Gamuda builds its flywheel of innovation centred on Autodesk Construction Cloud
Malaysia’s Gamuda Berhad has been transforming its operations and processes to exceed expectations in delivery and lead the region for innovation. With Autodesk Construction Cloud as part of its unified environment, it has enjoyed better collaboration, more efficient project delivery, and the freedom to drive further developments.
Driving construction innovation across APAC with Autodesk Construction Cloud
Gamuda Berhad (Gamuda), established in 1976, is a prominent Malaysian company specialising in engineering, property, and infrastructure development. Over the years, it has expanded its global operations, demonstrating expertise in delivering state-of-the-art projects that revolve around crucial infrastructure assets such as road and rail networks, tunnels, plants, and beyond.
In recent years, Gamuda has been on a digital transformation journey, revolutionising its business and project processes across its key markets of Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom and Taiwan–aiming to lead the region in innovative breakthrough solutions.
The catalyst for this transformation occurred in 2016 when John Lim, Group Chief Digital Officer of Gamuda, and other leaders posed a critical question: "How can we not only meet project expectations but also surpass them?" This query inspired Gamuda's digital transformation, driving them to seek new ways to excel in project delivery.
Central to this journey was transitioning away from physical, paper-based records to a digital workflow, allowing data to be captured in easily digestible formats. Today, many of Gamuda’s on-site teams are using tablets and paper has been substantially reduced.
Finding a solution that could evolve alongside Gamuda
Gamuda partnered with Autodesk having faced problems with previous solutions regarding feedback, support, and a need for product innovation. “We could see straight away that Autodesk would be proactive in meeting our needs and being open in terms of collaboration. It was clear from the start it’s a scalable and flexible tool that enables us to utilise the API to integrate with other solutions, helping to achieve our digital vision,” shared Lim.
Wanting a pervasive and unified platform, Gamuda adopted Autodesk Construction Cloud in September 2022. They wanted to break down data silos regardless of the market the project was in and the teams and third parties involved. Autodesk’s strategic partner, BIMAGE, helped Gamuda accelerate the implementation and adoption.
Autodesk Construction Cloud is now fully deployed across the business as part of Gamuda’s Digital Operating System, or GDOS, integrating it with other platforms across all teams and projects for a truly streamlined and robust environment.
A common environment to cut through the complexity
Running multi-billion projects across borders and time zones makes collaboration key for Gamuda. With Autodesk Construction Cloud, Gamuda has a scalable solution to bring everybody together and get diverse stakeholders on the same page.
The team could see the need to remove silos to get work done on time, on budget, and to a world-class standard. And John has since seen the desired impact, “Everybody gets the same support and tools to do the best work they can. All of this is boosting visibility, transparency, and in turn, the overall success of projects.”
The transition was easiest in markets like Malaysia, where digital adoption within Gamuda was already commonplace. And despite other regions facing potential challenges such as language barriers and a lack of digital experience amongst local partners, the deployment has been well received and operates as smoothly as the projects themselves. John is pleased with the way both internal and external teams have adapted to the new environment. “Contractors and consultants have adopted and got used to the new platform in record time. They can see the value in the simplicity of the environment. This has driven adoption very well,” says John.
Gamuda is now enjoying the benefits of bringing together disciplines like architecture, Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) engineering and more, into a single environment where they can collaborate with in-depth and high-quality BIM models. All parties are now coming together digitally before anything happens on-site, significantly reducing the risk of errors and costly delays further downstream.
Seeing the results of transformed processes and projects
One of the biggest impacts has been seen in data collection, creating the opportunity for analysis that was previously impossible. The team can then bring this data into its data warehouse and build live dashboards to give all teams more visibility.
In another first, Gamuda has digitised its cost management workflows. A development John is proud of, “As a company, we've never been digitised in terms of how we manage our contracts and our commercials, so this is a big step forward for us.” Working with Autodesk’s strategic partner BIMAGE, Gamuda built specialised cost document templates, accessible within Autodesk Construction Cloud, that integrate seamlessly with the company's existing internal processes and document formats. This has helped to reduce the risk of document duplication and costly errors across the organisation.
A project where the full potential of Autodesk Construction Cloud has been realised is the Rasau Water Treatment Plant in Selangor, Malaysia. Once completed, the facility will provide the region with up to 700 million litres of clean and safe water a day. The plant project is one example where the benefits of Autodesk Construction Cloud have been clear. John explains, “We deployed it across the entire project, and it’s shown how this platform can drive that collaboration we were looking for.”
The impact at a glance
Built a more robust common data environment where everybody can collaborate most effectively
United multidisciplinary teams across borders to improve integrated project delivery
Deployed and scaled digital processes across regional teams with ease
Digitised and centralised cost management capabilities, reducing the need for manual entry
Empowered businesses to innovate with a robust digital environment to build upon
Building momentum and innovation for the future
With a common data environment in place, Gamuda has a strong foundation and can now experiment and innovate further in new areas. For example, Gamuda is developing an Augmented Reality BIM solution to visualise design models and bring them to life in situ on site, offering a new, more immersive way to spot clashes and issues and keep projects moving in the right direction.
Another area Gamuda sees great potential for utilising its new data environment in the future is sustainability. Teams can explore measuring environmental and carbon impacts in a more standardised way across projects and geographies and can measure carbon score improvements over time. Both are important developments for Gamuda as it looks to deliver on its Green Plan initiatives.
John is excited about what the future holds for Gamuda with Autodesk Construction Cloud embedded into its business, “We’re delighted with the Autodesk solution, and the team has been collaborative and given us great support throughout this journey. This collaborative data-driven environment has been driving our flywheel of innovation, and there’s much more to come.”