Pure Salmon is a land-based Atlantic salmon farming company with a vision to bring the aquaculture industry to the next level. Operating globally and on target to produce 260,000 tons of salmon per year, the company is set to become one of the world leaders in high-quality, sustainable salmon.
With land-based farms using state-of-the-art technology, fish are reared in the healthiest living conditions possible that closely replicate the positive qualities of their natural environment. Free from antibiotics, pesticides, hormones and microplastics, this improves food quality for the better.
As a global food production operator, Pure Salmon have teams based worldwide in strategically selected locations. From Norway and France to the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, Japan and the United States, their teams must connect and collaborate across geographies and time zones.
Using Recirculated Aquaculture System (RAS) technology, Pure Salmon’s production facilities are state-of-the-art. As the world’s population grows, so does the demand for increased sources of protein.
For Pure Salmon, this means demand and growth in their production facilities. And they knew that being able to capture, manage, and retain data cross-functionally and throughout a project’s lifecycle would drastically reduce the cost and time spent on each new project.
With two new facilities under development in Virginia in the United States and in Brunei, Azza Nureldin, BIM Lead for Pure Salmon, turned to Autodesk Build and BIM Collaborate Pro —Autodesk Construction Cloud solutions, to create efficiency gains when it came to project delivery.
“Autodesk has been a market leader for design and make software for years, “reflects Azza. “This means I place huge trust in the adaptability and flexibility of their software.”
Working with their dedicated Autodesk Customer Success and Autodesk Services team, Pure Salmon developed a technology and change management strategy for onboarding and training employees, consultants and contractors.
“Addressing the pain points we have had in the past with our processes was the first step of our journey,” says Azza. “Not having to navigate between multiple systems using different interfaces was a key priority when it came to collaboration,” shares Azza.
For the teams on the ground, a structured approach to change management also helped to create a shared understanding of where documentation, data and information would be captured, stored and shared.
“We understand some team members have their preferred ways of working, so we needed to create a shared vision on the benefits of working in one central space which Autodesk’s team were able to facilitate,” says Azza.
Pure Salmon’s implementation plan – designed specifically for them by Autodesk’s Services team – supported their extended team to adopt new processes smoothly and efficiently. And thanks to the close collaboration between teams, Pure Salmon provided valuable feedback which has been used to support the ongoing development of the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform.
Pure Salmon liked that Autodesk Build had a variety of collaboration tools. “It acts like a single source of truth and that's what we’re looking for. We’ve been given transparency along with the ability to work with different information, graphical and non-graphical models, documents and so on,” says Azza.
Pure Salmon understands that change is a continuous process – they provide ongoing training and onboarding for all new teams working on the project. And for team members needing to refresh their understanding, the recordings of custom training sessions are stored directly within the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform.
For the design phases of these production facility projects, Pure Salmon turned to Autodesk Construction Cloud’s BIM Collaborate Pro solution to support better model coordination and to allow co-authoring of models in a 3D environment.
“BIM Collaborate Pro has been key for us to raise the right questions before we start working on site, and we’ve avoided variations that we may have historically experienced working with consultants and contractors because they haven’t been able to coordinate and request the information they need,” says Azza.
“Our design teams are based in Abu Dhabi and Norway, and our project sites are in the US and Brunei, but the teams can collaborate in a digital environment much more efficiently than in the past.”
When it comes to constructing on site, Pure Salmon’s team can be more proactive in identifying possible problems through improved pre-construction processes. Using the Bridge tool offered by Autodesk Construction Cloud, the team can move project information easily to other projects helping to create predictive insights that can be leveraged for future decision-making.
“Not only can we highlight issues earlier during the build phase to resolve things quicker, but we can learn from past mistakes and build these into our decision-making practices for the future,” says Azza.
For Azza, identifying the most beneficial tool is a difficult decision to make. “The schedule tool in Autodesk Build supports the project team members to keep on track with project status, but then the meetings tool is also one of the most useful features because we can now spend less time preparing the agenda and creating minutes of meetings.”
Ultimately the transparency created by using Autodesk Construction Cloud solutions helps improve collaboration, communication and leads to time savings. Azza affirms: “Everyone understands which part of the project they’re involved with, where they should be and deadlines that must be met for better productivity and easier collaboration.”
Pure Salmon’s journey to standardisation has seen the company transform with a digital-first mindset. “Thinking back to our first planning session, a lot of our pain points and challenges led us to propose ideas on things we’d like to see and achieve on these projects. I can see now a year later many of these improvements have already been implemented – it’s fantastic to see our progress,” reflects Azza.
Pure Salmon’s results speak for themselves. With more than 50% time savings on key processes like design reviews, sourcing documents and sharing documents, the extended project team can focus their efforts on value-adding activity.
“With such a geographically diverse team, having a standardised and structured approach to how we understand our data is invaluable,” says Azza. “We adhere to global industry standards for our approach to document management to reduce confusion. Autodesk Build helps us comply with these – we saved up to 70% of time using the ISO 19650 naming convention workflows on these projects alone,” continues Azza.
And, when it comes to reducing the administrative burden of preparing and recording meetings and action items, the meetings tool in Autodesk Build has automated many manual workflows. This means the Pure Salmon team gain one and a half hours of time back per meeting to channel to other important project tasks.
With sustainability at the heart of Pure Salmon’s mission, reducing the amount of time spent on manual and repetitive tasks means their global team’s expertise can be focused on developing innovative solutions to drive us towards environmentally friendly food production methods.
Looking to the future, Pure Salmon’s digitalisation journey continues. Azza shares: “We’re an ethically driven company and we want to use the data we capture to proactively manage our assets in a sustainable way by creating predictive insights to inform our asset management activity.” And for the global food production market, Pure Salmon leads the way when it comes to data rich ways of working.
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