Bluebeam’s Revu has helped Arup improve collaboration and move towards a paperless future
Arup serves projects all around Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. In an effort to guarantee quality deliverables to their clients, issues were found in the quality and accuracy of as-built drawings and the consistency of manual document annotations for design review. The lack of standard annotations within manual review processes kept stakeholders occupied with document management as opposed to focusing on design and execution.
Review timeframes were also bloated, due to the reliance on email and postal services for the heavy project collaboration. To address these issues, the firm implemented Bluebeam Revu, the project efficiency and collaboration solution trusted by more than 1.3m AEC professionals worldwide to improve project communication and streamline processes.
Going from manual to digital
Given the firm’s commitment to leveraging technology for project delivery, Arup began to explore ways in which manual processes could be digitalised for efficiency, quality, risk mitigation and standardisation across multiple offices and projects.
One key pain point Revu addressed was the issue with older or low-quality as-built drawings and scans.
“We actually had points where we couldn’t submit deliverables to the client because the native resolution and outputs were limited by traditional PDF products. Revu helped solve these issues by actually giving us the interoperability and the functions that we needed to be able to edit them on the fly and modify them to actually suit the client requirement,” explains Ben Taylor, Senior Technician at Arup.
This new approach has helped Arup focus on activity-based working, meaning that project partners are spending less time deciphering as-built drawings and scans and more time focusing on their respective aspects of project delivery.
Collaborating in real time and mitigating risk
“I think Bluebeam covers a whole lot of aspects, and risk mitigation is a very important one,” elaborates Regional CAD Lead Russell Bunn.
“It does improve the communication of the team, because efficiencies are gained when people are coming to implement the annotations, and we can also be confident that every single drawing has the same annotation in the same place and says the same thing.”
In addition, Bluebeam Studio Sessions offered a way to create simultaneous, real-time collaboration, across separate locations.
“We didn’t have an effective method of being able to communicate real-time and submit annotations, it was just email trails,” laments Ben Taylor.
“[Bluebeam] Studio solves all of those issues. Someone’s annotating drawings in London and they come through live in the Sydney office as we’re doing work and while people are talking on the phone, and it eliminates confusion or errors in communication via email.”
Live comments also create a single source of truth, allowing project partners to quickly assess review progress, and to make sure that the partners are working on only the most current documents.
Standardising deliverables and looking towards the future
The benefits of digitising the processes within Arup’s standards and manuals have become apparent not only in project delivery but also in paper savings and employee engagement. Arup’s culture of innovation fosters an organic approach to technology, keeping the company ahead of the curve in both project opportunities and employee procurement.
“Revu really helped us move towards a paperless office,” explains Russell.
With a paperless future ahead and better collaboration taking place, Arup continues to build upon the firm’s legacy as an industry leader.
“Going digital is so important for Arup because it’s the future,” concludes Taylor.
Benefits:
- The industry-specific tools within Bluebeam Revu allowed Arup to cut design review times by as much as 60% while maintaining quality.
- Revu has allowed Arup to minimise risk by using previously unusable as-built drawings and converting them into scalable, accurate and efficiently annotated digital PDFs suitable for client deliverables.
- The power of digital PDFs within Revu have allowed Arup Australia to move towards being a paperless office, showing a significant savings in paper-based costs and tools.
- Bluebeam Studio has allowed the globally savvy firm to involve technical experts from offices around the world to collaborate on projects, providing value to clients.
- The mobile capabilities of Bluebeam Revu and Studio keep employees engaged in activity-based working, as opposed to spending time in administrative or document search capacities.
Learn more about Bluebeam Revu at www.bluebeam.co.uk.
Bluebeam, Inc
Please note: this is a commercial profile.
