The state of our nation’s infrastructure is grim. The most recent report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave U.S. infrastructure an overall score of “D” for “poor” or “at risk”.

If your job involves capturing existing field conditions as part of the design and construction process, you’ll know it’s a tedious, manual, often analog and inaccurate process, which often leads to costly re-work.

Whether you’re renovating a building or involved in a large-scale infrastructure project, the process goes something like this:

As any surveyor or field engineer knows, capturing existing field conditions for an infrastructure project or building renovation is a tedious, manual, often analog, and inaccurate process – not to mention dangerous.

Renovations projects are a particular challenge since the infrastructure or building may be decades old and designed before the age of digital blueprints. You’re almost guaranteed to start a project using static 2D image documentation of existing conditions. Verifying and updating these manually is a lot of leg work.

What do a Facebook data center, a railway, an expressway, an office building extension, and a cancer center have in common?

These and other global projects are recipients of this year’s AEC Excellence Awards in recognition of how they’ve embraced technology to reimagine the processes of design and construction.

Want to win a free pass to Autodesk University (AU) 2018? Earlier this summer, we announced that we’ll be awarding a full conference pass for you or a chosen nominee at your agency or department to attend Autodesk University 2018 in Las Vegas from November 13-15^th.

Autodesk introduced its Autodesk Collections a couple of years ago and there’s never been a better time to make the switch from individual product subscriptions to a collection. Thanks to a limited time offer from Autodesk, your agency can save 20% on the remaining months of your existing term if you switch by October 25, 2018.

But what’s the buzz about collections and why make the move?

Why Make the Move to Autodesk Collections?

It’s that time again, when agencies rush to spend their remaining year-end budget before the September 30^th “use it or lose it” deadline. One-third of federal budget dollars are spent in the last quarter of the year, often in a wasteful manner. But for those in the field of digital design – there are many opportunities to make value-based investments using taxpayer dollars before it’s too late.

1. Training

Download the eBook here!

If you’re one of the millions of people who’ve been lucky enough to hear Lynn Allen present, you’ll know her as the queen of AutoCAD tips and tricks and all-round Autodesk technical evangelist, but she also knows quite a bit about the latest disruptive technology – BIM.

It’s hard to imagine a world without digital. But as you look around you, much of the physical world was designed and constructed using traditional 2D blueprints and is yet to be captured in a digital format. This creates a challenge for AEC professionals to incorporate these as-built designs into re-build or renovation projects.

Traditional imaging techniques like photogrammetry aided in this process by allowing engineers to piece together photographs of as-built conditions and weave in GPS coordinates to create interactive 3D models, see below:

For government organizations and municipalities, ensuring everyone is on the same page in terms of core competencies is an essential prerequisite to the success of any digital design or engineering project. With the pressure to do more with less, knowledge gaps can stymie team productivity, lower your return on investment in software tools, and make everyone’s lives a lot more difficult.