Norconsult relied on Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC), which brings together communications, project management and cost control tools, to ensure the complex project was delivered on time and on budget.
A nearly 100% paperless operation was required to seamlessly collaborate across a consortium of partners. According to Norconsult, the reliance on hand drawings for the new Sotra Bridge has been reduced by 99.5% compared to similar bridge projects in the past. “Bridges are really geometrically complex structures,” says Gavel-Solberg. “So there are a lot of things going on that are difficult to capture in a few simplified sections of a physical drawing. Many people are involved in the design, construction and maintenance of a bridge, and a 3D model gives everyone the opportunity to get a complete picture. How does each small part affect other parts in the project? This is where 3D models excel.”
Using Autodesk Platform Services APIs, Norconsult was able to streamline and connect workflows to create this complex digital design. APIs – including the data management, model derivation, viewer, ACC, and design automation APIs – gave the team the flexibility to meet the project's unique workflow requirements and combine large volumes of models and files without compromising data quality endanger.
“We used the APIs to validate the data and ensure that it was factually correct, to verify that it was the correct data type, and to format it correctly. The APIs have made data retrieval and exchange much easier and provided us with well-structured data to work with,” says Thomas Ostgulen, Norconsult’s Building Information Management (BIM) manager for the project.
The savings in time, effort and complexity were impressive. The team was able to reduce the number of drawings, from 4,000 on the company's last comparable project to just 15 for Sotra's new digital suspension bridge. They also collected and stored 60 million data points in 211 different models, spanning more than a million separate objects. At the same time, automation reduced the sheer number of repetitive tasks in the project and simplified processes around issue tracking, RFIs and submissions.