Sterling DCS & Tech Soft 3D

The Challenge

UK-based company Sterling DCS provides comprehensive turnkey solutions and services that help clients in the built environment sector to take advantage of the benefits of digitalization.

“Construction projects today require a different set of capabilities than construction projects 20 or even 10 years ago might have,” said James Hunter, Technology Director of Sterling DCS. “For example, while cost planning has always been important, today there is a considerable emphasis placed on the ability to calculate a project’s carbon footprint and to minimize the environmental impact a project might have.”

One of the key frameworks that carbon-conscious professionals turn to in order to achieve this goal is PAS 2080, a global standard within the construction industry for measuring and managing the amount of carbon in infrastructure projects.

While several carbon calculation tools existed to work in conjunction with PAS 2080 guidelines and help designers improve the carbon footprint of their project, many of the products were cumbersome and required on-premises deployments or restricted to a single platform for deployment, Sterling can be hosted in Amazon, Azure, Google or Oracle and On Premises or delivered as a traditional SaaS model

“We saw a real gap in the market for a new product built from the ground up as a cloud solution rather than an on-premises product,” said Hunter. “This gap was particularly glaring because a lot of the larger construction companies have a ‘cloud first’ mandate. They want solutions to be cloud driven rather than installed locally on machines, and accessible from all of their construction sites to ensure that they’re not working in silos.”

To seize this opportunity, Sterling DCS knew it would need a best-in-class foundation if it wanted to create its own web-based cost estimating and carbon forecasting solution in a timely manner.

“We have a capable team of tech talent in house, but it didn’t make sense to try and create every single aspect of the solution ourselves,” said Maciej Kindler, Project Manager at Sterling DCS. “That’s why choosing HOOPS toolkits was such a logical choice.”

A Blitz Development

HOOPS toolkits are a series of SDKs that accelerate the development of powerful engineering web applications. The platform includes HOOPS Exchange – the leading data translation technology, with access to over 30 CAD file formats – as well as HOOPS Visualize for WEb for advanced 3D web visualization.

Given the wide variety of CAD files used in construction projects, HOOPS Exchange allowed the team to build powerful, robust CAD data translation into Sterling DCS’s next-generation, web based solution, called Sterling.

“Our customers might start off an infrastructure project with a collection of 2D drawings and 3D BIM files created in multiple different products,” said Kindler. “They can easily bring all of those models into Sterling without having to worry about what product was originally used to create those files. HOOPS Exchange ensures fast and accurate CAD data translation.”

Once all the data is in Sterling, customers can start the cost estimating and carbon calculation. They do this by taking advantage of 2D/3D digital take-off tools that can quickly extract useful measurements and attributes for use in calculations.

“Imagine a customer has been requested for an estimate on a construction project,” said Kinder. “Using Sterling, they can see the current costs and carbon content of the built asset they’re developing and explore ‘what if’ scenarios if they add/amend/update or remove certain items.” The key factor was transparency to verify, quantify and validate that what was being put forward truly reflects the project requirements and can be exposed within the estimate. The ability to see all the resources, both permanent and temporary, required to build a project from labour, plant, material and its constituent parts. This alone will create value engineering discussion about the cost and carbon.

Accurate visualization of models is crucial to this process, which is where HOOPS Visualize plays an important role, delivering stunning graphics for 3D and 2D engineering data.

Beyond the functional capabilities that HOOPS Web Platform delivered, it also delivered a vitally important business benefit: speed.

“Using HOOPS toolkits allowed us to develop Sterling in less than six months,” said Hunter. “It really was what you might call a blitz development. It’s amazing how fast we got to market.”

By bringing new capabilities and precision to the estimating market with its cloud-based, PAS 2080 compliant estimating and forecasting solution, Sterling DCS feels it is doing its part to create a more sustainable future.

“Our ultimate goal is to accelerate net zero carbon in the built environment by helping our customers optimize the cost and carbon content of built assets,” said Hunter. “Tech Soft 3D is just helping us get there faster.”

Results:

• Develop a powerful cloud-based cost and carbon estimating solution within 6 months

• Allow the company to focus time and resources on core competencies and creating a differentiated product for the market.