Innovation

Arup heads for paperless design in Australasia

This sponsored case study from Bluebeam describes how Arup cut design review times in Australasia by as much as 60% by using Bluebeam’s digital collaboration tools.

Arup, the global multidisciplinary design and engineering firm, wanted to improve the quality and accuracy of drawings, and the consistency of manual document markups for design review.

It found that a lack of standard markups in manual review processes kept people busy with document management when they should have been adding value to projects with design and execution.

Its review timeframes were also bloated due to the reliance on email for project collaboration, as some projects involved stakeholders based around the globe.

So the company tried Bluebeam Revu to streamline its processes. By using PDF, Revu gives a common data environment for owners, architects, engineers and contractors to share jobsite information including 3D models and images.

Arup said it found the digital tools allowed its people to:

  • Cut design review times by as much as 60%;
  • Use previously unusable as-built drawings by converting them into scalable marked-up digital PDFs;
  • Bring in experts around the world to collaborate digitally;
  • Spend less time on admin and document searching, and more on design.

Listen to Arup experts describe how the solution made life easier below:

"We actually had points where we couldn’t submit deliverables to the client because we couldn’t deliver the information effectively, since the native resolution and outputs were limited by traditional PDF products," said Arup senior technician Ben Taylor.

"Revu helped solve these issues by actually giving us the interoperability and the functions that we needed to actually be able to edit them on the fly and modify them to actually suit the client requirements."

"Before Revu it was pretty much, we get the PDF from the architect, we print them off, mark them up in red pen, scan them in, and send them back. Now, we don’t have that need to print a PDF to a hard copy, we can do that digitally," said Russell Bunn, regional CAD lead for Arup’s Australasian transport, environment and resources team. "Revu really helped us sort of start to move towards a paperless office."

Ben Taylor said Revu has cut the time he spends checking and manually reviewing each page. "We did do the numbers in the early days which showed [Revu] paid for itself in a couple of months. It also made my life incredibly easy in terms of how I produce and edit the PDFs that I need to work with."

The full case study, produced in March 2019, can be found here. https://www.bluebeam.com/solutions/customers/arup

  • This content is made possible by Bluebeam’s participation in GCR’s global content partner network. See here for more information.
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