Dublin Airport Authority (daa) operates a number of airports worldwide, with the largest being Dublin Airport in Ireland. Passenger numbers are now returning to pre-pandemic levels of around 32 million per year and are set to keep rising.
Passenger experience is crucial to the airport’s success. Ensuring that passengers have a seamless journey through the site and can enjoy the amenities on offer is crucial, even while teams are constructing and maintaining complex assets.
Using the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform, the digital construction team at daa captures high quality information across the whole lifecycle of their assets, connecting construction and operations seamlessly.
Dublin Airport is a highly complex site to operate and maintain. Over 200 companies are involved in construction and maintenance projects, with all activities underpinned by rigorous compliance requirements set by the aviation authorities.
At the same time, the future of the airport depends on delivering an outstanding passenger experience, regardless of any construction activities taking place. Having a centralised source of accurate information is critical for supporting collaboration and transparency, so that projects are delivered efficiently and to the highest construction quality, while minimising disruption.
In July 2022, daa transitioned to Autodesk Build to manage their asset data from moment zero through to design, construction and operations, spanning the whole lifecycle.
“When I started, we were using quite a number of systems, which weren't led by ourselves. And so that meant we had data in various different locations,” explains Michael Earley, BIM Manager at daa.
With Autodesk, daa has been able to centralise and standardise their information, taking a unified approach that enables the team to explore key metrics on performance.
There are multiple collaborators at daa, from the design and build teams that supervise construction to those responsible for maintaining and operating assets, including multiple contractors and specialists.
Using Autodesk Build has helped to ensure seamless collaboration between these teams, while enabling higher levels of transparency. Today, daa has over 1,500 users on the platform sharing information in real-time.
Using Autodesk Build enables the daa team to have greater visibility into the work that has been completed. Features like issues tracking ensure that any snags are identified and resolved, with evidence of the work completed.
“The platform is just brilliant at capturing the actual build – and it gives us confidence in what's been built,” explains Richard Nash, Head of Quality, daa. “The forms feature has been really useful, especially for capturing inspections and issues. We can ensure every issue has been properly closed out, and contractors find it really useful for demonstrating to us that they have delivered.”
At daa there are ambitious plans for the years ahead, and having centralised, high-quality data is crucial for making data-driven decisions.
“Planning is a key element for developing an airport,” notes Jean-Manuel LeJeune, Head of Digital Transformation, daa. “We’re looking ahead to 2040, or 2050, and the number of passengers we want to achieve. The more information that you have, the better informed you can be in your decisions.”
For Jean-Manuel, there’s certainly no looking back to the old ways of working. “I can't even imagine what it would be like to go back into the history of going paper-based and disparate solutions to deliver a project.”
Read how CPAC Modular is using Autodesk Build to connect teams seamlessly.
