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com/infrastructure
"We completed this portion of
the project two months early.
In terms of resource usage, two
months represents a savings of
approximately $110,000."
Don Falken,
Washington Metropolitan
Transit Authority
A Transit Leader
Created by the federal government in 1967,
WMATA extends from the nation's capital into
Virginia and Maryland. Given the agency's
extensive service area and the nature of rail
lines, the agency has long relied heavily on its
surveyors. That reliance has grown though the
years, and today the agency's surveyors do
most of the production work on projects like
the light rail project. "Because we're able to
leverage our expertise with Autodesk software
to merge survey data and use it through the
design process, we're more efficient," explains
Don Falken, WMATA's survey manager and a
licensed professional surveyor. "Using a team
approach and working under the direction of
our senior civil engineer, Lee Roy Padget, we
are able to advance the design using Autodesk
Survey, Autodesk Land Desktop, Autodesk Civil
Design, and Autodesk Raster Design."
The Challenge: From Drawing to Review,
Unlinked Designs Waste Time
Funded by the District of Columbia, the new
three-mile light rail line represented a five-mile
property mapping exercise requiring numerous
design iterations. Each completed sheet must
present an incredible array of information,
including terrain, utility, and design data. Using
a traditional methodology, the designers would
start by drafting the informationsuch as the
utility lines intersecting the projectonto a
map built from survey information or imported
from a GIS (geographic information system). If
an element crossed several sheets, the designer
would need to open each sheet and draw in the
line individually. Not merely tedious, elements
can be easily missed, necessitating an equally
tediousand time-consumingreview
process. "When each sheet is a separate file,
the design process is slowed, especially on a
projects that include a lot of line work," says
Falken. "It's very easy to miss one element that
you are trying to capture during design. During
review, it also necessitates flipping between
documents to ensure information is consistent
from one drawing to the next."
WMATA Saves Two Months and $110,000 Using
Autodesk Solutions
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) transports 381
million passengers on its rail and bus network each year. With an eye toward the
cost-effective enhancement of the regions rail systems, the District of Columbia
has asked WMATA to design and construct a light rail demonstration project in the
Anacostia section of Washington, DC. The initiative is still in its early stages, and
with help from its integrated design software, it is on track to succeed. Using
Autodesk solutions, the design team completed its project documents two months
ahead of schedule and more than $110,000 under budget.
Customer Success Story
Washington Metropolitan
Area Transit Authority
Washington Metropolitan
Area Transit Authority
Customer Success Story www.autodesk.com/infrastructure
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Autodesk, Inc.
111 McInnis Parkway
San Rafael, CA 94903
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At the outset of the project, the team
anticipated another potential time
drain: the local utilities provided their
underground and above ground line
information in hardcopy format. Each
page of information contained graphic
line information and text containing
relevant notes. "Drawing in that data
by hand is time-consuming," notes
Falken. "Just scaling the information to
a common feature, such as an
intersection, requires time and
precision, as does having to interpret
and type text notes."
The Solution:
An Integrated Design Process
WMATA was determined to avoid
designing the project on individual
drawings, and it knew that the latest
versions of Autodesk mapping and
design software were ideally suited to
support data flow across design sheets
and disciplines. To accelerate the
project and ensure proper configura-
tion, WMATA turned to OutSource Inc.,
an Autodesk authorized training center
located in Virginia. OutSource, working
in close collaboration with WMATA,
established a clear set of design
standards that worked seamlessly with
the agency's complete suite of
Autodesk software. OutSource also
used Autodesk Land Desktop's inte-
grated design functionality to link all
the design sheets into a single layout,
which was stored and made accessible
on a central server. According to Harry
Ward, P.E., executive vice president of
OutSource, "With Autodesk software,
you can work with virtually any type of
data, including vector, raster, survey,
and even ESRI or MicroStation GIS data.
It readily supports moving data
between solutions and linking
elements of projects."
With a small team from WMATA's
survey department doing the bulk of
the CADD work, the project progressed
rapidlyso rapidly that some employ-
ees were reassigned to other important
projects. The designers were able to
easily draw elements that extended
from one sheet to the next. Because
the team completed work in layers,
multiple designers worked simultane-
ously on the same sheet. And the
software and the new design standards
helped to accelerate the project by
making the document review process
seamless. "Whether we were working
in Autodesk Land Desktop or Autodesk
Civil Design, we could move and draw
from one view to the next," says Falken.
"We could also import data from other
sources, such as Autodesk Raster
Design. During the review processes,
we were able to incorporate changes
that affected several sheets almost
instantly."
In order to digitize the paper maps
provided by the utilities, WMATA used
Autodesk Raster Design. After scanning
the paper maps, WMATA used the
software's rubbersheeting functionality
to position features according to the
project's coordinate system and
converted the data into vector format.
The team integrated that data into the
core project database. "Once you
become familiar with the process,
scanning, rubbersheeting, and
converting paper maps to digital data
can be done fairly quickly," reports
Falken. "Because the text was quite
blurry on the paper maps we scanned,
we didn't think we would be able to
use Raster Design's optical text
recognition capabilities on this project.
But it worked; it's a slick feature."
The Result:
Two Months and $110,000 Saved
Thanks to the effective use of its
Autodesk software, WMATA saved both
time and money on the initial design of
the light rail project. Falken points out
that those savings are being repur-
posed to help keep the project moving
forward. He says, "We completed this
portion of the project two months
early. In terms of resource usage, two
months represents a savings of approx-
imately $110,000. Because we didn't
use that money, it is now available to
help fund the site preparation stage of
the project."
The savings might even be greater
because Falken's figures don't account
for the fact that the agency completed
the project with a smaller project team
than originally anticipated. "We were
able to complete the project with two
fewer survey department staffers than
expected," says Falken. "In fact, the
process was so efficient that we were
able to reassign two of our more
experienced team members. They were
then able to share their advanced
design skills on higher value tasks
within the agency."