Aberdeenshire Council has chosen Trimble’s Stabidad to accelerate MEP productivity with automated BIM software and support
The Aberdeenshire region, predominantly rural in nature and dependent on the agriculture industry, has experienced significant growth in recent times due to the booming offshore oil and gas sector.
This upsurge has spurred the demand for more public services from Aberdeenshire Council, including various construction and refurbishment projects, including schools, housing and office facilities.
Ged Philip and Vic Dyson, two members of the Council’s building engineering team, are responsible for designing and modelling the mechanical and electrical systems for these projects.
Before Stabicad, Ged and Vic used another tool that claimed to simplify the workflow but failed to live up to expectations.
“Our previous solution was so difficult; we would sometimes spend 10 or 15 minutes just to get a pipe to fit another pipe,” Ged recalls.
“And we couldn’t do any calculations—we had to use another programme for calculations and then jump back in the modelling tool to finish the design. It wasn’t good.”
Frustrated with a tool that could not deliver on their design and modelling needs, Ged and Vic were pleased when a colleague introduced them to Stabicad. Still, they’d seen how vendor promises could fall far short of reality and reserved final judgement until Stabicad could prove itself on the job.
Simplifying complex mechanical and electrical design projects
Ged says, “Stabicad has been a fantastic help for me, particularly since we can perform the calculations along with modelling in the same software.”
The streamlined design and modelling enabled by Stabicad save time for the team every day, especially when working on more complex projects. Vic shares his experience on a particularly challenging project for a primary school designed using Passivhaus efficiency principles.
“To model this school in Revit would have taken at least a couple of days and another day to carry out the calculations using a separate programme. Depending on project complexity and the specific MEP systems we are modelling, Stabicad could reduce our modelling time by 20%-40% compared to our traditional workflow and enhance MEP productivity.”
Vic adds, “The biggest savings will come from being able to automatically do the calculations in Revit. With just a push of a button, Stabicad will size and calculate the system in Revit and generate the calculation reports. Based on project complexity, these capabilities help us improve overall MEP productivity by 30%-60% — possibly higher depending on the design stage.”
Saving time while gaining confidence in accuracy and quality
Now that Ged and Vic have been using Stabicad for some time, they are seeing the benefits of a more streamlined design and modelling workflow, saving them time while producing accurate results.
Stabicad includes a number of automated tools, like the Nodesolver, that simplify connecting elements in a model. For the team at Aberdeenshire Council, these tools now make even highly complex projects seem easy.
In fact, using their previous software, the team could draw in pipes thinking they were connected, only to find out they actually weren’t. It then required additional time to figure out how to get them connected. Ged recalls, “It used to take us ages to figure out what the problem was, and we sometimes just gave up. But the Nodesolver is awesome—to connect one pipe to another is a piece of cake. It’s a game changer, really.”
Results in a nutshell
- Reduces modelling time by 20–40%, depending on project complexity
- Saves hours connecting different mechanical or electrical elements thanks to automation
- Increases design engineering productivity, producing more work within the same timeframe
- Eliminates double work by integrating sizing calculations directly in the modelling tool
- Improves team confidence in the accuracy and quality of calculation results in thanks to CIBSE verification
- Helps Aberdeenshire Council deliver more projects to benefit the public.
Continue reading the full story here, or if you would like to learn more about Stabicad, visit the Trimble website or request a demo.
About Stabicad
Stabicad for Revit is a fully-integrated BIM solution for Mechanical and Electrical design, enabling engineers and contractors to dramatically increase their design efficiency while creating usable mechanical and electrical outputs.
The powerful integrated mechanical calculations are verified by CIBSE’s pioneering Software Verification Assessment – a UK first, meaning you can have confidence in the accuracy and efficacy of your calculation outcomes.
