Rodio Swissboring is a regional leader in special foundations and soil technologies. Specialising in a number of disciplines, including deep foundations, slope stabilisation, ground treatment and improvement, marine projects, mining and geotechnical exploration, tunnels and specialised civil works. Their team consist of highly expert geotechnical and civil engineers. And as part of the wider Vinci group – a world leader in concessions, energy and construction, the depth and breadth of the group’s expertise spans 120 countries worldwide.
For Rodio Swissboring, developing a structured way to manage their project information became an ever-increasing priority. In Central America, a BIM implementation team led by Oliver Contreras, Regional Construction Director for Central America and Ernesto Calzia, General Manager and Digital Transformation Co-ordinator for the Iberoamerican region, paved the way for pioneering the use of BIM. By introducing Autodesk Construction Cloud’s ™ BIM 360 platform in January 2021, they embarked on a journey to standardisation.
The company’s previous processes of managing data manually across spreadsheets, local network drives, and physical folders were no longer fit for purpose and delayed true collaboration.
Without a central repository for all project information, key data like calculations, design plans and documents were stored on individual computers, making it difficult for collaborators to share easily and access information. Not only was this time-consuming, but these methods created confusion because it was difficult to distinguish which file version was the most up-to-date.
The team wanted to innovate, but introducing BIM 360 to the wider Rodio Swissboring team meant an overhaul to all ways of working. The BIM team at Rodio Swissboring developed a comprehensive training plan to familiarise colleagues with the new platform: “We worked with Autodesk Construction Cloud’s customer success team to run BIM training in our region, which everyone attended – even our company’s c-suite members,” says Jeyling.
With different levels of digital competency in the company, Rodio Swissboring understood that adoption would be a continual process. The plan involved the creation of BIM champions who were pivotal to the successful rollout of the technology and supported colleagues in understanding the platform.
Approaching the technology rollout using a step-by-step approach meant Rodio Swissboring could ensure their teams were confident using new workflows. Given the complex nature to Rodio Swissboring’s project base, working intuitively and more visually has helped the teams to educate their clients when it comes to making important project decisions.
“Before using Autodesk Construction Cloud, we worked predominately in 2D,” says Sofia. “As our team’s work is highly specialised, our clients often find it difficult to understand the implications of our work if we present it in 2D,” Sofia continues. Now the team uses Autodesk Construction Cloud to visualise project information, making it easier to explain and present complex information.
Rodio Swissboring is now moving its first projects onto Autodesk Build, underpinned by Autodesk Docs, which unites the best of BIM 360 with additional new functionality to create a comprehensive field and project management solution. Transitioning projects to this platform to manage the end-to-end construction process, from the planning through to the design and operations phase, will allow the company to manage their data in a better way than previously.
“We have increased traceability within our projects which means we have greater certainty when it comes to making decisions and collaborating with all project partners,” says Sofia. And having greater certainty on projects means the team can avoid mistakes that lead to costly rework.
“We can now trace the information we have to the source which helps us to avoid thousands of dollars in rework,” affirms Sofia.
For Regional Construction Director, Oliver Contreras, transitioning to digital workflows fits with the company’s long-term technology goals. "The adoption of a common data environment such as the Autodesk Construction Cloud is a strategic decision that meets our objectives for the implementation of the BIM methodology,” reflects Oliver.
Sofia believes that timesaving has been Autodesk Construction Cloud’s greatest benefit.
“Managing issues was an entirely manual process before with site managers and engineers using 2D drawings to resolve problems. Now the teams can easily see any changes made without missing details like previous revisions,” shares Sofia.
“Previously, communicating about this activity would have been done over emails and phone calls which was time consuming in itself, but now we do it collaboratively in real-time during the meeting using the model and Autodesk Construction Cloud is a tool which helps us find solutions,” adds Jeyling.
Rodio Swissboring estimates that their team has reduced the time spent searching for, comparing, or consulting about project information by 10% thanks to using the Autodesk Construction Cloud.
For Rodio Swissboring, it has been invaluable to enable people to focus on value-adding activities by reducing the number of onerous and manual tasks they must complete. And reducing the amount of waste created on their projects has helped the company to make strides towards its sustainability goals. Working in a digital environment eliminates the need for printing several versions of the same document.
For Jeyling, standardisation means everyone is working from the same information and the team know when things are ready to share with a client. There is no confusion over whether a document is a ‘work in progress’ file or a complete file. With the ability to link issues to a sheet, monitor costs and track progress better throughout the project in Autodesk Construction Cloud, Rodio Swissboring can easily access and reference project information to share with their clients too.
Looking to the future, Rodio Swissboring plan to explore the functionalities available in Autodesk Build. “We estimate that we only use the solution to 30% of its full potential and benefits. We know we have much more growing to do when it comes to using the tool,” says Jeyling.
“The traceability element to our projects has been transformative,” says Jeyling. “We know we are just at the beginning, so I’m excited to see more and more adoption across our projects.”
And for Oliver Contreras, Regional Construction Director for Central America, establishing BIM best practice within the company cements Rodio Swissboring as an expert in their field and an expert in digital construction methodology.
“Our teams are learning more and more every day about the possibilities available when using construction technology such as Autodesk Build and Autodesk Construction Cloud. We know we have a long way to go but we have started our BIM journey and will be working towards our goals using these tools better each day to create a shared understanding across our projects, team members, collaborators, and clients alike,” concludes Oliver.
