Caerphilly County Borough Council

Caerphilly County Borough’s Building Consultancy Department

Caerphilly County Borough’s Building Consultancy Department operates in an environment where competition with outside commercial agencies is now more regular. Their ability to show best of field practice and an almost pioneering adoption of CAD, Autodesk Revit in particular, has helped strengthen their position in the region’s construction market.

The Challenge

The Building Consultancy's major clients are the councils client departments, Education, Housing and Social Services. The majority of the clients representatives are not technically minded, so it's difficult for them to envisage what a building would look like when it's complete. When the design staff start to talk about why a particular style or method of construction has been chosen, it's very tough to explain unless you can show the client something they can understand easily. When the clients are spending millions of pounds of public money, eliminating opportunities for costly mistakes and delays in the funding process is critical.

Why Autodesk?

One of Caerphilly's senior design technicians, Andy Morton, had first seen Revit at The South Wales CAD Show, run by Cadspec. He was impressed by what it could produce and the potential it could offer in improving the client service they offered. A number of months were spent analysing the benefits of Revit by himself and his colleagues.  After a more in depth demonstration based on the department's own work they were convinced of its fit within the department. A couple of samples were taken to the clients to show them what they would be able to offer and the clients could see the added benefit.

The Benefits

  • Speedier approval of feasibility schemes turning into reality.
  • Increased productivity
  • Intuitive to use
  • Ease of making alterations
  • Improved visualisation, makes process of understanding exactly what the client is getting much easier.

"Simply clicking and lifting a whole roof so you can insert taller plant and machinery onto a floor and having the walls move to correspond with it is impressive."

Julian Harding, Lead Designer, Caerphilly County Borough Building Consultancy Dept.

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