Engineering Inc. - January/February 2006 - 21

T E C H N O L O GY S P OT L I G H T O N I . T. RETURN ON INTEROPERABILITY:
THE NEW ROI IT INTEGRATION PRODUCES MAJOR COST SAVINGS, DRAMATIC GAINS IN
EFFICIENCY AND COMPETITIVENESS BY MALCOLM WALTER The answer, in this case,
was a ost everyone is familiar with the financial phrase M Bentley system
called Project- return on investment, or ROI. But here's another Wise,
which allows management meaning for ROI: return on interoperability. of
disparate engineering informa- Today, in the architectural, engineering
and con- tion and related workflows struction A/E/C industry, we have a
unique oppor- among multiple users. Now, tunity to earn a dramatic return
by paying attention to the interop- HDR employees, partners, erability of
technologies. clients and sub-consultants have This opportunity is made
clear by a recent study of U.S. capital access to information at home, at
facilities conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Tech- the
office, on the road or at a nology. What NIST found was alarming. The
study identified client's office. nearly $16 billion in annual waste due
to the lack of interoperability Work sharing or collaboration among
computer-aided design, engineering and software systems. is the aspect
most improved by Is there a magic bullet that could make that whopping sum
go away? Of course there isn't ... but there is hope. ProjectWise, not only
from office- Malcolm Walter to-office, but with sub-consultants At Bentley,
we think of interoperability as part of our corporate and clients, says
Jeff Triphahn of DNA, and our recent work with architectural, engineering
and con- HDR. It's particularly important sulting giant HDR is an example
of that. HDR professionals are on larger projects in which there are many
stakeholders, such as on involved with hundreds of disciplines, and they
partner in blended the New York State Thruway Authority Woodbury design
project. teams to provide solutions beyond the scope of traditional A/E/C
One project manager said that there was no way he'd do a project on firms.
The company's 3,800 employees are spread across 100 loca- this level
without ProjectWise. tions, with projects in all 50 states and in more
than 60 countries. HDR found that the system eliminated up to 30 man-hours
per Unlike many firms that funnel services through a central production
month per project by avoiding file losses and unintentional reconfig-
group, HDR is decentralized, and thus depends on effective IT col- uration
of the design environment. That translates to about $2,000 laboration
tools. saved per month on each project. The firm's challenge was to bring
engineering data into the com- The system not only saved HDR time in data
delivery to other pany, process it, move it to the teams that needed it,
turn it into offices, consultants and clients, it greatly reduced errors
and confu- coherent designs and rapidly deliver it to their clients. sion
in file management. The natural result is better design because For
example, suppose the Charlotte office brings in a Design- time is focused
on essential work instead of tedious tracking and Build project for the
extension of an interstate in North Carolina. backtracking. To meet
best-case delivery objectives, the Charlotte office might seek Distributed
computing is very important to HDR, adds help from bridge design experts in
the Pittsburgh office and assis- Llewellyn. It fits HDR's culture and
strategic business direction. tance with water drainage analysis from the
Tampa office. Interoperability is essential. If there's one lesson we've
learned, it's So the Charlotte office would simply send the required files
to that distributed computing on a massive level is not only doable, it's
each office. The project is managed and the engineering objectives the
only way to do it. There's no example that I can think of that met almost
as if the team were all working in the same location. That seems simple
enough, and it's certainly something most multi- better tests the limits
of interoperability. office firms can handle. But when you have more than
100 offices, the problems multiply quickly. In this scenario, work sharing
Malcolm S. Walter is chief operating officer and senior vice president of
requires more than e-mail attachments or an FTP site. Bentley. It was a
process fraught with wasted motion and churn, as staff attempted new and
unproven methods for processing engineering information, says Rick
Llewellyn, HDR vice president and director of systems. The challenge was
to eliminate inefficient business processes time wasted verifying
information, reworking design files and processing requests for
information, as well as costs of manual data re-entry. January l February
2006 ENGINEERING INC. 2 1
Engineering Inc. - January/February 2006

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