Risa and COWI saves 1 year with BIM in Novorender

August 27, 2024

Challenge

Rogaland County Municipality ( “Rogaland Fylkeskommune”) had engaged construction companies Risa, Contur (part of Infra Group), and COWI to build a dedicated buss road (“Bussveien”) between the cities Stavanger and Sandnes in the western part of Norway, valued at >150 mEUR.

This was part of an ambitious and complex project involving 50 km of buss road, of which 75% would be dedicated lanes, and without unnecessary turns to access stations and in roundabouts – all to help improve mobility and connectedness in the region.

Risa was not satisfied with the traditional design and construction approach centered around 2D drawings: inefficiencies caused by producing, updating, and printing drawings were leading to inefficiencies and excessive errors.

Although they had an ambition to work 100% model-based and paperless, they had historically always needed to revert to 2D drawings and printing paper during the construction phase. It was also a requirement from the owner, Rogaland County Municipality, that the project was model-based.

“We have had projects in the past that were defined as paperless projects at the start. But when it came down to it, they were not, due to lack of maturity. (…) We always produced drawings for the construction phase.”
– Ruben Rosland, Lead Surveyor, Risa

On a medium-sized, detailed, and urban project like Bussveien, a 2D approach would typically require production of 1,000 drawings, each with 4-5 revisions and an average production time of 1 hour.

By fully-implementing the paperless approach, Risa wanted to work faster and with higher precision – and avoid costly surprises during construction.

Solution

The help take the next step in reducing 2D drawings and eliminating printing, Risa adopted Novorender, the world’s most powerful BIM platform. Specifically, this helped them with:

*A unified 3D model with integrated data and systems: consolidating all available information from different systems and ensuring that it was all updated in one place.

«[With Novorender] the risk of working with old and outdated data is eliminated» – Ruben Rosland

*Easy access to 3D for everyone: due to Novorender’s simplicity and device availability, the entire project could adopt 3D to support their daily work, including the critically missing piece vs. past projects: the construction workers in the field.

“We have a completely different understanding of what we are building because we can always see it visually in front of us. We always work with the latest version; no one has an old drawing lying around. We have a model that is continuously updated, and everyone has it right in their hand, on a tablet or mobile.”
– Ruben Rosland, Lead surveyor, Risa

*Self-serviced use among construction workers: Novorender provided the design engineers and construction workers with required functionality to replace drawings with takeoffs directly from the 3D model. This was done e.g., via measurements, cross-sections, the ability to follow center lines etc.

“For example, here four manholes will be set up in a group along with an intricate pipe system. With the 3D model [in Novorender] so easily accessible, it is simple to find all the information needed to identify, measure points, or find heights, widths, and lengths. You become completely dependent on it!”
– Tor Gunnar Vestly, Machine operator, Risa

Results

By implementing Novorender, Risa succeeded in reducing 2D drawings by 90% vs. a traditional project – and eliminated printed paper completely. Although the model-based project Bussveien resulted in 90% less 2D drawings, it required more engineering hours in modelling. Given these improvements, Risa is now expecting to complete the project 1 year ahead of schedule, a big win for them and their client.

“We have used many different softwares, and it has been difficult to navigate them. But now we have made it, we have a limitless tool [with Novorender].”
– Ruben Rosland, Lead Surveyor, Risa