RKD Leans into Tech and Sees Productivity Spike

International design firm, RKD, discovered that adapting to agile workflows was the key to driving innovation and harnessing collaboration. And when COVID-19 put the world on pause, RKD turned to technology to keep its design teams on track.

With a rich legacy dating back to its 1913 formation in Dublin, Ireland, RKD is one of Europe’s most diverse and effective architecture firms, made up of 200+ creative professionals who service a wide range of projects across the EMEA region from office bases in Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Spain, and Poland.

Sustainable design connects and unifies RKD’s multi-service, multi-sector approach and includes data centres, mission-critical infrastructure, pharmaceutical facilities, commercial offices, workplace and interior design, healthcare, and higher education buildings.

Its design processes and supportive software are the common threads tying together RKD’s work across all project areas. Almost every new project that RKD undertakes today is carried out using the 3D design modelling solution Revit and BIM 360—two Autodesk Construction Cloud™ solutions.

Operational Resilience During Uncertain Times

RKD began using BIM 360 in 2018 to enhance workflows across its international office network. When the pandemic prompted the company to adapt to a remote work set-up, its reliance on cloud-based data really eased that transition. Eliminating the need to overburden the corporate network with data reduced the amount of pressure on RKD’s IT systems and its VPN, just before working remotely became the new standard. RKD’s main challenge was ensuring its teams remained agile whilst undergoing the adoption processes of both new tech and the correct Building Information Modelling (BIM) procedures.

Collaboration with Diatec, Ireland’s leading Autodesk Training, Consulting and ICT technology partner, was crucial in helping RKD navigate its digital transformation roadmap. By providing training, workshop courses and consultancy, Diatec supported RKD‘s ability to minimise any potential disruptions to its live projects that embedding new technology might have had. Using BIM 360 ensures teams can share models and other project information with consultants, partners, and clients across any architectural project.

Using BIM workflows, which are certified to BS EN ISO 19650- 2:2018, means that all projects are set up using the same core principles for folder structure, file naming, and information sharing.

Driving Productivity

Deborah Moynihan, BIM Manager for RKD reflects, “We tend to work in large project teams where there is a focus on staying creative and collaborative despite potentially being many hundreds of kilometres apart. That is something that the Autodesk products have allowed us to do. It has enabled us to continue to work efficiently and productively through the pandemic and the removal of geographic obstacles through digital transformation is a key component of our international growth strategy.”

RKD estimates that using BIM 360 achieves an average 75% of time savings, because opening cloud- based models is much faster than time spent accessing them across a VPN. The outcome is a practical time savings of approximately 3,870 billable hours. By moving its models to the cloud using BIM 360, RKD increased productivity by 4% across its project teams. The ability to rapidly restore project data from a cloud back-up has also meant RKD projects and data is protected from the risk of information-loss.

“Autodesk products have allowed us to work efficiently and productively through the pandemic.”

- Deborah Moynihan, BIM Manager

Reaping the Rewards of the Cloud

Now that geographic location is no longer a limiting factor, information is readily accessible, ensuring that the right RKD people can work on the right project at the right time. For team members not as familiar with using digital technology as part of the day-to-day activity, projects are now viewable in a model environment.

For team leaders, being able to view models and drawings in real time immediately following publication has proven quite useful. Team leads can also create mark-ups and highlight issues in a dynamic fashion, which then prompt the attention of the production team to take action. This improved way of working helps streamline a workflow that formerly involved a lot of printing, and manual mark-ups, in an office environment, and converted it into a largely paper-free process. Now, RKD can see how all previous mark-ups and issues have been tracked, significantly reducing dependency on paper-based reviews.

Collaboration with RKD’s project partners and consultants has also improved. The traditional way of sharing models was to send work packages over email and via weblinks for partners to work on in isolation on its own servers. But now, project collaborators can save time and bandwidth accessing live information required from anywhere.

Moving Boldly Forward into the Future

BIM 360 is a critical component in RKD’s international growth strategy. The platform has enabled the organisation to grow its international business to represent 26% of total turnover by infrastructure. RKD’s next step on its digital transformation journey will be expanding its Autodesk adoption to include model collaboration.

“Our next ambition is to link the Navisworks model with the BIM 360 model coordination space and use BIM 360 insight to automate the publishing of our clash reports from all the issues that will be generated using the BIM 360 issues plug-in for Navisworks.”

-Deborah Moynihan, BIM Manager

RKD has significantly transformed its project design process, transitioning from a predominately CADbased project portfolio to now, where design is approximately 90% BIM-based. Autodesk solutions, coupled with the Diatec’s unwavering support have been huge supporters in RKD’s successful digital transformation journey thus far, and RKD knows the bar doesn’t stop there.