Using Cloud Solutions for Sustainability in Rebar Detailing

SCOTT PETERSON: Hi, and welcome to Using Cloud Solutions for Sustainability in Rebar Detailing. Today, we'll cover a few items. We'll do some general introductions for Stephan and myself. We'll look at who is InfraBuild. We'll then look at our current journey, our sustainability aspirations, some current projects, and the tools and technology we're using to deliver them. Then we'll look at the future, and then at the end, we'll have a Q&A session.

So who am I? My name is Scott Peterson. I'm a national BIM and technology manager. I started in early 2007 as an estimator and moved into project coordination or scheduling later that year. Since then, I've worked on a diverse range of projects all around Australia as well as managed a diverse team. This has included gas plants in the Northern Territory in Gladstone, major road and rail infrastructure in all states and territories, as well as many large-scale projects like high-rises, stadiums, and convention centers.

Bringing together manufacturing techniques, client and engineering needs, as well as technology can be a complex process, but, if done right, can lead to great outcomes. This is why I like getting involved in all aspects of the business. I currently get to sit across a number of different streams, and I find myself looking up to sales, project delivery and technology. Connecting and automating workflows between these teams as well as clients is my current focus.

STEPHEN GUMPERT: Thanks, Scott. So my name is Stephan Gumpert. I'm a technical specialist at Autodesk, and I am one of the folks that works together with Scott and the team to try and help them, I guess, move through their project stages. I've been at Autodesk for close to 10 years. I love working with customers to try and help them move through to new workflows and be able to do things better.

Prior to Autodesk, I was a structural draftsman. My mantra for many, many, many years was always wanting to work smarter, not harder. So outside of drafting, I've done loads amounts of programming and automation, but ultimately, it's all about doing things a lot smarter instead of just working harder.

SCOTT PETERSON: OK. Who is InfraBuild? We're a longstanding company that started when BHP opened its first Australian steelworks in 1915. There were lots of milestones over the next 85 years that have shaped who we are today. If we fast-forward from 1915 to the year 2000, this is when BHP spins out of its steel Long Products Division and names it OneSteel. With this change, BHP reinforcing products business becomes OneSteel Reinforcing, which has a diverse portfolio and targeted all market segments of reinforcement supply.

In the late 2000s, OneSteel acquired Smorgon, which then became known as Australian Reinforcing Company, or ARC for short. OneSteel continued to run the two reinforcement distribution businesses. In 2012, OneSteel changed its name to Arrium to better align with its business goals, which in 2017 was purchased by Sanjeev Gupta's GFG Alliance, who rebranded the business InfraBuild in 2019. This is where we find ourselves today. Up next is a short video showing who we are.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- We rely on steel every day. It builds our schools, hospitals, and office towers. It helps us to safely get to where we need to be in cars, across bridges, on our roads, rail, and in the sky. It's used in the stadiums that host sporting and entertainment events. It supports our primary industries and even helps us get a good night's sleep.

While demand is expected to grow, steel production is also energy intensive and globally contributes to around 9% of annual carbon emissions. At InfraBuild, Australia's largest vertically integrated long steel manufacturer, we make steel that is more sustainable with lower embodied carbon by taking advantage of one of steel's unique properties-- it's infinitely recyclable. Here's how. It starts with scrap metal recycling.

- Absolutely everything that you can see, if it wasn't recycled, would finish it up in landfills. We've recently scrapped some trains, cars, fridges, washing machines. All that material is aggregated together and goes through our shredder, where the process separates all the steel from everything else, and then we take out the nonferrous metals, the copper, brass, and aluminum, from the waste. We capture over 98% of recoverable metals in the recycling stream.

- Through InfraBuild's domestic network of recycling facilities across Australia, about 1.4 million tons of metals gets recycled. From our recycling operations, the process scrap then moves to our steel manufacturing area for use in our electric arc furnaces, or EAFs.

- So in the metal shop, we take scrap and we melt it down 92 ton at a time into liquid steel, where we add alloys, cast it into billet, which is then later on rolled.

- During the EAF charging process, EAFs can reach temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than a volcano. Ladles then move the liquid steel to the continuous caster to start the process of making steel billets.

- The billet yard's basically the middle man. So we're receiving melt shop materials, so where they recycle steel, making the billets, which can be anywhere between 12.1 to 5.7 meters length. We feed the furnace, and inside the rod mill and the bar mill, they've got the furnace, which they reheat the billets before it goes into the pressing, compacting, stretching, and making the materials. At the moment, we're doing warm charges, so as soon as it's coming out of the melt shop, we take it away, and it's being made into a material.

- Semifinished billets are then sent to downstream plants for further manufacturing while our finished goods are packaged and prepared for distribution to our customers within Australia and around the world.

- What makes me proud to work for the business is I'm part of a sustainable economy and have been all my life.

[END PLAYBACK]

SCOTT PETERSON: OK, InfraBuild by the numbers-- we're Australia's largest long product steel supplier. We're the second-largest scrap recycler in Australia, 1.4 million tons of recycling scrap used, 3.7 million tons of steel and scrap sold, two electric arc furnaces, 15,000 retail customers, 5,000 employees, 150 sites globally, 113 real-time processing sites, and 35 recycling sites.

We are a global business with an electric arc furnace in Sydney and Laverton. We have many sites all around Australia, with them being predominantly recycling and our distribution businesses, which are shown in the blue and green. We are a manufacturer of high-quality steel and steel products, our business is vertically integrated. And we remain committed to the long-term positive action of creating lower embodied carbon steel.

We manufacture products critical for the building of the nation. Our goal is to become carbon-neutral by 2030. That is the commitment of Sanjeev Gupta, the chairman of GFG Alliance. This will come from a variety of projects which are currently in progress. One of those is our new range of deformed reinforcing bar called Sense 600, which we'll cover in a minute. Other projects center around equipping our clients with clear, accurate, and timely information, empowering them to make well-informed decisions that lead to successful and sustainable outcomes.

In Australia, the primary reinforcement used is the form 500 MPa product with a normal ductility, also known commonly as Rebar 500, and InfraBuild has brought to market a new product called Sense 600. When we started on the Sense 600 journey, there were two primary considerations for the product-- sustainability and easy to use. Recycling is a key component to the sustainability aspirations of Sense 600.

How do we make a more sustainable reinforcing steel? What we have done was use the World Green Building Council's waste hierarchy as a guiding principle. At the top of the hierarchy is reduce, and this should be our main focus. Ideally, we try to stay above the red line. The Sense 600 we're talking about is above the red line because it is produced in a closed-loop recycling process.

The closed-loop recycling is an important aspect of Sense 600 products. We make 500 MPa steels via a combination of blast furnace and electric arc furnace routes. This is not closed loop because the blast furnace route is predominantly iron ore feed. To improve the sustainability credentials, the Sense 600 bars are produced entirely via the electric arc furnace route, making a closed-loop recycling system as it is all produced from scrap feed.

As a result, the global warming potential value of Sense 600 reinforcing bars is less than the global warming potential value for our 500 MPa reinforcing bars. In the following slide, we will see how significantly reduced the net global warming potential figure is for Sense 600 when all the benefits are combined.

For every 500 M bar there is an equivalent Sense 600 bar. We've used the concept of equivalent design capacity diameters, so the Sense 600 bar has the same design capacity as 500 MPa bar. That is, the N12 and S11 had the same design capacity. In the Diameter column, you can see the bar diameters it gives is the same design capacity, which means there is about a 8.35% reduction in diameter.

The area is reduced even more than the diameter because it is a square relationship, 16.7% reduction, which leads to a 16.7% reduction in mass. We saw in the earlier slide that the global warming potential for our 500 MPa product is 1.33. As a result of the production route, that figure comes down to 0.966% for Sense 600.

When we combine this with the reduction in mass for the equivalent 600 MPa bar, the saving is 39% compared with our 500 MPa product solution. Here we can see the impact of changing from 500 M to Sense 600. For these six columns, we would see a reduction of 2.5 tons of CO2, which is a significant saving.

So we've spoken of InfraBuild as a whole, but we're split into three different streams-- recycling, manufacturing, which is our mills, and then we have our distribution network, which is where InfraBuild reinforcing sits. InfraBuild reinforcing, or IBR as it's commonly known, can be considered as a second-stage manufacturer and is responsible for the processing of rebar cores and long products into cut and bent bars to suit project requirements.

We also offer prefabricated solutions. We have two reinforcing distribution businesses on the InfraBuild banner. IBR's focus is on the major projects that define Australia. These could be major civil infrastructure or high-rise buildings in Australia's capital cities.

STEPHEN GUMPERT: That's an amazing introduction there, Scott, some really good advances in the rebar technology, something I wasn't fully aware of either. Let's diverge back to some potential industry challenges that exist in the market today, at least from the perspective of where I see working with customers. Next slide.

So within the market, there are so many things that are, I guess, challenging businesses from a day-to-day perspective. Technology is moving at astronomical rates, with lots of change in the market. Next.

If we think about a couple of these points, it's about potentially integration of siloed data stacks where businesses have multiple things happening at once but in different platforms and different locations, challenges of people returning to work after a beloved friend, COVID, came along and disrupted our world, the increased requirement for automation.

This is a huge, huge request from the industry, along with things like digital twin technology and, of course, the topic that Scott talked about today around sustainability. All these things lead to businesses needing to do things in a much more efficient way, hence the reason why we get to the point where we try and have conversations with customers to be able to show what else it is we can do to drive change. Next.

SCOTT PETERSON: So how we operate-- a project owner engages a design team. A design team develops 3D models and 2D reinforcement drawings. At this stage, the owner looks to engage a contractor, at which point project estimates are developed. Once the contractor has taken on the project, they will then engage InfraBuild Reinforcing. Are then required to reduce bending lists based on 2D drawings as well as the requirements of external and internal stakeholders.

This can be a very time-consuming process, depending on how all parties come together. While IBR doesn't have a direct relationship with many of these investor parties, they need to work alongside them to ensure a successful project. These relationships may include the contractor design team, steel fixers, formworkers, and other services. The reinforcement will then be manufactured just in time to suit the project. The contractor is then responsible for the installation of rebar and/or prefabricated elements.

So where did we start? We started with manual takeoffs. When we recognized the need for advanced tools, we had to move to PDF markup tools to get internal-external people engaged in thinking about how we could leverage technology. Many schedules until recently could not see a time where they could move away from a paper-based system.

AutoCAD 2D becomes a very useful tool, but it was considered very time-consuming, so people resorted to traditional methods. AutoCAD 3D developed, and we started using it for very complex elements and in our prefabrication business. We then moved on to automations with a mix of 2D and 3D plugins.

The challenges-- it's a highly specialized field, and investment in people was significant. There was a considerable amount of 2D drawings, and finding information could be difficult. Another issue was people could interpret the drawings differently, which meant inconsistency. There was a large investment in time and money to develop programs like Rebar Scheduler and GeoPack, which were internal IBR plugins.

Limited visibility-- and what I mean is a lack of data to assess future requirements or project status. This meant we had to invest in specialist project managers. It was also error-prone and a lack of detail on concepts. Poor stakeholder engagement-- the communication is ambiguous, and quite often issues are not dealt with until a product is installed on site. There was an onerous RFI process requiring a lot of detailed written communication that can be misinterpreted.

Why change? We were seeing clients transition to BIM, and they were already supplying us with Revit and IFC files that we could leverage. Revit had parametric rebar families which were ready to go. We were able to implement company standards with limited customization. Shape families were easily mapped to required output values.

Being able to specialize our work gave us a clearer understanding of requirements and enabled us to identify missing elements that may not be considered. This also helped us train new schedulers. We could see students being trained in these systems at universities, TAFE, and school, and it created a larger pool of potential recruits. It was easier to interrogate and optimize bending lists as changes in the schedules were dynamic.

Enhanced coordination and clash detection compared to our previous methods. We saw the platform being customizable using Dynamo or the API. The Forge Viewer was a key factor. We were receiving a considerable amount of BIM files which were time-consuming to convert and import. We felt sharing files via an online viewer would prove more user-friendly, leading to increase stakeholder engagement and improve collaboration.

Industry recognition was a big one as well. If we said Revit or BIM 360, almost everyone in the industry knew what we were talking about. If we said a plugin or other package, they'd be unsure what to expect.

STEPHEN GUMPERT: Which, I guess, leads us to that next conversation. Believe it or not, I still have many people that I interact with where the conversation comes back and says, why BIM? What is BIM for? Why does it help us? And Scott's already iterated quite a few of those.

Let me just run through a series of things where I think the benefit here is so that we can look at it from a slightly different lens. Next slide. So the way I describe BIM is it's the placement of real-world elements to produce that design-- next-- the idea being that it's a multidisciplined environment where you have architecture, structure, MEP, space modeling considerations. But ultimately, it's that placement of real-world elements, moving away from lines, circles, arcs, text, and dimensions to produce those end-design documentations. Next.

As you can see, some, I guess, real-world examples of MEP, concrete, steel, giving you a real sense of that multidiscipline environment. Next. As Scott mentioned, when you're using a BIM-based process, it's parametric. You're modeling those real-world elements with respect to other objects.

Whether it's placing rebar respect to a cover or placing a door in a wall, the parametrics are there to help you do things faster, smarter without the need of thinking of things that are irrelevant and concentrating on the design, for example, placing a door in a wall. That door will automatically cut a hole in the wall for you. Should that door move? Well, the opening will move with it.

These sorts of parametrics are fundamental and key to reducing the time taken to produce those models but also to remove those labor-intensive things that we would think about back in the old days, remembering to update section labels, trimming back lines, all those sort of drafting-type processes that we take out of the place now and allow the system to do for us. Next.

There is also a sustainability aspect, as I said, that leveraging BIM, or Revit in our case, giving this ability to do space modeling as well, so being able to analyze volumes of spaces, being able to leverage the information in the model or the I in BIM to be able to then push that data to other processes to create more information to help make us better decisions ultimately. Next.

Along with being able to do the placement of those real-world elements and, I guess, in a nice, intuitive way, there's also a visualization component to this. If I think back when I started in 2D, a lot of what we did was trying to reverse-visualize what we had drawn in 2D to think of it in a 3D space. Here, as you can see in these images, the visualization piece is there in a really good way for people to, I guess, understand what is happening in that space.

But there's also visualization from a rendering perspective, being able to see views not just in a 2D view but have color-coding, as you can see, rebar color-coding for different diameters. Visually, I can then grab context of what those bars look like or in space of the floor plans down below, that the color-coding represents a volume or some sort of data in relation to that floor plan. Next.

These two points for me are probably one of the key points. As I mentioned earlier, programming was an area that I was heavily involved in previously, creating automations for people to be able to do things in a smarter way. But within Revit, we also have a generative design component, being able to leverage, as Scott mentioned, a Dynamo script, be able to put in some constraints and parameters with respect to a space, and run through thousands of iterations to be able to form the best result based on those requirements when it comes to the placement of those elements.

This, previously, in a 2D space-- forget about it. We would be able to drag a view out to the side, maybe do one or two iterations, and then bring that data back in. Being able to visually be able to automate this is obviously a massive win. Next.

Last but not least, the system is extremely configurable and customizable. Being multidiscipline environment, it needs to have the ability to be able to work in different requirements. Everybody has their way of doing things, but ultimately, this configuration and customization capability means that across the board every person working in this environment works and produces a constant deliverable. There's no, as what we would have said many years ago, drafting a license to anything. It's all standardized, customized, so you've got a constant output. Next.

If we think about the benefits of BIM-- next-- there is huge amounts of benefits here, and you probably just maybe click through these just shortly one bit at a time. If we think about the cost predictability, knowing that we've got a standardized process, that standardized process allows us to, I guess, have an improved schedule because we know things that we do and don't need to do.

And Scott mentioned earlier about the 2D space and having many errors, when you've got configured and standardized processes with, I guess, a fully customizable system, you reduce the errors. You got the ability to spend the time on the design process and optimize that design as opposed to thinking about those 2D workflows and bits and pieces that you would normally be thinking about.

As I said, that old concept, oh, I moved the section to another drawing, I now need to update the section labels, did I do it in plan, did I do it in section, all these things, they're just stuff that happens in the background. Ultimately, though, having a model with all this data with my real-world elements in one place means I have a better understanding of what's happening, which allows me to make better decisions and, I guess, ultimately concentrate on that design. Next.

So I spoke a little bit about automation, and automation is one of the, I guess, disruptors in the market, and it's also an area in which people can gain massive amounts of benefit from their competitors, let's say. Next.

So when we talk about automation, there's two areas where I like to talk about. Next. That is, there is the scripting element of automation, and then there's the coding side of automation. And you heard Scott talk about the fact that they're starting to leverage a lot of Dynamo components and to some degree, InfraBuild, they're starting to look at code now as well. What is the difference between the two, and how would I describe them?

If I were saying to you, you're just thinking about automation, you have no programming capability, you would start with Dynamo. Dynamo is that noncode-required way of, I guess, scripting forms of automation without the need of that extensive background or programming knowledge.

And the system, the Dynamo interface, is actually built very much for people to be able to put some logic together and just run a process in one block to the next block to the next block. In fact, when I went into it with my programming background, it produced a whole bunch of challenges for me because I was already thinking in my code manner, which then led to a whole bunch of challenges for me, but in the end, I got there as well.

The second phase is once you get to a really good case and scenario with your Dynamo scripting, there is a point in time where moving to the next phase and actually building code-based automation gives massive amounts of benefit, the ability to error-trap an error-handle if-then-else-type scenarios in a much more secure and robust way. It is definitely something worth exploring. The coding option is where the real competitive advantage comes in because you can really sit down and narrow in on what it is that you would like to do. Next slide.

So if we look at the-- next. If we look at the automation that we drove when we first started working together here with Scott-- next-- so as we spoke about, we did look at the Dynamo piece. And Scott and his team have built some amazing Dynamo scripts to automate some of this stuff, and I'm sure he's going to go through some of those bits and pieces later on.

But in the near term, they also looked at automation using the Autodesk Platform Services or what was formerly known as Forge, and they built a really nice viewer to, I guess, streamline the information to those people that need it. And that's the difference here. The viewing capability already existed in the Autodesk Docs environment, which they're leveraging today, but it needed to be even simpler for different people and different parts of the business.

From a long-term perspective-- next-- the next level of automation that is bringing consideration at the moment is how do we then take InfraBuild to that next phase, converting some of those Dynamo scripts into .NET plugins? How do we extend the Platform Services automation to that next level?

Well, there's a whole range of things we're looking at because the Autodesk Construction Cloud, which is the backbone of these processes, has a whole range of open APIs. So building those next-level processes to streamline the niche requirements that InfraBuild have to that next level is key to leveraging this automation.

The last thing I would say is when it comes to automation, be careful how much you're going to invest in that automation piece. Once you start seeing the power of automation, you can quickly, quickly go down a rabbit hole of wanting to automate anything and everything.

And one thing to take into consideration is you have a special skill set as an engineering provider. You're not a software provider. So make sure whatever automation you produce fits the purpose for the requirement for what you're trying to automate and not end up getting to a point where you're spending more time and money just maintaining those automations from a long-term perspective. Try and leverage as much out of the box as we can, but definitely automation where they need it. All right. Over to you, Scott.

SCOTT PETERSON: Cool. Thanks, Stephan. I guess we're going to look at a few of our BIM projects now. Modeling reinforcement is a strategic approach used in complex civil infrastructure. It allows all stakeholders to enhance their understanding of the structure that is required to be built. This greater understanding reduces the risk by identifying potential issues, logistics, and buildability before they become critical.

Modeling reinforcement with purpose is crucial to make sure it is not just a technical exercise. Rebar needs to be modeled with the desired manufacturing outcomes in mind to ensure the information contained within the model can be leveraged to manufacture and transport the steel in an efficient way.

There is a need to build large amounts of data into our models to facilitate all the competing requirements. Only certain aspects of this data is meaningful to each external party, and we'll cover in a later slide what needs to be done to reduce the noise.

If we look at the image shown, the complex geometry is not just a radius but a combination of three or four radii. Many of the bars have multiple radii. To achieve this desired structure. There are three issues here. The first is, how do we manufacture these bars? To manufacture efficiently, we need to move the laps to limit the number of radii on a single shape. All this allows us to communicate this effectively to the client and the design team to get their approval for the change.

The second issue is many of the optimized rebar placement methods available in Revit do not allow us to place the [INAUDIBLE] to achieve the output we're targeting. This would leave us sketching each bar to conform to the required profile, which is very time-consuming. Therefore, modelers that work on these projects need to have the skills in place to generate or modify existing geometric Dynamo scripts to place the reinforcement.

The third issue is that the geometry does not meet Revit's rebar shape methodology, so we're required to use freeform bars. This creates a problem for us at IBR as we're unable to have predefined shapes with mapped output values. To overcome this, we need to find another solution as manually extracting the data takes considerable time.

This is where Dynamo comes in. We need to use Dynamo to extract the line geometry from each freeform rebar and then write it back into the parameters contained in the model. The reason why we write it back into the model and don't just extract it straight into our manufacturing system is we need a central point of reference. Passing the early design phase, all interactions are done through a customized ACC Forge Viewer. This removes duplicate information that can provide confusion.

The script shown is just an example of how a modeler might create one and is overly simplistic. To efficiently perform this task, the person writing the script needs to ensure the optimum selection and filtering method is used to select the objects and not just a singular selection as shown. The requirements for each project can be unique, and scripts can be made overly complex if one script to suit all approaches applied.

This can result in numerous input values which in itself become inefficient for the modeler on long-term projects. This is why Dynamo can be really useful as existing scripts can be adapted to suit project requirements requiring minimal inputs. To ensure an optimal runtime on the script, it is extremely important for the developer to have a proficient understanding of list management in Dynamo.

It's not always possible to use shape codes, and we need to have a robust, nonstandard shape process. Proficient Dynamo skills are essential to ensure efficient rebar placement and interrogation of geometric characteristics of freeform bars which are unavoidable. Modeling for purpose so we export the parameter values of 3D objects into our manufacturing system is extremely important. When we model for this purpose, it can make it extremely difficult to automate the output of 2D drawings to conform to traditional conventions.

So for this one, we're going to look at some wind farm bases. With all projects, rebar optimization is an extremely important part of the detailing process. Model geometry quite often isn't how our bars get manufactured, so getting the correct output geometry is critical. Dynamo is a key part to speed up the model bar placement.

When fewer variations in rebars are used, we can streamline the manufacturing and tagging process. This means we can greatly reduce the number of work hours required to produce wind farm bases like this one. Varying length straight rebars are something that are very easy to model as well as manufacture with our modern equipment.

But when we look to transport these to site and install them, bearing bars consume a considerable amount of work hours with elements like this base. Bearing sets would mean more bundles, so additional crane lifts. Site teams would need to spread out the bundles on the ground and sort them to smallest to largest lengths.

Our industry has come to expect one bar mark or bundle for placement. This is due to the fact it was the easiest way to communicate size and shape plus how many bars are installed at the location. We quite often use the analogy that we create a jigsaw puzzle and the site team need to bring it back together. Using Revit, we're easily able to communicate the information the site team need.

It makes it possible to group items together that in the past we were not able to. This can greatly reduce the number of bundles and time spent sorting on site. To further reduce the number of bundles, we standardize varying bar lengths in increments of about 1 meter for a project like this one. The bars shown in pink would typically have been scheduled at six different lengths.

The benefits of rationalizing bundles is that it reduces the likelihood of bars being placed in the wrong position. All these changes come at a cost, which is increased tonnage, which can be a primary consideration for the client from a price and sustainability aspect. Prior to modeling bases like this, our clients would potentially not understand what we're trying to achieve.

After the first couple of basses get delivered, then they would come back to us to implement the changes we'd proposed. Using Revit in the long view, the client can appreciate impact of the decisions, and we can agree prior to supply. This removes the confusion of having to change midway through supply.

So model rebar versus what we would schedule-- this is a frequent occurrence on civil projects where we need to model a bar to suit profile, but the natural flexibility of the bar is sufficient and doesn't require processing. These bars, if they were to be supplied as straight, can be modeled as freeform, and Revit will transfer the overall length to a required shape code parameter.

When we need to add a [INAUDIBLE] another M profile, this doesn't work. So for objects like this, we either need to create an additional straight-shape code with formulas in them to output hook or L-bars or use Dynamo for the export function. We choose to use shape codes as it then allows us to make sure the external stakeholders can see what's going on in the online model. This can be problematic as it is very easy for the modelers to overlook switching the shape codes. So we use custom Dynamo scripts to do these assignments as well as perform checks to ensure these issues don't arise.

This is the impact of optimization. The schedule length, which is the number of bars, is greatly reduced, 45 pages down to 18. The impact for us is faster manufacturing, loading, and restraining times. For our clients, the impacts are reduced lifts on site and work hours sorting and placing the steel.

When we talk about sustainability, there is an increase in tonnage, but many other factors come into play. The reduction of crane movements in the initial delivery phase as well as sorting bundles plus a reduction in work hours required on site is considerable. Many of these wind farm projects are remote and require significant infrastructure to accommodate people. Being able to contribute to reducing work hours and potential timelines of projects has the ability to easily offset the increase in tonnage.

This is a short video to show rebar placement of a few bars using Dynamo. We use smaller scripts as each base profile, and engineering requirements are unique. This makes it easier to customize scripts as we move from one place to the next.

So some key learnings-- using Revit allows for modifications to be dynamic and, in combination with our online viewer, creates increased engagement with our clients prior to delivery. A higher percentage of rebar is models to fit geometry but is dimensionally incorrect for fabrication. The Viewer can be used for demonstrating staging and bundling.

As well as [INAUDIBLE] supply, IBR focus on providing custom solutions like prefabrication. This could be of benefit for any number of situations. Some of them are temporary works, reduced lifting, reduced rigging, safety on site.

With this one, I want to focus on the internal process that go on in a business like ours. We have an initial design from the engineer, and our detailers spend considerable time developing solutions to suit our client needs. The first cages are designed, prepared by a team. If you look at it, there are two different ligature sets, and then each set have a number of bars. A team have detailed the cages due to the typical industry shape requirements plus modeling the sets at the locations of the cage.

These lig sets go through a two-stage process in our factory before the cage is assembled. The ligs are first manufacturered [INAUDIBLE] core machines, then bundled and moved to our prefabrication area. Jigs are then set up to weld the lig sets together. We are looking at 27 minutes total time to manufacture the ligs and weld the slices.

Here we are with a different case design for the same element. If you look at the arrangement here, we can manufacture these in one piece from our [INAUDIBLE] core machines. They're difficult to run because the machine needs to be slowed down. If this site was to be proposed to a manufacturing team, they would have been resistant because they couldn't see the benefits.

Using Revit to do this design and assigning timing has allowed us to show the overall benefits of the singular cage, 27 minutes of preassembly time down to 10 minutes. It has also allowed the detailer to quantify the impact of the change in the weight to the cage and demonstrate it meets the design team's requirements to ensure signoff.

Just some rough numbers, but if we were to do this for 40 floors and each floor had 10 of these columns, this would be a reduction of 113 work hours and saving a 10 ton of reinforcement. We use a combination of drawings as well as online viewer to get all the parties internally and externally to agree to this solution. Trying to do this without the model in the cloud would likely see one or more parties being disconnected and not agreeing to the design.

One of these cases is inefficient, but automating the cage creation saves us considerable time and gets our team away from doing all the meaningless clicks and movements. It allows them to spend time doing what they're great at, which is coming up with customized solutions that benefit our clients and our business. This group was created by Christina, one of our talented detailers. As you can see from the script, there was a lot of inputs needed. Simplified user interfaces is key. Otherwise, detailers will revert back to the manual process. How'd we do?

STEPHEN GUMPERT: Awesome. All right. So let's talk about how we got to this place, leveraging cloud. Obviously, InfraBuild wasn't here in the beginning, but Autodesk came along. And we spoke to Scott about, what is those next steps look like? So Scott explained what they do currently today, and then at Autodesk, we came down and we sat down and said, look, let me show you what the possibility was. And this is where we talked about the introduction of cloud. Next slide.

Cloud in the broad space of the industry is that next step for digital transformation, and digital transformation is definitely one of the hottest topics around at the moment. So many people are looking to move away from those analog processes to a digital process to make the business more efficient in what they do. Next slide.

So Autodesk has been on this journey for quite a few years. Back from the acquisition of Navisworks through to the Vela Systems acquisition, BIM 360 Team, Field, PlanGrid acquisition, a whole range of automations to where we are today with the Autodesk Construction Cloud, Autodesk has been investing in this space for many years and has a quite strong and robust solution to be able to have a strong common data environment, or what's referred to as a CDE. Next.

This common data environment allows Scott and the team to be able to communicate with all the people in their process internally, externally, albeit at the moment I don't think we're doing external communication just yet, but it is building those robust processes so that as the business scales in this space, the Autodesk Construction Cloud or common data environment allows them to scale at the same time. It also gives people the viewing capability in a nice web-based environment to give them the ability to make decisions without the need of having to open up Revit every single time to look at files. Next.

So what did this process look like? Because obviously, we didn't just come in and say, hey, Scott, you need to use the cloud. And to be honest and if I think back at the original conversations, initially, there was a little bit of hesitation, and that is to be expected because-- let's be realistic-- we work in an environment where we're executing business with the current processes we do, and if there's no real challenges or problems, why even change? But it's about looking at those other possibilities. Next.

So initially, it was just a basic discussion. How do we move from server-based to cloud-based, giving people the ability to work from home, visualize data in a much more stronger way? And there was definitely some desire in that space. The good part for Scott in these additional conversations was Docs, which was the requirement for this cloud aspect, sat in the AEC Collection, which is what predominantly at InfraBuild they were leveraging. Next.

Next. The docs piece that was then-- the conversation then moved to the BIM Collaborate Pro piece for collaboration, and this is the part that we're working on at the moment, being able to have an environment where multiple people can work in one place in the cloud and be able to leverage all that data in a nice, streamlined way from one step to the next. And as their team scales and more and more people move into that Revit space, it is giving us the power to be able to do that. Next.

Ultimately, the end goal is, I guess, managing the fixers and riggers out on site, so being able to transfer data through the Construction Cloud into a controlled manner with the approval processes in place to be able to manage and process the data from that design or premanufacturing phase through into manufacturing and then ultimately in that rigging space.

As Scott spoke about and will demonstrate later, they're already leveraging the power of the Autodesk Platform Services APIs to be able to simplify the viewing capability of what's actually stored inside the Construction Cloud to be able to streamline the way people consume this information downstream at a later point in time, which is also a massive benefit. Next.

The Construction Cloud, as you can see here, has many, many, many facets, and for those of you unfamiliar, I would say the term "Construction Cloud" is an umbrella statement because it actually does have a lot of components to it. Next. If you think about these modules, they're LEGO pieces that build a process or build a platform as you require it.

Today, at InfraBuild, Scott and his team are leveraging Docs. They're starting to leverage BIM Collaborate Pro together with the features and tools of Revit inside of the AEC Collection. But moving forward in long term, you can see the capabilities that they have here is everything from being able to do estimating with the audit with takeoff.

And then, of course once those fixers, either internally or externally, start fixing those rebars, thinking, how do we manage the transportation of this rebar to site? How do we know, from a tracking perspective, what's been delivered, what's been installed? How do we take photos of stuff to track progress out on site? Et cetera, et cetera. Build gives us that capability. So this platform will allow Scott and InfraBuild to be able to scale what they're doing as their capability and technology grows internally inside of InfraBuild. Next.

Now the big question is, why do we always do this? And this is a common question or common scenario that we go through with many customers. And quite simply put, it is much cheaper and much easier to fix a problem in the model back in the office than it is to try and fix something out on site. You heard Scott talk about the optimization of rebar to minimize impact on the manufacturer but also minimize the possibility of errors out on site.

So it's being able to analyze the data in a visual context inside of the Construction Cloud and in the design space to fix those problems in the design space before you get out to construction because the cost of fixing things out on site far outweighs fixing it back in the model. Next.

Ultimately, it's taking all those I guess, ad-hoc processes on the left, streamlining them through the Construction Cloud to be able to predictively look at all the information in a nice, manicured way to be able to make the right decisions when you need it.