Case Study: Skanska Saves on A46 Project with Third Digital's Arc

Client: Skanska

Industry: Construction & Infrastructure

Project: A46 Highways Project

Third Digital Service: Arc Renditions

Introduction

For large infrastructure projects, efficiently managing and sharing accurate documentation is paramount. Skanska, a leading global construction and development company, faced a significant challenge on the A46 highways project with the manual and time-consuming process of generating PDF renditions of design drawings within their ProjectWise environment, particularly those created using non-Bentley (Autodesk) tools like AutoCAD. Seeking a reliable and automated solution, Skanska partnered with Third Digital to trial their Arc Renditions service.

The Challenge: Manual Rendition Headaches and Programme Risk

Skanska's ProjectWise CDE was central to the A46 project, which involved generating an estimated 12,000 PDFs during the detailed design phase. While ProjectWise offers out-of-the-box rendition capabilities (like iCS for PDF), these were known to be unreliable when working with non-Bentley design tools such as AutoCAD, a primary tool used by their designers, Arcadis and Mott MacDonald.

The unreliability meant that automated renditions often resulted in quality issues, including exploded layers and lost scale, rendering the PDFs unsuitable for contractual requirements and client (National Highways) transmittal. This forced project teams into a laborious manual process:

• Critically, manually checking each automatically generated PDF for errors.
• If errors were found (a frequent occurrence), manually correcting the source file or the PDF and re-uploading – a time-consuming "check-and-fix cycle."
• Manually generating PDFs outside of the standard ProjectWise automated workflow.
• Manually uploading these PDFs to ProjectWise.

This manual process was a significant drain on resources, taking approximately two days to produce just 100 PDFs. It placed considerable strain on engineers, pulling them away from more productive design tasks. Furthermore, with over 60% of PDFs generated in the later stages of detailed design, this manual bottleneck introduced a substantial risk to the project programme as construction mobilisation approached. Skanska also faced challenges ensuring PDF rendition folders in ProjectWise were correctly locked down and preventing project members from mistakenly editing the generated PDFs instead of the source DWG drawings.

The Solution: A Trusted Partnership Delivers Automated, Native Renditions

Based on an established four-year working relationship built on trust and Third Digital's proven technical expertise in software development, design, and BIM implementation, Skanska chose to trial the Arc Renditions service. Skanska recognised Third Digital's unique ability to develop tailored solutions, especially where off-the-shelf Bentley products didn't integrate well with Autodesk software.

Arc Renditions was implemented as a tailored automated solution specifically designed to address the challenges of generating reliable PDF renditions from DWG files within ProjectWise. Unlike the traditional methods, Arc leverages native Autodesk tools to ensure high-fidelity, accurate outputs.

The Results: Significant Time Savings, Cost Reduction, and De-risked Delivery

The implementation of Arc Renditions delivered immediate and significant benefits to the A46 project:

• Automated Batch Processing: DWG PDF renditions were created automatically in one batch directly from ProjectWise, completely removing the manual intervention and associated man-hours.
• Enhanced Reliability & Quality: By using native Autodesk tools, Arc eliminated the quality issues previously experienced, producing trustworthy PDFs with correct layers and scale, thus ending the need for extensive manual checking and the frustrating "check-and-fix cycle."
• Massive Time Savings & Productivity Boost: The speed increase was dramatic – Arc could handle hundreds of PDFs per minute compared to a human producing one every seven minutes manually. This freed up valuable engineering resources to focus on core project tasks.
• Quantifiable Cost Savings: During the trial, automating approximately 3,000 renditions resulted in an estimated £20,000 saving in labour costs.
• Mitigated Programme Risk: By automating a critical late-stage deliverable, Arc significantly reduced the programme risk associated with manual bottlenecks, ensuring timely transmittals to the client.
• Improved Collaboration & Reduced Risk: Designers received reliable renditions automatically, improving information flow. Skanska reduced its risk associated with managing the CDE's rendition process, which had historically been prone to breaking.

Designers at Mott MacDonald provided overwhelmingly positive feedback and expressed keen interest in adopting the tool internally for their own projects. Skanska is now rolling out Arc Renditions to other projects to support efficient handover processes.

Conclusion

The A46 project's experience with Third Digital's Arc Renditions demonstrates the power of tailored automation and native file support in overcoming the limitations of standard ProjectWise rendition tools when working with Autodesk files. By eliminating manual checks, significantly increasing processing speed, and providing reliable, high-fidelity outputs, Arc not only delivered substantial cost and time savings but also de-risked a critical project deliverable and improved team productivity and collaboration. Third Digital's deep expertise and trusted partnership were key to developing a solution that truly works and provides a platform for future enhancements.