Case Study A Company With Vision (150 Dpi)

Founded in 2001, the company targets the built environment

market with a very clear objective. GESS aims to exploit their

graphic engineering solutions and services in order to add value

for their clients - infrastructure owners, civil engineering

consultants and designers.

The company has four main offerings. First and foremost, they

operate as engineering IT specialists. They are also resellers of

professional engineering design software offering sales,

training and technical support to a growing client-base of more

than 100 customers across sub-Saharan Africa. In addition,

they are highly skilled engineering consultants in their own right,

and back this up with additional technical support and training.

With the emphasis on developing solutions to help clients win

business, becoming players in the civil engineering

visualisation market was seen as a strategic opportunity. It was

obvious that the sector was growing in importance in the

industry, and GESS' founders accurately predicted the role that

it would play in their market in the future. Today, visualisation

has become an integral part of the planning and design phases

of many projects (to check sight distances for example) as well

as an essential element of the marketing process, from

environmental feasibility studies and initial bids through to final

design presentations for planning authorities and the public at

large, as part of public participation programmes.

Since the introduction of visualisation services at GESS, their

clients have been quick to realise the potential of the company's

offerings - and a look at GESS's list of visualisation projects and

clients bears this out. These include the Gauteng Province

Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works; the National

Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Gautrain; Kumba

Resources and schemes such as the De Hoop dam and road

realignment; the Luanda Waterfront Rehabilitation scheme; and

the K90 interchange at Johannesburg International Airport.

GESS understands the importance of synchronising the

visualisation with design changes as the scheme develops,

and the overall significance of achieving these objectives in the

most cost-productive way possible.

When applications engineer, Mark Parkinson joined the

company from New Zealand in 2004 he immediately saw the

potential of visualisation package Dynamite VSP. Compared

with the other systems available, it offered exactly the tools and

utilities that GESS needed, and featured strong integration with

many other software packages that they already used.

Dynamite VSP is developed exclusively by 3am Solutions, who

specialise in high-end visualisation solutions for the civil

engineering industry. The package is tailored to the needs of

professionals working in this field and has been specifically

designed to integrate with many leading civil design, survey,

and CAD systems such as Bentley Geopak, MX, MicroStation,

and InRoads; and AutoCAD, 12D Model and Civil 3D.

Mark illustrates just how Dynamite VSP has been put to use on

the visualisation of the K90/K157 motorway interchange at

Johannesburg International Airport.

“The design of the K90 interchange was undertaken as part of a

larger project to investigate the possible use of digital media

and new technologies in the development, reporting and

management of preliminary designs for the Gauteng Province

Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works. The K90

interchange is particularly significant as it will support the

development of a new industrial zone to the east of

Johannesburg International Airport.

“In terms of the CAD software used it was a multi-tool approach.

The detailed design was carried out using Bentley Geopak

Road and Bentley MicroStation. The triangulation meshes of all

the motorways and ramps were then transferred to Dynamite

VSP via LandXML files. Just to add to the mix, the orthographic

photography was manipulated in Bentley's Descartes and

additional 3D features were modelled in AutoCAD and

Autodesk VIZ.

“This was our first Dynamite VSP project and we really benefited

from the software's ease of use. It was so intuitive that we were

up and running producing high quality results almost from day

one because it uses familiar terminology and engineering

rationale.

A Company with VisionExploiting a growing demand for high quality visualisation

South African company GESS - Graphical

Engineering Solutions and Services (Pty) Ltd - might

initially look like any other conventional small civil

engineering consultancy. However, a closer look reveals a very

different kind of animal - highly specialised, focussed and with an

interesting and highly unique business model.

Ca

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K90/K157 Interchange

“We also have specific road marking and road feature

requirements in South Africa and creating these in Dynamite

VSP has been a breeze. This means that we can now work with

our own customised library of objects such as bridge barriers

and sign gantries, which adds that extra 'local' touch. This has

proved very important when showing visualisations to clients,

planning authorities and the public.

“The automatic synchronisation with our design data also

saved us a huge amount of work as we didn't have to rework

any of the visualisation when the model was changed. Add to

that the time-savings we achieved using its in-built automation,

and the ease of data transfer with the number of different

packages used, and there is no doubt in our minds that

Dynamite VSP was the right choice for the job.”

On the back of this success, a second project quickly followed:

visualisation of the preliminary design for the upgrade of the

Luanda Waterfront for presentation to Baía de Luanda PMG SA.

This involved the re-development of the bayfront area of the

central business district as part of a wider project to clean-up

and dredge the bay itself.

Because of the nature of the project the timescales were very

compressed - GESS had only two weeks to complete the

project. The original design had been carried out using Bentley

Geopak Site and Bentley MicroStation, but because of time

pressures, it was especially important that much of the

visualisation process was automated. That's where Dynamite

VSP's unique feature interpretation system really proved its

worth. It's one of Dynamite VSP's most powerful utilities and

meant that more than 330 vehicles, 1300 car parking bays, 500

road markings (with 10 different marking styles), 250 lane

markings (in 14 styles), 80 traffic signals, 400 specifically

located lights of five types, hundreds of concrete bollards,

twelve bus stops and 1000 individual trees could be added into

the visualisation model with a few key presses. These items

were even tailored to local Angolan standards.

The final visualisation of the waterfront was presented in

interactive video form to Baía de Luanda PMG SA to seek

approval to proceed to the implementation stage. As a result of

this, permission to proceed was granted in April 2006 and the

project was scheduled to go to tender in March 2007.

GESS has received extremely positive feedback from many of

its clients, including Vela VKE Engineering Consultants. Neil

Slingers, project manager at Vela VKE, had this to say about an

earlier visualisation project, and specifically about Provincial

Administration of the Western Cape Department of Roads'

decision on the construction of cycle lanes: “On seeing the

visual effects of the proposed cycle lanes, the client decided to

have a cheaper, combined walkway/cycle path completely

separate from the road; one could argue that the visualisation

assisted the client to make more informed decisions as well as

savings on construction costs.”

In describing another recent project - the redesign of Zimbali

Golf Course - Mark adds: “We used the visualisation phase to

tie together all the different disciplines of the design - golf

course grading, roads, bridges and cadastral information. We

even included environmentally sensitive wetland areas and

buffer zones. The result gave the client a very clear picture of

what would actually work. The golf course designers were also

impressed with the results, and were quick to spot the areas

where their own designs would benefit from additional work.

Recognition for the quality of GESS's visualisation work has not

been limited to their own client base. GESS received two award

nominations in 2006 for their visualisation capabilities, and their

visualisations formed part of a prize-winning presentation for

best Civil Road Design Project at the Bentley User Conference

in the same year. This is no mean achievement as Dynamite

VSP was the only non-Bentley visualisation product

acknowledged in this way.

Brett Forbes, GESS's managing director, comments on how

they have benefited from their successes in visualisation:

“Visualisation gives us a competitive edge in order to gain

access to clients, projects and other opportunities for our

professional services and software sales divisions. Using

Dynamite VSP for visualisation, integrated with our other 3D

technologies, we are able to offer a better service than our

competitors, and with a level of productivity which makes it a

very good business proposition. In turn, our clients receive a

value-added service which enhances their relationship with

their own clients and creates opportunities to win future bids

and projects.”

© Copyright 2007. 3am Solutions (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, AutoCAD, 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. MX and Arenium are registered trademarks of Infrasoft Limited. Infrasoft Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bentley Systems, Incorporated. All other trademarks or product names are the property of their respective owners.

For further information, please contact:

3am Solutions (UK) LimitedPO Box 421 Fareham Hampshire PO15 5ZR UK

Tel: +44 870 950 0447 Fax: +44 870 950 3357

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.3am-solutions.com

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