SSOE: It’s All About Value — More Bang for Your Click

As a Top 10 Engineering & Architecture firm, SSOE Group has been delivering a full range of project delivery solutions across 20+ locations worldwide for over 60 years.  SSOE leverages advanced technology and integrated teams to deliver high value results across its projects – saving time, trouble, and money for its clients.  When SSOE found that its BIM content management strategy wasn’t keeping pace with the needs of the firm, they turned to UNIFI – and found a partner who shared their vision of embracing technology and collaboration to drive value.

At a Breaking Point

Before engaging with UNIFI, SSOE had an extensive BIM content library with thousands of pieces of content to the serve the needs of its vast and diverse client base.  Initially, all of their BIM content was stored in a single network location. As use of BIM grew across SSOE’s nearly 30 locations, they realized this solution would become inefficient and difficult to maintain.  Accessing content was becoming slow at times, fixing broken content was difficult and propagating content changes across models presented numerous hurdles.  Roan Isaku, a BIM Specialist at SSOE and an architect himself, worked in the Revit team within SSOE and understood that “SSOE’s growth and pervasive utilization of BIM had brought them to a point with their BIM content that they needed a new solution”.

More Bang for Your Click

Leveraging SSOE’s own core values of agility and innovation, Roan turned to a like-minded solution – UNIFI Content Management – which offered “more bang for your click” in managing and utilizing content. UNIFI’s cloud-based solution fit the needs of SSOE’s distributed workforce of nearly 300 Revit users by enabling rapid access to a single source of content from anywhere, anytime. Intuitive workflows fostered sharing and collaboration among designers, while also streamlining content reviews and changes. Now, Roan and the other BIM Admins are able to review and approve content from wherever they are – in the office on a desktop or in the field on a mobile phone – making it easy to distribute the most up-to-date content in real-time.  “UNIFI embodies efficiency,” says Roan, “we are able to do more with less.  Or, in UNIFI’s case – do more per click.”

Moving the designers to UNIFI was a planned and deliberate process.  As Roan describes it, “Some of our users were reluctant to move away from a solution they knew – the server – to try Unifi.”  SSOE’s advantage was their dedicated BIM coordinators and culture of learning and development. By partnering closely with UNIFI’s customer success team, several impactful training sessions were conducted. They focused on introducing UNIFI’s capabilities within SSOE’s unique project workflows. Thanks to those customized training sessions, UNIFI has now become the primary content management solution for Revit users allowing for more efficient project delivery and improved collaboration between offices and disciplines. The “old” network server has become SSOE’s backup for content.

“UNIFI has become second nature for accessing content at SSOE. It provides maximum effect with minimum resources,” says Roan, and helps SSOE fulfill its model of delivering value and ultimately making their clients successful.