Mill Technology (Broutek)/Autodesk Revit case study/March 08/Sue Tabbitt

When Mill Technology first came across Revit 3D design software from Autodesk, it saw such potential in the technology that it set up a separate business to design content for it.

Mill Technology is a provider of 3D modelling, draughting services and building services co-ordination. It specialises in large commercial developments, which, by their very nature, demand fast, efficient and accurate coordination of building services and the preparation of single-service installation drawings.

For maximum efficiency and accuracy, the firm makes extensive use of 3D object libraries and viewers to draw, visualise, check and programme the installation of the building services without service clashes.

Mill Technology has been in business since 1995, and its reliability and experience is proven and accepted within the building industry, where its projects have included redevelopments at Ascot Racecourse, the various terminals and car parks of Heathrow Airport, and London's Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena).

Before Autodesk launched Revit MEP in mid 2007, Mill Technology used a specialist design package called CAD-Duct Solids/MAP; when Revit MEP came onto the market, the firm made the switch and has never looked back.

"The architects and structural engineers we work with were already using Revit software [Revit Architecture and Revit Structure]; now there is a version for mechanical/engineering/plumbing, we can all collaborate more easily using the same functionality," explains Chris Milford, Mill Technology's CEO.

"The benefit is that we're all looking at the same picture, which improves efficiency and accuracy, and enables closer collaboration. It probably halves the time it takes to design building services installations, as we no longer have to take files and convert them to 3D; with Revit, this is all done in one stage. If we all use the same software, we can work in parallel, becoming more closely aligned; the process isn't disjointed any more."

Revit MEP is an intuitive design tool that works the way engineers think, allowing them to visualise their designs as detailed 3D structures, rather than as series of flat, two-dimensional calculations. This is an advantage that has been available to architects and structural engineers for some time, but has now been extended to engineers in the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineering design field.

The ability to work on similar, compatible software as architects and structural engineers, enables efficient, concurrent working, minimising the potential for coordination errors. This is because all members of the extended team now share a single software platform and the same building information modelling (BIM) workflows. This aids decision-making and provides superior building performance analysis support for engineers, facilitating sustainable design.

Not only does Revit present data in a real-world 3D format - ie a virtual model of how the finished design will look and feel - the data this is based on is very sophisticated. Every 'object' in the design has associated information about its properties and behaviour. This dictates what can be done with it, and what impact one facet of the design will have on another. Data only has to be input or changed once, too. This is linked dynamically throughout the design and related applications so that a single change made to one aspect of the design will ripple automatically across the entire software system; its impact on other aspects of the model is calculated and redrawn immediately.

"We can now type in the new size of a pump, and the software redraws it automatically," Milford explains. "Revit really is a very, very clever product. If you draw steel pipework and then want to see how it would work in copper, you can do this with the click of the mouse - the design suddenly changes to copper, and all of the new properties are assigned automatically."

The ability to model buildings and how they behave and change over time is crucial, too, he notes, especially in the business of managing and maintaining services.

"In our business, the lifecycle starts with design and never ends, and Revit is geared to that," he adds. "Revit MEP has a complete maintenance feature, which can analyse power usage and give a complete inventory of the building, including every tap and door handle, all with their associated attributes and schedules. So, if we want to replace all the door handles, we just enter this information and the software immediately works out all the implications so you have the associated bill of materials and so on. Everything is measurable in Revit!

"This is huge from an architecture perspective," he continues, pointing as an example to curtain walling. "If a building is one shape on the ground floor but changes shape and dimension as it moves up, the Revit software can make all the necessary calculations just once. You only need to draw one object and tell it the sizes and at each level Revit will automatically copy it and make the appropriate calculations. This gives huge time-savings and flexibility.

"Buildings are built a lot faster today, and this helps us keep up," Milford notes. "We can also deal with changes very quickly as clients change their minds, which can happen a lot over the course of a project."

The ability to measure and influence a building's environmental impact is another clear advantage of the Revit software, and something that will become even more important over time, Milford says. "Autodesk has joined forces with a company called IES whose Virtual Environment software can analyse a model and calculate all of this," he explains. "For example, you can rotate a building 10 degrees at a time to find the optimal position for heat gains and losses."

Milford believes such capabilities will become essential as planners begin to specify 'green' criteria over 'lowest price'. "I heard a talk by a Chinese company at the Autodesk University in November, talking about a marking system they have when tendering for building work," Milford says. "The company with the most points wins, and only a small part of this is based on price. The IES package in Revit is seen as key here, as firms can prove to the government that their buildings are as green as possible. Although the UK is a way behind on this, it's only a matter of time before firms are subject to the same pressures, and a software tool like Revit provides a definite advantage."

Although Revit MEP is relatively new to Mill Technology's toolkit, Milford is very excited about its potential. "We've just won a contract as the lead coordinator for developing 3D building services for the One New Change development behind St Paul's in London, and we hope to do all the part work in Revit," he says.

The seven-storey, mixed office and retail redevelopment will see Mill Technology join forces with Arup, a big name in the construction industry. Both companies use Revit, and share the same Autodesk software provider, Excitech.

"They have drawn all of the steelwork in Revit, so we will now take the architectural structures and model these in Revit MEP for the building services," Milford explains. "This will give us a lot of flexibility and time savings. We'll then be able to deliver spool piece drawings, with dimensions and details, so that these can be pre-fabricated off site, which is very important in a busy city environment. Here, the objective is to minimise the work needed on location, and deliver projects cost-effectively and efficiently. Revit really plays to this need. Traditional building methods would be extremely difficult in London for a project of this magnitude."

Milford has been so impressed by the potential of Revit that he has now established a separate business - Broutek - with the sole purpose of developing content for Revit, which architect and engineering firms can buy to drop into their designs. "If a firm is designing a building but doesn't have the exact furnishings the client wants, they'll contact us and we'll model it and send it to them," he explains. "We'll also do models for pumps, cooling towers, generators and so on.

"We have a team of modellers who create and model the features using Revit, to sit in the 3D environment. It's extremely fast. The key is re-use and the potential is so enormous that this has become a whole business. We've been going a year and a half now and we're way ahead of the game; business is really picking up now. Revit MEP is new, but we are incredibly enthusiastic and are rapidly building up a stock of content."