Accelerating high-tech project start. Discover how a general contractor leverages cutting-edge tools for rapid mobilization.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: All right. Hello, everyone. And welcome on the Autodesk University session, accelerating high-tech project starts. Discover how a general contractor leverages cutting-edge tools for rapid mobilization.

THOMAS NAGEL: So my name is Thomas Nagel. And we want just to make sure with the safe harbor that what we show today is a best practice from Exyte. It is not a purchasing or a sales pitch. So everything you see here should not lead to a purchasing decision on your side.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: So, hi, everyone. My name is Grzegorz Pilarski. And I'm BIM manager at Exyte in Central Europe. In my role as BIM manager, I oversee the implementation and integration of building information modeling across our projects, ensuring that our designs are not only innovative but also optimized for precision and efficiency. My primary focus is on enhancing collaboration between our multidisciplinary teams and streamlining our workflows to deliver exceptional results to our clients.

THOMAS NAGEL: So my name is Thomas Nagel. I'm a senior business, a senior principal business consultant at Autodesk. And my role is to help customers on their digital journeys, such as Exyte, and Greg here to understand their workflows, processes, their pains and gains. I have a history of more than 30 years in the industry. And from the first day on since 1992 until now, my work was executing projects and helping companies to become more digital and help them on a digital transformation journey.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: During this session, we will start by describing our partnership between Exyte and Autodesk. Then we will explore the need and benefits of accelerating BIM implementation. Then we will dive into our common challenges in standardization. Afterwards, we will present our Exyte approach to project configuration. And finally, we will wrap up with our lessons learned.

Introducing Exyte-- so Exyte is a global leader in engineering, design, and delivery of high-tech facilities, including clean-room and odor-control environments. Our core business sectors include advanced technology facilities, biopharma and life science, and data centers. In Exyte, we believe the future of technology is not only something we anticipate, it is what we actively shape and bring to life. As BIN department at Exyte, we contribute to that vision by supporting the digital transformation in construction industry.

THOMAS NAGEL: I would like to say a few words about how Autodesk is working together in partner with Exyte. Exyte is an enterprise business agreement partner, where we have an account team, as you say, with different experts, with different customer success managers, how we try to support Exyte on every detail on their engineering and project execution way of doing things.

Also, like Greg said, we believe a better world can be designed and made for all of them. And this is what we try to achieve together with Exyte. We have also made a match of our visions. And we looked at the values from Exyte and to our values. And there is really a good match of what we would like to achieve, now, also together as a team, as a strategic partnership.

Discovery-- so when we do work together with Exyte, we also executed a discovery workshop a couple of months and years ago where we were trying to understand what the BIM department would like to achieve.

And based on this workshop, we really went into the details from many different stakeholders from sales, project execution, engineering, site services, the board of Exyte, the customer of Exyte, the BIM manager of Exyte. And we looked at their pains, gains, their wishes, what benefits could be achieved if we improve and help, let's say the BIM processes. We created user stories and also changed stories to help the communication within Exyte.

And out of this workshop, we looked at typical industry outcomes overview. And together with Exyte, we said, OK, what of the typical outcomes of operational efficiency, of risk reduction, of business growth you would like to improve. So how can we understand what you would like to improve so that everything we do together will maybe pay in to the following sections?

And then we came up with four areas, so increase operational efficiency by optimizing engineering workflows, by enabling transparency and quality in all workflows; automate design processes, connect stakeholders, and so on; reduce project risks-- very important, especially because Exyte is executing huge, big mega projects; and also maybe win more business and increase customer and user experience.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: Accelerating BIM implementation-- in our BIN department, we often used to say, we just started and we are already late. And I'm sure the same feeling is in every design office because implementation of BIN processes is crucial in all our projects from the first day.

With a great effort of our team, we are trying to change the mindset to follow our new saying, it's never too late to start. It is always too late to wait. This is driving us to be proactive and to ensure that every step we take is helping us to deliver on time and in the required quality.

It is what to discuss, what are the benefits of early implementation? So first of all, it enables coordination from day one, what is absolutely crucial for our big project teams that are working on high-tech projects. It's also improving our quality of our deliverables and of our Revit models. It also reduced the work that we spent on design and also reducing the cost.

So always when we need to change our templates, rename our drawings, or jump to our scripts to reconfigure them, it is something what is costing a lot of time. And by proper BIM implementation, we can reduce that a lot. Another aspect is that it is speeding up the project execution and design. It is also streamlining the work and communication in our team. And last but not least, it is helping us to bring the right quality in the right time, what is highly visible and is bringing values to our customers.

Now let's talk about the common challenges that we have in traditional BIM setup. So we all know that it is simply time consuming. Manual data entry is taking time, and also always we do multiple mistakes. It is also very complex task. So we have large projects where many stakeholders are involved, multiple disciplines, and over 200 piping and ductwork systems in every project.

Our team is diverse, so we are working with international Exyte offices. We are working with design partners, with subcontractors, and our goal is to have a consistent project documentation. A final challenge, which is one of the biggest challenges for us, is the interoperability. So we are working with sometimes different software, with different templates, with different families. And we need to bring it all on track.

Our approach to project setup at Exyte-- so first I would like to explain what are our standard tools that we use. We are using mostly Autodesk software and tools. And this is Revit, AutoCAD Plant 3D, AutoCAD, Navisworks for coordination, and we use multiple tools to ensure quality in our deliverables. And here we use Autodesk Validation Tool. We use coordination tool for Navisworks, Revit model checker. And all of them are integrated in ACC platform.

What are our exact projects? What is the size of our average projects? So in Exyte, we usually work with quite large projects. And average floor area is around 80,000 square meters. On average in project, we use over 3,000 different families and types over one million Revit objects, more than 200 different piping and ductwork systems. In detailed design, we have around 70 models, and it is rising in the construction phase up to 150 models.

And we have defined what are our main challenges and what are our goals we want to achieve. So we are lacking of unified standards between multinational company branches. We are also working with different project locations, so we have different building codes and regulations. Very often, we need to follow customer standards when it comes to colors, to naming, to drawing naming, to different attributes. And simply, our products are very complex. We are working with special equipment, so we have custom families. We have multiple piping and ductwork systems. And we have tight schedules.

So our goal is to facilitate model collaboration and work sharing between all our offices. We want to deliver consistent documentation. We want to provide data that is trusted. We want to-- we are looking for a tailored solution so that we can adapt it to the project needs. And we want to streamline our processes.

Let's now shift our focus on how we can prepare ourselves for the future projects. So first of all, the standardization is a key. We have standardized our protocols, our guidelines, templates in a way that they can be quickly adapted. We've also standardized our common data environment platform, which is ACC. So we designed our workflows and processes. We standardized our folder structure that is used in every project. And we also defined how we manage permission to folders.

We also understand our resources. In the beginning of the project, we clarified where are project key members. The roles, responsibilities, and tasks are clearly communicated in our protocols. We also built a BIM product setup team, which is a dedicated team experienced in setting up BIM in the beginning of the project. And we also have our automation team that is constantly working on improvements and always available to support us in projects.

We also need a strong understanding of our software and technology. We continuously improve software knowledge. We optimize our processes and review them regularly. We explore which tools we can use to generate our deliverables. We also provide trainings to our teams. And we also build the teams considering their skills. So we always combine someone who is new to our company or is fresh in the design with someone who has more expertise.

We also try to engage all stakeholders in an early phase. By engaging them very early in the project, we can clarify our expectations, we can identify the risks and opportunities, and we can build relation with them.

Another essential tool that we use are very simple checklists. They bring really huge benefits to implementation of projects. So we can ensure consistency across all the tasks. We can make sure that the tasks are completed in the right sequence. We can also track that the task has been completed. And checklists, they provide clarity to the team. They reduce stress. They increase encourage and focus on the tasks.

In this slide, I would like to bring attention to how we approach template standardization at Exyte. We recognized early on that flexibility is crucial for us. We decided to make our templates customizable. And this is described in three steps. So first, we program the project. We collect all necessary data.

Second, we fill all the information about our project to our templates, which are in form of Excel. And based on that, we can generate our BIM-CAD documentation and Revit templates. The third step is optimization and control. And before we jump to details, two examples how this is implemented into our project, I will hand over to Thomas for an introduction to what is Dynamo.

THOMAS NAGEL: So what is Dynamo? I've heard customers saying, hey, our new axle is Dynamo. And another customer is describing it that it is our Swiss knife. So Dynamo is an open-source software, which is easy to learn. So you can program and automate processes and working steps just by a simple way of doing visual programming.

Again, it is open source. It is added inside of Autodesk technologies, such as Revit and others. And you have a visual interface just to design logic routines. You can create geometry. You can create workflows. You can take data from one source, as Greg will show later on, and bring it to another area such as Revit. So it has an interface to multiple softwares. It is, as the customer said, really a Swiss knife.

And what I like on this picture is to explain maybe where you would locate Dynamo. And Dynamo is, if you look at programming software and languages, it is maybe in low-hanging fruit. So normal people are able to use Dynamo to improve their workflows and processes and data handovers and everything.

Normally, programming is a task for a programmer. And this programmer has to understand what is needed from the user, maybe, or from an BIM manager or from an operative person. And also, it is not easy to use. This may change now with ChatGPT. But the visual programming shows you the possibility of how to connect maybe data, what we'll get out of it.

And you can just by entering values inside of the Dynamo, you can see the results of your programming. You can see your results of creating geometry or handing over data. So this makes it so, first of all, so easy to learn, so easy to adopt. And then the results can be checked also very easily.

And here you see on the left-hand side, the old way of doing things. You must be maybe a specialist. You need to understand programming languages. And on the right-hand side, it is a way to simplify things with Dynamo.

And Dynamo is always also split into different phases. So maybe at the left-hand side, Dynamo is now reading data from a certain area such as an Excel list, for example. Then it is using the data, computing the data. And then, it is writing it into an area such as Revit family, or Revit et al, or creating geometry.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: Now I will jump to examples of our standardization at Exyte. So part of our workflow that we built to set up in our projects is to utilize combination of Excel-Dynamo with Revit to populate information from Excel into our models.

As a first practical example, I'll take filling out project information to our Revit models. So in the early phase of a project, we are collecting all the data into our project information sheet, which is then, with support of Dynamo script, loaded to the Revit project information. The Revit project information includes also all of the parameters with what is necessary for exporting proper IFC files. This is really improving efficiency by reducing time and also reducing the mistakes that we would normally do.

A second example is how we build our attribute list in the project. So we have a large Excel file where we listed all our standards parameters at Exyte. This list is in every project developed by adding parameters that are needed in a specific project. And in next step, directly from the Excel file, we can generate our LOD matrix.

It is a document that we can print that is our deliverable. And it's defining the requirements for LOD and also for parameters for object types. And the same Excel file is also used to load parameters from shared parameter file to Revit model to simply build our template. So we attempted our template that is created for our project needs.

Next steps is creating materials. So we have a standard tool, which is our Exyte MEP system list. It is a list in Excel with mechanical-- so with ductwork systems, with piping systems, and with electrical systems.

And in the first steps, we create materials in Revit. So we can simply select in the first column what are the systems that are necessary in our project or in our model. And then with use of Dynamo, we can create materials with a naming convention that we established and with colors of the graphic that we defined in our medium list.

In second step, we can create the piping and ductwork systems. So we use the same Excel file. So it is one centralized place for all our MEP information in the project. And we can create our piping systems directly. In the piping systems, the Dynamo is giving the name to the system. It is overriding the graphic with the right color. It's assigning the material that was created in the previous step and is also filling the other information like abbreviation or description of the system.

We also create our filters using Dynamo. So we didn't want to have one template for every project because we could end up with hundreds or thousands of different filters. So we can build it according to the systems that we have in our projects. And this is helping us to maintain the right graphic in the projects and in our drawings.

In the next step, we also create worksets using Dynamo. So we have our standard list of worksets. And there is a selection column when we can select what are the works that are needed for our project or our discipline. And the boxes are loaded to the model.

Now I will play a short video that is presenting how we built our templates in Exyte using Dynamo.

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We call it our Revit template configurator. And we start with project information. This is our standard parameter list. And the parameters will be assigned to the categories. And all the parameters are loaded from shared parameter file. Second step, we create our project levels. So we define project levels in an Excel sheet. And by selecting a building, we can load them to our model.

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In the next step, we create our views. And when we create our views, we apply our view template for the discipline. And we can see that the views are presented in the project browser. And for every level, we a view created.

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In projects, we are loading also project information so we can ensure that in all models, we loaded the same information about our projects. We can quickly create our worksets. So here we avoid any typo mistakes. And this is our standard list of works that we use.

Using our medium list, we can define what systems should be loaded to the model. And in the first step, we create our materials. Materials are created, and the graphic is assigned.

We create also materials for ductwork systems. And in next step, we can create our piping and ductwork systems. It is a very quick step when we can create multiple piping systems and all information are coming directly from our standard medium list.

Next step, we create our ductwork systems, and we create our filters.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We are also using AutoCAD in our project. And to ensure that we can provide consistent deliverables not only from using Revit but also AutoCAD, we have generated a Dynamo script that is generating a LSP file and the LSP file based on the selection of the systems that we'll be used in our project.

The LSP file can create all the layers accordingly by providing the correct name, assigning colors and line settings. And with another LSP, we can create our template that is drawing all the lines in the AutoCAD space and also providing tags to all the lines.

We are also managing our federated model in Navisworks. And here we utilize Dynamo at first to create search sets. So in every project, we have a standard tool, which is our model list. The model list is necessary in our big projects to understand who is responsible for what models. And with the use of the model list, using, again, Dynamo, we generate XML file that is defining all the search sets. And the search sets then can be very quickly imported into Navisworks.

We are also using Dynamo to build our clusters. So always for our clusters, we define using clash test matrix. In the matrix, we define the models that are checked against other models and the settings for the tests. And again, we generate XML file that can be downloaded to Navisworks. And at the setup of the clash-test list, it's much faster.

Another important aspect of the standardization exercise are our predefined workflows. So we have multiple workflows that are well documented. We document every workflow. And we are always trying to optimize them with next projects. As far as possible, we integrate them with our ACC platform. For every workflow, it is clearly defined what are the roles, tasks, responsibilities.

We develop for most of our workflows Revit templates. So if the workflow is related to Revit, we have a ready-to-use Revit template. And they can be very quickly adapted to every other project.

Revit-dependent views-- so this is another very interesting function in Revit that is helping us to accelerate our design and delivery of our sheets. So dependent views are-- I'll link to our two primary views. It means that the changes in the parent view are applied also to the dependent view.

This is very helpful when we break down large areas to multiple sheets what happens often in our projects. What we can do using Dynamo, we can develop our deliverable list or task-information delivery plan. So we list all our drawings, all our views. We define what sectors should be applied to the views, what view templates should be applied.

We define what is the title block that should be loaded to the views. We define how the title block, what information should be placed in the title block. And with a very simple Excel list and also Dynamo script, we can generate the views, generate the sheets, place the views on the sheets. So the process is automated, and it's really streamlining our work. I will hand over to Thomas.

THOMAS NAGEL: Yeah, thank you, Greg. I have to say, by all the things you are doing here with Dynamo, I would say also my Swiss knife was not a bad description. So you can see that in many different workflows and steps, Dynamo can be used in setting up in project very fast in something like this.

And what Greg described is to set up a project to have high-quality Revit models, maybe during the process, during the project, and for the handover for final customers. And he mentioned that they are using at the moment still the model checker within Revit.

And there is another class from Exyte. And Exyte had rolled out for one mega project and functionality called Autodesk Validation Tool. And the Autodesk Validation Tool is able to automate the check, checking of models which are saved in the ACC and Autodesk Docs. Here you see maybe the name of the class.

If you want to see it later on as a recording, as maybe even live, just have a look onto it. And the Autodesk Validation Tool is fully automated inside of Autodesk Docs, which is part-- it is the common data environment from Autodesk Construction Cloud.

And when you have your workflows in Revit and it gets uploaded maybe from a supplier, then there is a preconfigured and customized validation check script, which is then checking the models, according to the demands and the requirements you set up, maybe for your partners, maybe for your engineering team. And this will be done automatically. It will create, let's say, an overview of all the errors which are inside of the model.

There might be some major problems. And there might be some small problems. But this will be also identified and brought to a Power BI dashboard, where you can see right away, without any manual interaction, that maybe the model is either good or is not good and has to be modified again.

So if we look at the typical structure, how does this work? Then you have on the left-hand side maybe many internal and external teams or team members working in Revit models. And then they bring it, let's say they work in the cloud with Revit Cloud Worksharing in Autodesk Docs.

And when it gets to a certain status or after work-in-progress, you share it or somebody is uploading it, then the validation process starts, identifies problems or issues maybe with the model and bringing the data over to a Microsoft Azure environment where then Exyte, for example, can use a Power BI dashboard identifying the models who loaded it up, something like this. And then you can bring it back to the team members saying, here are some issues. Please provide a next version of a cleaned Revit model.

And then it gets to the construction site to the people who have to work on site. And at least just as a sneak preview, the quality could be improved clearly on this project. And the engineering team was always ahead of the game, so they were not late. The quality was good. That construction team had all the models, all the plans on site, and could work seamlessly with good high-quality models and sheets.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: A few words about our standardization in ACC and Exyte. And so ACC is our standard common data environment in all our projects. We standardized our folder structure, which is used in every project, what is helping to our team to work on multiple projects. We standardized our project roles and our approach to managing permissions into the folders.

We also applied file-naming standards to folders. We defined multiple workflows, which are now available as templates that we can easily implement to our next projects. And we created many trainings and presentations. So we are always onboarding our new members of Exyte to our standard ACC as well as our design partners, our subcontractors in our projects.

A few words about naming standard, which is really a great feature in ACC, and it helps us a lot. So what we can do in ACC is we can define naming convention by creating attributes. And it can be adapted to any naming convention that you use. So it is very, very simple to use. And what will happen in next step when you enforce the naming convention in your folders? If a document is loaded to ACC folder that does not follow the right naming, it will be located in the holding area.

And it doesn't mean that the document is simply wrong and that it won't get to ACC. The user can access the holding area and can validate and correct the file name. So this really is helping us to improve the quality. It reduced the time that we spend on checking if our design team is providing the deliverables with the correct naming. So I highly recommend using the tool.

And to summarize a bit, the use of ACC at Exyte-- ACC really helped us to integrate all our processes into one place. So we have multiple workflows. We have multiple special processes in different projects. And it is really important to have them all centralized in one place. But by using ACC in our projects, we are quite confident that everything is precise and is in the right place.

BIM implementation team-- so I wanted to speak a bit more about the BIM implementation team. So there is another popular saying in our BIM department at Exyte, which is, every project is different, but problems are the same. So we recognize that there is a set of challenges in every project. And the challenges are changing along the different stages of the project. So for that reason, we decided to look for improvement to manage the special challenges.

And we came to an idea to build a dedicated team for BIM implementation. So the team also called, as we call it, BIM task force setup-- the team is responsible for implementing all necessary workflows, tools, in the beginning of our project. So their responsibility is to identify the project requirements, is to establish all project standards, is to implement CDE in the project, is to set up our models, define our workflows and optimize them, and also to set up a quality-assurance plan for our project.

So the project that the team is expertise in is integrating BIM in early phase. And the picture, I think, is reflecting the task very well.

So what is our goal here? We noticed that in every project in the beginning, and the beginning is actually-- it takes not only a few weeks, but a few months. It takes-- it is a big effort to implement all the processes. It is a special challenge. And it is a bit different task than the father BIM management that, of course, it is ongoing in every project. But the difficulties and the challenges are different.

That's why in the beginning of the projects, we are onboarding our BIM implementation team. And they are responsible for the initial setup. They understand the priorities. And they can implement all the necessary tools and workflows in the right time.

After the time when, let's say, the project is already running the way we expect, the BIM management is handed over more and more to the BIM management team that will stay in the project throughout the project life cycle. And as represented on the picture, this is what we expect to achieve. So we reduce our time spent on the implementation and on BIM management.

But it's not only time. It is bringing much more benefits. So it's really time-efficient. The team is using Dynamo to automate many processes. And it can reduce time of the work up to 70% or 80%. We can also faster adapt our standards to the customer requirements. And the reducement of the time is here around 50% or even more.

We can also accelerate documentation processes. This is very important for us so that we can deliver our products early. And we can also improve our quality. So we have many automated processes that reduce errors in documentation. And by early implementation, we can also ensure a proper collaboration in the product of our team.

Another cause we believe we achieve with our approach is that we can make our team to be more efficient. So they know from day one what are the tasks, what tools they use, where to save the documents, where to get all the documents. And this is increasing efficiency of about 30% to 40%. We are also using advanced tools. We are using Dynamo. We are implementing the tools in an early phase, what is also increasing our efficiency.

Talking about cost savings-- so we spend, of course, less time on implementing it, but also much less time on any reworks, and also enhancing model quality and compliance. So we can deliver our products with a higher quality. And we reduce the number of the revision and updates. And we can reduce our revisions to 20% to 30% when it comes to delivery of our sheets. This is a significant improvement.

I would like to now wrap up our session with some key lessons learned. First of all, standardization is absolutely a key. And I can recommend to all design offices to really spend time on standardization. It is bringing many benefits. And sometimes it can be pain. But in the next project, you will definitely see all the benefits of it.

It is super important in projects, but also in our BIN departments, to define roles and responsibilities. If possible, we highly recommend to have the special dedicated team for implementing BIM. The team, they are experienced. They won't be surprised by the challenges that pop up in the beginning of the project. And when we have projects that last for many years, coming back to the same challenges, it is sometimes a surprise. So having the dedicated team is, I believe, a really good approach.

All processes should be documented. So sometimes we forget about it. We do something. After a few months, we don't remember anymore how did it work. But it worked. So we pay now really big attention to the documentation. It takes more time in the beginning. It brings huge benefits later on.

Explore new solutions. So, yes, there are many solutions on the market. There are many features that also Autodesk is releasing. Sometimes someone could be skeptic at the beginning. But it's always worth to try it because a change in the beginning is hard. But we need to improve, and we need to try new solutions. Always with a new tool, it's good to test it before it is really used in the project, but it's important to explore.

Quality is important. So sometimes in the projects, we believe that quality control is not so necessary when we have a quality assurance, when we define what is the quality in our project. But it's always good to have some control of the quality. And it makes not only the deliverables simply in a better condition, but also the team is more happy.

Create checklists. Checklists are a very simple tool. For some, it could be something a bit old-fashioned, but we were surprised how happy are our colleagues, our newcomers to Exyte when they have a clear understanding of what are the tasks, what is the sequence of the tasks, and how we can also report that the tasks are completed.

And lessons learned-- so we have now lessons-learned slides. And lessons learned are important. It's always good to find time for lessons learned. We recommend we do it in every project phase at least once. We look over all our processes. We look for improvements. And it is always something we can improve. And now, we would like to thank you.

THOMAS NAGEL: Before we say thank you and goodbye, I would like to share one saying from the company where I come from. We had always the saying, tell me how your project starts. I will tell you how it ends. And I think this describes very well so what Greg was presenting here with the BIM setup team, creating a lot of work and concentration and focus on the starting phase of a project so that it can run over years, maybe smoothly.

This was my saying, I wanted to share after Greg shared so many. So I say thank you. If you have any questions, you can also reach out to me.

GRZEGORZ PILARSKI: Thank you.