_

Millard

"The important thing is the geometry and data part, and we need to help them [designers and suppliers] move from 2-D CAD to 3-D and 4-D information modeling," Millard says. "Many already have the toolsets, but they need help developing the capabilities."

Millard notes that while Autodesk is very important and a "key to strategic acceleration of the BIM tool set," design and product data are only a part of the picture to which Balfour Beatty adds layers of logistics and other information, involving data exchange among many additional tools and vendors. It is all part of the larger toolset that the company wants to integrate and improve, and it is a universe much bigger than the scope of any one software vendor.

"To completely automate an end-to-end process with the complexity of an asset lifecycle, it would be remarkable if there were one dominant partner who were able to provide all the toolsets," Millard says. He says it is more than a progression from 2-D to 3-D and 4-D, etc.; it is a different workflow determined by the standards and protocols used to progressively build the information for the BIM.

Fleming says the agreement has been "incubating" for three years, as Balfour Beatty laid down its challenges:

 

—It wants Autodesk to facilitate its acceleration of best practices around BIM and the dissemination of those to all of its business units worldwide;

—It wants early access innovations and new technologies, such as developments with cloud services, to help the company make strategic decisions about BIM and "get ahead of the curve,"

‑And it wants Autodesk to provide deep support to help the company fill in some of the missing links about using BIM, the cloud and digital tools to connect data for the lifecycle.

Implementation

Millard says the closer engagement with Autodesk has been going on for a couple of months, coordinated through regular meetings. The company has "quite a long list" of needs it wants to address, and although he says he prefers to keep the list confidential, he acknowledged that improving interoperability is a central one.

 "I expect all of our software vendors to work on improving interoperability," he says. "I think that's absolutely essential in the development of BIM globally. We have to be able to rely totally on the accuracy of data."