Digital Engineering: Facilitating Better Communication for All Stakeholders

By their very nature, engineering drawings are incredibly complex documents which are only properly understood by a select few people. This can create communication barriers between stakeholders – including community members, contractors and clients – during the design, approval and even the construction stages of an engineering project. That’s why, here at Lindsay Dynan, we endeavour to showcase our designs to all stakeholders using a variety of digital tools, and ultimately break down these barriers to create a more inclusive design process.

Our history in Digital Engineering

Lindsay Dynan combines over 35 years of experience in the industry with the diverse and dynamic skills of our team to create value-engineered solutions for our clients. That’s why, for over a decade, we’ve utilised the latest in digital visualisation tools to help communicate our vision to our clients and other stakeholders. We transitioned from 2D to 3D, and more recently we have started to leverage these 3D models to create visualisations and immersive experiences such as augmented reality and virtual reality.

Given the complexities of engineering projects, especially those on a commercial scale, communicating the vision for a project to stakeholders such as the community, construction contractors, and end clients, can be challenging. Breakdowns in communication during the design phase of an engineering project means lower stakeholder support and engagement and can also mean that identifying potential issues before they occur can be almost impossible. The 1960s saw the advent of the first 3D modelling software as a solution to these traditional engineering challenges.

3D design involves creating a three-dimensional digital visual representation of an engineering project which can be inspected from all angles, allowing for better communication, coordination and understanding of the design’s intricacies. From football stadiums to railways, to multi-storey commercial buildings, 3D modelling allows engineers to interrogate each element of the project much more clearly and in much more detail than through the use of traditional 2D engineering drawings.

When first incorporating 3D designs into our process at Lindsay Dynan, we worked with programs such as AutoCAD and 12D. Over the years, as the technology has developed, we’ve invested heavily in innovations in Digital Engineering and upskilling our staff. We can then reshape this knowledge as a differentiator for our clients as we can now better communicate our designs, enhancing stakeholder engagement at all levels and help to better convey design visions from the earliest stages.

How we are leveraging these skills

Here at Lindsay Dynan, we use Digital Engineering in a number of areas, such as fly-through animations, construction staging animations, augmented reality and virtual reality. Thanks to advances in software and the skills of our staff, we are able to help a project’s stakeholders to visualise each area of a design, enabling non-technical stakeholders to understand, interpret, and provide valuable insight on a project before it has begun.

Digital Engineering allows us to do much more than simply create three-dimensional animations for engineering clients. By leveraging over 30 years of engineering and construction experience, our team can develop a detailed and immersive experience for all stakeholders, which conveys a range of critical messages about a project. This may mean creating a visual experience for a community consultation using virtual reality, a construction staging animation for a site team planning meeting, or even a traffic flow impact animation for the public. Throughout each stage of the planning and design of an engineering project, we leverage our skills in Digital Engineering in combination with our extensive design and construction experience to enhance the understanding of all stakeholders and unlock their invaluable input.

How Digital Engineering helps our clients

For our clients, the use of Digital Engineering can assist with many aspects and challenges involved with their projects. Importantly, consulting with the community through 3D visualisations and 4D animations can be instrumental when seeking approval for a project from local government bodies and can assist the community in better understanding the impacts that a project will have for their neighbourhood. This is particularly useful when seeking feedback from the end-users of a proposed building, road, or train station, for example.

Digital Engineering can also play a vital technical role in coordinating a complex engineering project. Often, project design issues aren’t discovered until the construction phase of a project has begun. The use of BIM helps engineers, construction contractors and clients to pick up on potential issues well before they happen on-site, during both permanent and temporary works (where the site’s conditions change daily), and can save clients potential delays and added costs.

As Digital Engineering technology continues to develop, Lindsay Dynan will continue to invest in incorporating these into our consultation process, ensuring better outcomes, not only for our clients, but for their contractors, their clients, and the wider community.