Arup
Arup Sustains Its Market Position With Bentley Training
“The provision of a properly structured training program has been essential in maintaining our position in the commercial market and ensuring that we have the skills in our staff to meet the challenges of the future.”
Arup is a global firm of designers, engineers, planners, and business consultants who provide a diverse range of professional services to clients in three main business areas: buildings, infrastructure, and consulting. The firm exerts a significant influence on the built environment and is the creative force behind many of the world’s most innovative and sustainable designs. It has almost 9,000 staff working in 92 offices in more than 37 countries. At any one time, it has more than 10,000 projects running concurrently.
Challenges
- The diversity of Arup’s geography and business demands in the United Kingdom means that each office has different skill and training needs.
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- The firm planned to conduct an organization-wide MicroStation update. The introduction of discipline-based CAD standards and new drawing protocols provided an excellent opportunity to bring the staff’s skills up to a uniform level, but flexibility in arranging training at the right time for each project team, group, or office was vital.
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- A pre-training questionnaire revealed that users’ skills could be improved to take advantage of the productivity and efficiency gains offered by MicroStation.
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- Following the MicroStation upgrade, the firm decided to standardize its entire building sector business on 3D, inspired by successes in 3D already achieved in parts of the firm.
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Solution
- Arup recognized that investment in the development and training of its people contributes to the success of its business and established a comprehensive training program to develop people's skills and encourage individuals to achieve their full potential.
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- The firm decided to outsource its custom MicroStation training in the UK to the Bentley Institute. All groups and offices were advised to conduct training prior to upgrading.
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- Arup operates a “CAD Skills Network” intranet, which functions as a communications channel for sharing knowledge and skills among individuals. It uses the intranet to promote all the courses available through its subscription, who should attend, and how to register for a course.
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Results
- Arup credits the successful upgrade for significant improvements in work consistency, compliance with standards, and interoperability across its groups.
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- The training subscription has proved to be a success not only in advancing staff skills, but also in its flexibility to meet the demands of its geography and often short-term requirement to complete training.
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- In the first three months of the subscription, Arup exceeded the amount of training it had completed annually in previous years.
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- The different delivery mechanisms offered by the Bentley Institute are essential to the achievements of the training program. In particular, OnDemand eLearning allows users to refresh their training at their desktop should they need to and distance learning keeps staff apprised of product developments.
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- Post-training questionnaires indicated an improvement in staff skills.
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Fast Facts
Employees: Approximately 9,000
Services:
| Business Solutions |
Planning and Engineering Consultancy |
| Multidisciplinary Design |
Project Creation and Management |