SSOE Group Achieves Substantial Project Cost

SSOE Group Achieves Substantial Project Cost Savings Using
GlobalSCAPE® WAFS™ to Share Autodesk® Revit® Files
Time savings on architecture,
engineering, and construction (AEC)
projects can translate into substantial
reductions in project costs—and higher
operating margins. AEC firms often
struggle with how to achieve project
cost savings given labor-intensive
design and engineering processes, not
to mention the technical challenges
inherent in sharing information among
geographically distributed teams.
SSOE Group is one of the largest AEC
companies in the United States, with
headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, and
locations across the US, Europe, and
Asia. The company has demonstrated
a commitment to being technology
leaders, first as earlier adopters of
computer-aided design (CAD) and,
more recently, building information
modeling (BIM) software. SSOE uses all Autodesk® Revit ® products to share essential
BIM data while implementing a collaborative, integrated design and engineering process
throughout the project lifecycle across geographic locations. Such collaboration,
however, can be problematic given the relatively large amounts of complex, layered
BIM data potentially associated with AEC projects and the need to share that data
across wide area networks (WANs).
Revit Project Collaboration over a Wide Area Network:
Necessary but Challenging
For AEC companies like SSOE, project collaboration over a WAN is a necessity; however,
this introduces a significant business challenge. “Our most important information
exchange and file transfer challenge is implementing Revit file sharing across the
network efficiently while using as many
people as necessary on a project without
limitations on locations,” says Melinda
Beham, a BIM/CAD technical specialist
with SSOE.
Revit allows project teams to collaborate by using worksharing or linked models.
Worksharing allows multiple team members to work on a single model, with all
changes stored in a central model that maintains the project data. Linked models, on
the other hand, allow project elements or systems to be separated into individually
managed models that can be linked together. Regardless of the specific collaboration
approach, Revit file sizes are typically more than 50MB, with file sizes of more than
150MB not uncommon. These large file sizes directly affect the ability of project teams
to collaborate effectively over WANs, primarily due to file save and reload times.
GlobalSCAPE WAFS™ Significantly Improves Revit Performance over WAN
GlobalSCAPE’s Wide Area File Services (WAFS™)
allows companies like SSOE to share Revit models
over a WAN at much quicker local area network
speeds. File replication ensures the same Revit files
exist at all locations, while real-time file locking
keeps users from overwriting files in use. Critically
important is that upon a file save or close, only
the file changes, compressed and encrypted, are
mirrored across the WAN to other locations—a
process known as byte-level differencing—and the
file is once again unlocked, further reducing network
traffic and the need for additional bandwidth.
GlobalSCAPE’s Wide Area
File Services (WAFS™)
allows companies like
SSOE to share Revit
models over a WAN at
much quicker local area
network speeds.
“Before implementing WAFS, we were working over
the network with a central file in one office and users pulling Revit models across the
wide area network,” said SSOE’s Beham. “Before we purchased the WAFS software,
we analyzed the performance of Revit for an existing project involving collaboration
across multiple offices connected to our WAN. We tracked save-to-central times and
reload times across the network for the project.” SSOE used this performance data as
a baseline when implementing a pilot deployment of the WAFS solution and assessing
the project time saving. The results were quickly apparent and impressive.
SSOE Achieves Substantial Savings and a High ROI Using WAFS
“We estimated from the pilot deployment that the WAFS software would save
approximately $16,000 over the course of 82 days with the actions of saving Revit
files to central, reloading the latest files, and copying down a new local file,” Beham
continued. “This estimate was based on six users, including two in a remote office. We
estimated we could save almost $20,000 over the 82 days if we included mechanical,
electrical, and plumbing in the analysis.” On the basis of this analysis, SSOE purchased
the WAFS software and began a full production implementation.
SSOE™ Group Achieves Substantial Project Cost Savings Using GlobalSCAPE® WAFS™
SSOE has deployed WAFS to five locations that use Revit, including one in Shanghai,
China, and initially used the software for two production projects. SSOE calculated
that the WAFS implementation saved 45 percent of estimated costs on one project
and 75 percent on the other by increasing productivity. “The WAFS installation process
was very easy and, after six weeks, the savings from our baseline performance paid
for two of the five offices,” noted Beham.
Since the company’s founding in 1948, SSOE has
created value for its clients by defining opportunities
to save time, trouble, and money while adding to
the quality of delivered products and services.
The WAFS implementation has allowed SSOE to
continue enhancing its value proposition for AEC
projects. According to Beham, “GlobalSCAPE was
the first company we found that provided a practical
solution for decreasing save and reload times for
Revit. This translates into more production and
more income.”
“ T h e WA F S i n s t a l l a t i o n
process was very easy
and, after six weeks, the
savings from our baseline
performance paid for two
of the five offices.”
ert
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