CORE Engineering Consultancy LLC

CORE Engineering Consultancy LLC

How CORE Engineering Consultancy LLC (CORE) brought about enhanced coordination between the road and infrastructure project teams, with Autodesk AEC Collection. This was achieved by integrating the design process and enhancing the quality with integrated workflows of document management, conceptual design, modelling, coordination, and documentation using Autodesk AEC Collection. As a direct result, there was improved coordination between the road & infrastructure project teams and successful adherence to the standards of the Abu Dhabi Municipality authorities. The new tools and process equipped and empowered the CORE team to go beyond, anticipate and deliver what’s required for the reviewing processes and approvals.

Background:

Incepted in 2007 in Abu Dhabi, CORE Engineering Consultancy L.L.C. (CORE) focuses on offering Engineering Consultancy Services for special projects. These projects include Master Planning, Airports, Roads, Infrastructure, and Bridges, amongst others, for both, the public and private sectors.

Following its inception, CORE successfully collaborated with a diverse set of local and internationally recognized firms, including EGIS & LEEAD. Over the years, CORE has been successful in providing tailor-made services by forming specialized teams, best suited for the specific project requirements.

This paved the way for CORE to gain a solid foothold in anticipating the needs of all the key stakeholders involved in the engineering construction project, right from the client to the engineer to the contractor. At present, in addition to the deep understanding, CORE has also grown its team size to 175+ professionals. It has, furthermore, expanded service offerings to include Design Consultancy Services and Construction Supervision Consultancy.

Consequently, CORE has now emerged as a well-recognised consultancy firm, with several world-renowned public and private clients trusting the firm with their architecture and infrastructure projects.

Exemplary Project by CORE:

 Some of the key pillars and enablers to the success of CORE include its Innovative Approach, Design Capacity, Design Culture, and Management Understanding, in addition to its investments in software and technology.

In the UAE market alone, CORE has executed a range of diverse and significant projects, including:

• Zayed City Development, Al Dhafrah Region, Abu Dhabi, UAE
• Improvement of Road (E311) from Ajman Interchange to Exit 119- Sections 1 & 2 Ajman, UAE
• Road linking Sheikh Khalifa Road and Al Showaib Roundabout in the Norther Emirates, U.A.E
• Safety Improvement Works for Sheikh Zayed Bin Rashid Al Sultan Road, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
• Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Centre for Marine Research, Umm Al Quwain U.A.E.
• Construction Supervision of internal Roads at Mohamed Bin Zayed City
• Design & Supervision of the Bridge linking Siniyah Island to Mainland Um Al Quwain
• Masterplan, Detailed design & Supervision of Siniyah Island’s roads and infrastructure

Challenges:

CORE has been involved in some of the most important projects in the UAE. However, while their team of skilled engineers work closely with government officials and other high-ranking authorities, the projects tend to bring about their own complexities.

Take, for instance, constructing a road in Abu Dhabi. While some engineering teams are focused on meeting the distribution requirements of Abu Dhabi, other teams would focus on the Abu Dhabi municipality requirements. At the same time, another team would work with Etisalat’s requirements, as necessitated by the different requirements of building a road in Abu Dhabi.

So, even though all the teams are engaged on the same project, they are still working on 3 very different standards and disparate requirements and yet, need to work on shared data files. This type of coordination is easily facilitated in the BIM environment.

Effortless Coordination with Autodesk AEC Collection:

Previously, the team had used AutoCAD, Civil 3d, Micro Station, and Bentley. However, those projects only had to adhere to each of the individual departments, which involved internal procedures and permissions. And since different project teams needed systematic coordination, the same required more time and effort to resolve any challenges in coordination.

With the intention of bypassing these challenges, CORE decided to purchase Autodesk AEC Collection. It presented a one-stop ecosystem and included programs like AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Navisworks Revit, and Infra Works. With Autodesk AEC Collection, CORE Engineering would find it seamless to achieve the BIM goal, while meeting the mandates of government authorities.

The range of tools provided by Autodesk AEC Collection made it easy for CORE to effortlessly execute and expedite the projects, right from the early stages of design through construction. Furthermore, the adept tools helped the teams to come up with infrastructure designs that were of higher calibre and design. They, furthermore, were successful in driving cost and time efficiencies by optimizing the projects and minimizing errors in the design process.

The collection made data exchange and interoperability easy and effective, giving a shared data environment to infrastructure project teams. This not only made document management and control easy but also addressed the requirements of the Abu Dhabi Municipality authorities for assessments, reviews, and approvals.

Now, with Autodesk AEC Collection making it possible for all the teams to work together, in addition to the project-oriented training that the team received from Omnix, the CORE team was quick to understand, predict, and deliver results that would receive quick approval from the authorities. As the teams were working together in a shared environment, it minimised the coordination hurdles or differences that may otherwise complicate a shared design process of such massive scale and importance.

Nabil Harb, Sr. Project Manager, said, “The tools provided by Autodesk AEC Collection were instrumental in significantly reducing the time team spent on the project, from start to completion, by streamlining the software administration and making the team more capable of meeting the requirements of the project. This also included getting approvals from Abu Dhabi Municipality authorities. Since a majority of our projects are with government authorities and some with private developers as well, Autodesk AEC Collection has made it easy for us to improve project predictability, and get stakeholder buy-in and approvals while minimising errors and rework. Instead of working hard to achieve the same goal, the team is now able to work smart and optimise the time invested in each project, from start to completion.”

Infra BIM Implementation & Training:

The CORE team worked closely with Omnix for training and implementation of the Autodesk Desktop AEC Collection.

• Phase One: Training the CORE Team

  The phase commenced with assessing the training needs. Omnix team begin by conducting an “initial system study” to better gauge the skill matrix and the systems that the CORE Team has already been doing. After the successful completion of the study, the report was submitted to the project lead.

   

  Since the CORE team was already involved in other ongoing live projects, the Omnix team were aware of the time constraints. To mitigate the same challenges, the Omnix team came up with flexible training methods, including remote training, so that every team member involved in the project could easily attend the session.

   

  Seasoned and highly skilled Infra Engineers delivered the project-oriented training, bringing the CORE Engineering team up to date with the entire spectrum of tools covered in the Autodesk AEC Collection. Instead of rushing to complete the training in a short duration, it spanned over a few months. This allowed every team member to gain proficiency in the Autodesk AEC Collection while completing their ongoing commitments to other live projects.

   

  “This made it easy for the team members to quickly learn and implement the new learnings right on the projects that they were working on. The form of delivery was more pragmatic and efficient, and we truly appreciate that,” adds Nabil Harb.

• Second Phase: Implementation Service Process

  In addition to the skillset training, BIM procedures require a different level of collaboration. Unlike the AutoCAD process, the BIM process mandates a higher number of documentation and standards to be followed. That involves the list of best practices and strict methods for sharing work for the purpose of collaboration between project teams.

   

  Thus, in the next phase, the Omnix team helped the CORE Team in practically implementing tools of Autodesk AEC Collection on live projects.

   

  To provide the team with post-training and implementation support, Omnix Infra engineers were present both, on-site and in back offices at their Dubai headquarters. For nearly 2 months, Omnix Site Engineers were present at CORE offices, to handhold the team in implementing and properly adhering to the systems, BIM documentation, and achieving BIM skillsets & competencies. BIM-related documents are important, especially when bidding for government projects since they need to submit a wide range, and each time, these documents are unique.

   

  In addition to training the team on procedures, Omnix helped in creating documents that would meet the protocols and standards of Abu Dhabi Municipality for internal reviewing and approvals.

• Driving Results

  The BIM’s capabilities, along with the integrated ecosystem provided by AEC Collection, and the proactive training provided by Omnix formed a strong foundation for the execution of an important project. Different stakeholders at CORE could come together easily and adopt a well-coordinated and integrated approach. With ease, they worked with data from multiple disciplines and created a detailed digital representation. Furthermore, through real-time collaboration on executing and expediting the project, they not only completed the project within the stipulated time but also met the standards and the mandate received from Abu Dhabi Municipality.