

So as we take that forward and we try to get away from that PDF exchange-- and what does this look like as we move forward? So let's show you. And, Devrez, please do always add in here. But let's move on to the interoperability. This is the actual data exchange happening here.

So this is where you have the ability for that export and import. So again, being able to share that data between the geotech team and the design team. Now, does this clear all frustrations? No, it doesn't. It's not a perfect harmony quite yet. But that first step in that interoperability is key-- is that data exchange. Devrez, what would you add to this here?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Indeed. I mean, instead of searching through PDFs and trying to scan them for data points that you can then maybe do some compute on, we try to remove that by providing import-export functionalities of numerical data, tabular data, so that you can at least export the database into a tabular format like CSV, or Excel, or in a GIS layer, which can then you can ingest into a design environment to actually do some use with it.

That's why we became a partner to Autodesk, because we wanted to use that as a bridge between these two communities. As a starting point, what we started with was, let's get those rich reports that you just saw in the GeoDin environment and export them in a format that is ingestible into the Autodesk environment. And we started with DXFs. All our clients were actually asking for DXF quite early a couple of years ago, and we started developing that.

And now we've released that more recently, that you can export these reports and visualize the same report you see on the left and right here, the left one being the GeoDin original and the right one being the layer definitions and lab results in the design environments in Autodesk. That already gives the engineers the ability to collate all of this information in their design platform of choice.

But we want to take it one step further than that. And this year, we actually developed a Civil 3D export functionality in GeoDin. There's a dedicated button for it in our software where, if you click on it, it takes a subset or the full data set that you have selected and exports it in a format that is error-free ingestion in terms of metadata into the Civil 3D.

So what you see in the upper right corner is a screenshot where you, when you load the file, you see all of the metadata, the locations, the project IDs, and the ground data that was exported. And once you ingest it in, you can then start forming your layers in 3D as you visualize it at the lower image. So this already takes it even further. So instead of having a report that's digitally coming in, you now have actual data coming in, which you can use to model in 3D. But it's still an import-export functionality so far. But we want to take it further. Right, Kim?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: We do. Yes, exactly. And this is the visual where we're taking it to that direct connection to Civil 3D. So there, you see have the ability early on in design to make solid decisions based on your ground data, and really bringing that in, and adapt earlier in your design, knowing what's beneath the ground. And that interoperability and that seamlessness., It's really key to alleviate those headaches.

And that's really-- you can see there that just being able to match geolocations without errors-- just a few examples, and there are so many more-- implement design recommendations, as well. It's really important. And this is allowing with that interoperability to really increase efficiency, decrease cost. And we already know the other savings that come along with this, as well, whether it's more the extreme with lives, or it's also our climate.

And how about for you, Devrez? What else? I know we are all really excited about this, but what excites you most from your side?

DEVREZ KARABACAK: I think just I hate export-imports overall. It sort of restricts you. First of all, it adds cumbersome and redundant actions that you can get away with in trying to meet the demands of that infrastructure boom that's happening.

But also, direct connections allow you to be very much more protective about who accesses that data and who has the ability to share that data. You can do security and safety around the data. You can make sure that they're ingesting the latest and greatest, as opposed to some legacy file being mixed up. So you can really control the versioning, you can control the security, and you can control the granularity of the data that comes across.

And that's what we try to do with our setup, with the direct connection. What we have is a complicated schematic here of the roles. And it is a complicated process, but we're trying to simplify it down. We have the data acquisition, as discussed, the by on-site engineers. The geotechnical engineers then go in, and into the GeoDin desktop application that they may be using to collate that information, analyze it, generate the reports around it. And that-- all of that reporting that they do there is stored in the database. Again, that database could be locked and secured to a certain number of people accessing it.

And what we are now providing is a direct plug-in inside the Civil 3D environment that accesses that database that can be used by the geotechnical engineer, or it can be used by the design team to access and view that data, bring it across the boundary in a controlled environment, and refresh it when there's new insights available on the ground. Because as you go back into the site and you start your construction, maybe you discover more. Maybe you do some more site investigation because the design team has decided to shift their focus into a new area.

That database will keep getting enhanced, as I talked about it earlier, and the plugin will pull the latest information that's available there. And then the civil engineers, as you saw in the upper-right corner, can view directly what is in the database inside the Civil 3D environment. So they don't have to leave their design environment. They can view the project and the sites that are available to them that they have access to. And then they can say, give me the boreholes from there. And voila, they will get their [? sticks ?] of borehole models that are generated along with the metadata ingested into the Civil 3D environment.

KIMBERLY NORTON: Let's show an example. Devrez, it is exciting.

DEVREZ KARABACAK: Indeed. So this is the development we've done. So this is the GeoDin environment. This is a Denver-- station in Denver that we work with on Autodesk. And what you see here are a list of the locations that have been investigated. Those were the red dots on the map.