Partner: SNC-Lavalin
Bangalore, India, is home to SNC-Lavalin’s Global Technology Centre (GTC). An office of engineers that sees projects from across the globe that lead in digital transformation. A state-of-the-art technology offshore centre that plans to grow into a figurehead of innovation.
In the first instance the GTC was founded for capacity; its aim, to find additional engineering resources to support projects around the world. As it has grown, it is not treated as an offshore design centre whose inclusion is required, but rather an integral part of the SNC-Lavalin business culture.
Dubbed “the garden city beyond Silicon Valley” by the GTC’s Senior Vice President Bharat Gala, Bangalore was chosen for its wealth of engineering talent. However, it was established as a global design centre, specifically to support design activity across the company. Heavily focused in the task mindset the employees were to compliment the primary teams on a project and give assistance where needed.
As the company’s relationship with and trust in the GTC grew, they began to take on more complex tasks rather than singular assignments. Eventually moving onto projects, it delivered a multidisciplinary design for a complete section of the UK A14 road project between 2010 and 2014.
Subsequently, from 2015 onwards, the GTC grew into the digital space. Engaging directly with customers and transforming into the heart of SNC-Lavalin’s digital and technological development. It was at this time that they rebranded from a global design centre to the Global Technology centre. This recent change shifted the emphasis from design assistance to supporting the digital transformation of the company and industry. Their current focus is on expanding the team to work in growing sectors such as water, nuclear and transport.
The two-thousand five-hundred-person workforce brings a diverse skillset, from engineers of different disciplines to architects and digital experts. By 2025 the GTC wants to grow to five-thousand employees, a feat they believe will be plausible thanks to involvement on projects like the Hinkley Point C power station.
Hinkley Point C will be a nuclear power station, the likes of which haven’t been constructed in the UK for over 20 years. Recent innovation and changes to safety regulations, alongside input from the GTC, set it apart from the previously built station of the 1980s. The innovation is not simply in these materials and safety elements of the power plant, but also in the methods that can be used for its foundational design stages; allowing key aspects to be planned before breaking ground.
Over five-thousand miles separate Hinkley and the GTC, but that is less than half a second in digital time. Thanks to this work done in Bangalore can be with developers in the UK almost instantaneously. The GTC began the project with a small team of twenty people, growing it to approximately six hundred before reducing back to the one hundred engineers currently at work on the Hinkley project from India.
With the industrial shift towards digitalisation, the GTC team and their digital input have become increasingly integral to design projects. With the technological advancement from drawing boards to the 2D environment, and now almost exclusively 3D, the GTC has made big investments in IT infrastructure. They believe they are leaps ahead of their peers in this space, their delivery underpinned by their digital tools and capabilities.
The centre covers multiple sectors, from buildings, transportation and defence, to water, power and renewables. However, these construction projects often have issues with delays and budget escalations. These capabilities allow them to more accurately predict outcomes, as they are based on data, rather than someone’s perceptions.
Haima Haldar, Director of Digital in the GTC at SNC-Lavalin, says “That is exactly what digital transformation is bringing to our clients, that data driven decision making, the power of data at your fingertips to see the status. It is no longer based on perceptions, it’s actual facts and figures.”
This close control over the progress and status provides a more accurate model of the outcomes in terms of how to reach and control them.
The digital twin, a virtual model designed to accurately reflect a physical asset, is an example of this. Working alongside the Atkins team in the UK, Cardiff University and Network Rail, the digital twin is planned to significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions at Reading station. The aim is to improve energy performance by a predicted 20%.
Having created energy simulation models measure to reduce energy consumption have been identified based on improved lighting controls and optimisation of machinery such as escalators and elevators.
Termed a “digital rehearsal” by Haima, it is this technology that they are implementing in the aforementioned Hinkley Point C power station. A type of digital twin, using data to predict the outcomes of planning, management and technology, they are provided with the opportunity to correct any problems before they occur, even prior to the assets they could affect ever being built.
A significant portion of this has consisted of structural concrete work and design for many of the Hinkley buildings. Virtually all of that has been done from the GTC with the complete support of the client EDF.
Supplementing this work is the recently launched the SNC-Lavalin Lava Lab. This is an immersive space where clients and project teams can interact with each other for design coordination and clash detection.
The company has three of these collaboration spaces in total, one in Montreal, one in London and this one in Bangalore. Through the Lava Labs, project teams and clients can visualise, collaborate and deliver projects with greater certainty and outcomes.
Haima describes it as “almost the real thing, it’s as close to the real thing as you can get […] making mistakes digitally is good, because then you can correct it digitally before you actually take it to the construction site.” Anything that can be corrected at this digital stage, as opposed to onsite, has a huge value proposition, saving time, money and resources while reducing carbon emissions.
By bringing together the various stakeholders involved at the different stages of a project or asset delivery, the problems surrounding disruptions to collaboration and communication are mitigated. By embracing these new ways of working and utilising the data-driven tools, the GTC is enabling project owners to make accurate, real-time decisions for the whole lifecycle value of an asset. Although no statistics are available as of yet, trends show projects that are being governed digitally to have better outcomes.
The GTC wants to drive this digital transformation, be the forefront of the movement. Bharat intends to create Centres of Excellence in the GTC, for the integration of the centre into work happening worldwide. They aspire to become a digital centre of excellence.
