How Oktra Drives Collaboration across their Supply Chain

Oktra is an award-winning company specialising in the design and build of commercial spaces with short timescales. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Oktra began using BIM 360, an Autodesk Construction Cloud™ solution, to aid faster and real-time design collaboration to efficiently share model information and collaborate in real-time on one platform, eliminating the risk of miscommunication. This success led to adopting BIM Collaborate Pro and migrating to Autodesk Build to support better collaboration across their supply chain on design and build projects in the UK.

When Virtual Collaboration Becomes a Necessity

As a design and build contractor, Oktra often works on high-profile and high-speed projects with short timescales. Their delivery timelines can be as short as 14 weeks, so their methodology for project delivery is crucial when executing projects. For the team, having the right software and processes to support high-speed, real-time collaboration is paramount.

Early in 2020, as the world began to feel the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK government issued a nationwide lockdown, forcing Oktra’s teams to work remotely.

The team resolved to adopt a cloud-based document management system to collaborate in a virtual environment and remove any obstacles in accessing high-resolution models remotely.
 

“This has saved a designer on average half an hour a day…this is value that we can see straight away from using Autodesk Construction Cloud.”

Alex Turner
Head of Digital Design and Construction

Improving Collaboration and Communication

The success of this experience led Oktra to review their design and build processes, exploring how they could use technology to improve information sharing and better store project documentation for a single source of truth for project data.

They extended the use to their supply chain partners to minimise the amount of miscommunication on projects and reduce information loss. Supply chain partners have better access to models meaning they can visualise the work that needs to be done better, resolve issues quicker and capture feedback instantly.
 

“We’ve had issues in the past where lost information and miscommunication has led to errors on site. Now we reduce the amount of rework needed on projects because information shared is accurate and up-to-date.”

Alex Turner
Head of Digital Design and Construction

Leveraging a Digital Solution to Deliver More

For Oktra’s diverse team, understanding and interfacing with construction information is much simpler and easier to digest. No longer do the team rely on technical experts to break down information, they can now access everything they need in one place in a much more visual way.

And for Oktra’s supply chain partners, it is much easier to deliver right first time. The next step for Oktra is to deepen their use of digital technology to underpin all of their operations in their pursuit of being a data and digitally driven organisation.
 

“Increasing our use of Autodesk products has shown us how we can drive continuous improvement through better insights and data. And we’re looking to use all the functionality available to bring another layer of accountability to our projects to understand why issues arise and then use this information to improve what we do in the future.”

Alex Turner
Head of Digital Design and Construction