GHD’s Breakthrough with Workato: 480x faster Access to >1000 files per Project, Saving 8 hours Weekly

With over 11,000 employees across five continents, GHD distinguishes itself as an engineering and design consultant for giants across sectors like construction, mining, transport, logistics. 

Tackling highly complex engineering projects means that everything has to fall in place at the same time – data across multiple environments, users across several locations, and even partners dependent on receiving up-to-date and compliant information. 

Bhupesh Sharma, Director of Process Transformations and Emerging Technologies at GHD Digital, set out to build such a future-ready foundation with his team. His goal? To harness technology to build sustainable operations – one that not only optimises costs but also makes life better for people, building a sustainable future for the communities served. 

Joining GHD with 25 years of technology-driven business transformation experience under his belt, Bhupesh was already familiar with several pure-play automation tools (e.g. Selenium, Automation Anywhere and UiPath), as well as advanced automations for instrument engineering. Yet, this time, he recognised the need for a far more powerful platform – for enterprise orchestration – a stable underlying technology that could empower GHD to integrate across their massive operations and automate at scale. This story outlines their journey.

Limited visibility, no consistency

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“When people do not have the latest version of the designs, they are blindfolded on what other teams are doing.” 

Bhupesh Sharma, Director of Process Transformations and Emerging Technologies, GHD Digital

Service line engineers were trying to connect multiple common data environments (CDEs) which hold huge amounts of data for large infrastructure projects. No standard mechanism existed for exchanging information across these CDEs, leading staff to copy and paste information from one proprietary system to another. 

On large infrastructure projects involving multiple construction partners and design teams, people were using different design softwares and platforms, further complicating how data federation and data integrity could be managed in the face of complex interdependencies. Users also required additional access and training to use multiple CDEs to access different versions of files. 

To rise above competitive pressures and differentiate themselves, GHD needed to connect multiple systems and automate their entire workflow, across all service lines – water, energy, railways, and road infrastructure. 

Synchronising common data environments

Bhupesh and his team set out in search of an agile, flexible, and scalable solution. One that is also vendor agnostic and secure by design. Bhupesh partnered Shan Ee, Digital Transformation, Automations, and Integration Solutions Lead at GHD, to lead this evaluation.

When Workato showed promise, the duo and their team embarked on an in-depth study into the platform’s capabilities, mapped out how their CDEs operate, and began with a proof of concept. 

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“We quickly found ourselves independently building integrations and automation workflows on Workato. Our strategy was to engage chosen champions of change, rollout solutions to specific teams first, and once enough equity was built, scale it to the larger community of engineers, designers and project managers across GHD.”

Shan Ee, Digital Transformation, Automations, and Integration Solutions Lead, GHD

Using Workato, they built a CDE synchroniser that monitored diverse CDEs featuring multiple systems and triggered data exchange into a central CDE, Autodesk Construction Cloud, whenever there was new information available in any of the systems. This included web scraping information from legacy systems with no APIs. The synchroniser even notified all users via email, of new information made available. 

Here’s how it works:

Speed, scale and visibility

Here’s what GHD achieved with Workato:

• Over 1000 files on average are synchronised and reconciled for every project (i.e. over 100GB worth of data), with over 1800 files synced at peak load.
• Saves over 8 hours weekly, otherwise spent on syncing files, and frees up critical resources for key projects. 
• Over 480 times faster file accessibility, with a 1 week effort reduced to just 5 minutes. 
• Empowers GHD’s service line engineers to customise to project needs within weeks. Such value-accelerated deployment unlocks unparalleled responsiveness for construction projects in the digital age.
• Improved compliance to standards and regulatory requirements like the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), thus lowering the risks associated with data management.

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“Workato allows us to scale at speed. We achieved 480x faster access to over 1000 files per project, saving 8 hours weekly. Best of all, the platform allows us to elevate our people to focus on what matters. By templatising our success, we can continue unlocking tremendous value for our staff, clients and partners.”

Bhupesh Sharma, Director of Process Transformations and Emerging Technologies, GHD Digital

Building a sustainable future

Once Bhupesh and his team nailed the first rollout of their CDE synchroniser, they lost no time in scaling it to over 10 key projects, delivering immense benefits for GHD. Yet, they are not slowing down anytime soon. The team continues to replicate the success of the template they have created, to benefit more teams and service lines across the world. 

With cross-discipline data being handled in a governed and scalable manner, GHD is poised to scale their impact in building a sustainable future for the communities they serve.