Video Transcript

Amit Shah, Director XS CAD Ltd.

XS CAD has more than 250 team members working with us. We have offices in the UK and India. Over and above this, we also have presence in the US, Canada and Australia. We believe this gives us access to the American sub-continent, European continent as well as the Austral-Asian continent. We feel that XS CAD is blessed with the best of both worlds, we are very western when it comes to a highly process-oriented approach and a strong “do-what-you-say” philosophy. Couple that with the flexibility and talent of our team members and we think that we have something special going on with us. The advent of BIM has resulted into several new skills being required by the AEC industry. The point to note is that we are modelling information, not just geometry. And when we model information, not only are the skills on the tools such as Revit and Navisworks important, but also the inter-play of the services such as architectural, MEP and structural. XS CAD has established its very own Autodesk authorised training centre at an independent location in Goregaon. There we have been able to train in the last 3 years, more than 2000 professionals, architects, engineers and CAD professionals on BIM technologies. We feel that we are able to use our experience of working on projects of global scale and utilise that experience to train team members who are ready for the industry. The construction industry is expected to go through a digital make-over over the next decade. XS CAD wishes to be at the fore-front of this emerging digital make-over and we feel that building information modeling is going to play an important role in this journey.

Kuldeep Bwail, Director XS CAD Ltd.

XS CAD is a UK and India based BIM services provider. We provide BIM, CAD and design services to building services engineers and installers, retailers, home builders and architects. We are an ISO 9001 quality certified company and we’re providing CAD and BIM services now for the last 7515 years. So, from the beginning we have adopted a number of technologies for online collaboration, for file sharing and of course for 3D modelling and BIM modelling. The ability to create and then easily share and validate design data before creating accurate construction documentation has been quite an important driver for our success. I’ll cover of our two key areas, if you like, MEP and architecture. So, for MEP, XS CAD have worked on numerous MEP engineering projects and that ranges from hospitals, stadia, universities, offices, hotels, industrial sites and mixed use projects. Now, MEP projects have traditionally been delayed and they suffer from cost over-runs mainly due to inadequate planning. BIM, really has addressed some of those shortfalls because at allows us to create a virtual model which is easily viewed and easily, therefore shared and commented upon and that’s quite important because we are getting lots of buying from the key stakeholders. For retail and home building projects, they always work on a leaner time-scale because of the fast-moving markets that they operate in and design over-runs and maintaining standards at the same time have been a constant challenge. So, BIM has reduced the time-frames during the design phase because of the ability to make changes easily and also to assess the impact of those changes in that virtual environment. We undertake retail, residential, architectural and MEP projects. I would say 75% of those projects utilise the Revit platform. We have used BIM to develop existing accounts, where customers have migrated from AutoCAD or Revit. Indeed, in some cases we’ve created pilots in Revit based on an AutoCAD design to help customers to see the benefits and value that Revit can add. We also feel that the impact of immersive technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality cannot be underestimated, both, we feel will require some BIM support. At present we are designing BIM models that occupy physical space in the real world, so in some ways we are limited. The virtual world is infinite and therefore, the opportunities for BIM in that environment are seemingly endless.