Alsina is a global company that thinks locally. Their mission is to offer solutions for concrete structures that help customers improve project efficiency and safety with committed, attentive service in the global market. Alsina offers a wide range of solutions in the field of formwork and shoring, specializing in providing designs that meet the specific needs of their customers and their unique projects. In addition to these specific solutions, Alsina offers a range of accessories, safety equipment, and engineering services to ensure the successful implementation of their formwork solutions. In essence, Alsina ensures the professionals who use their services aren’t trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, with their focus remaining on enhancing both safety and productivity.
BricsCAD® enables them to focus on providing high-quality service by reducing the cost of ownership and maintaining the same productivity as a stable platform for their in-house software, AlsiCAD. If they were to use a legacy CAD platform, they may need to increase the price of their services and, potentially, lose business.
The Challenge
Like many companies that have technical design at their core, Alsina needed a solution that provided:
- A stable, reliable platform on which to run their in-house software, AlsiCAD
- Compatibility with other DWG solutions
- Consistently helpful support
- Easy to learn and implement for a team with a CAD background
- Maintains productivity of quick design proposals and 2D assembly drawings
- All of this at a reasonable cost of ownership
In addition, Alsina needed to make sure it could involve contractors in the design process. In other words, instead of merely sending them a file, Alsina wanted to incorporate the contractor in the ideation and feedback phases.
Alsina also must manage an intricate formwork and scaffolding rental process to ensure each customer gets exactly what they need, including:
- Visiting customers
- On-site reception
- Project analysis
- Design of special pieces
- Proposal presentation
- Assembly
- Detailed plans
- Logistics
- Onsite support
- Removal of materials
Alsina needed software that could support all these phases, without pushing the company beyond budgetary limits.
The Solution
Bricsys was an ideal solution for several reasons, all of which make Alsina’s design and delivery process faster, leaner, and more straightforward.
Speed and accuracy of design deliverables
One of the key benefits of BricsCAD® is that Alsina’s more than 100 technicians can create design proposals and bill of materials very quickly. The more proposals they can get out the door, the more projects they can win.
After a job is awarded, designers then use this data to generate detailed, 2D construction drawings that contractors can use to assemble formwork on-site. The speed and accuracy BricsCAD® brings to this process is key to maintaining steady productivity. As formwork assemblies might change daily, there may be updated documentation every day. In this way, the contractor is able to save time in the assembly process, as well as ensure safe installation on site.
The combination of 2D and 3D drawings
While most designs get produced in a 2D PDF at Alsina, a small number of these documents would also have a 3D diagram that illustrates how things fit together. To make this possible, Alsina used hybrid 2D/3D parametric components for both the bill of materials and the illustrations.
The 3D representation produced using BricsCAD® made it easier to visualize each setup — both for the designer and the contractor.
Delivering exceptional service at lower costs
Alsina prioritizes excellent service in its business model. This involves several components, including a pain-free materials return process, fast support, and no hidden fees. If Alsina had used an alternative CAD, they may have had to charge more for their services due to the increased cost. With BricsCAD®, however, the company is able to keep their expenses down and pass the savings on to their clients.
Licensing flexibility that fits business needs
Alsina’s process incorporates both BricsCAD® Pro and BricsCAD® Lite users. All technicians use BricsCAD® Pro to design plans to specifications for customer proposals, drawings, and lists of materials.
At the same time, many of Alsina’s salespeople use BricsCAD® Pro, under a network license, to generate fast quotations while in the field. They can do this without having to refer to the technicians because they can build plans for simple installations right there in the field. BricsCAD®'s flexible approach to licensing provides Alsina with an all-important edge over competitors.
With the combination of license levels and BricsCAD® products, Alsina has been able to work out the most cost-effective way of pricing rental contracts, according to the kind of work being performed. For example, when using the Lite version, supply chain and corporate colleagues who don’t need to use plugins can simply use the 2D CAD features, such as opening and making measurements on product drawings, and generating designs of their warehouses and plant. In short, they are able to focus their time and efforts, rather than getting bogged down in any features that are unnecessary for them but are leveraged by their colleagues in other areas of the business. Each user’s process is made convenient and efficient in this way, with BricsCAD providing Alsina with a valuable competitive edge.
As Manuel Gascón, Technical Manager for Software Maintenance, explains, the different license options provide flexibility throughout this process:
“We want to use the technicians for the study of job sites and structures, (so) we try to make non-technical team use the Lite license as this is more cost-effective for us.”
Easier repairs with the BricsCAD® Mechanical license
Alsina also leverages the BricsCAD® Mechanical license to streamline the process of designing repair machines for the material maintenance and repair. Specifically, it uses it to design tools for repairing its assets, or to design the right warehouse layout for performing the repair. BricsCAD’s 3D features make the process more intuitive for designers.
Easy integration of plugins
With BricsCAD®, Alsina can program its own plugins. Alsina has designed a host of plugins and programs that work with the BricsCAD® platform called AlsiCAD, and developed a vast library of 2D, 3D parametric formwork components. This saves considerable time in the design and delivery process.
Marc Forte Genescà, Digitalization and Continuous Improvement Department Manager, describes why, explaining,
“Since BricsCAD® Pro allows us to program our plugins, when we must do regular work, we don't have to manually put all the material in the correct position to have that final drawing. Now, with BricsCAD® Pro, we can use a plugin, so the process is much faster.”
Results
Alsina's strategic advantage with BricsCAD
BricsCAD® enables the Alsina team to maintain high-quality services and high levels of productivity, all while optimizing cost of ownership, and providing a stable, reliable platform for their in-house plugin, AlsiCAD.
Complete with LISP routines, and a vast library of parametric 2D/3D formwork components, both sales and technical teams can deliver drawings and proposals quickly, maintaining that all-important competitive edge for their business.
To see how BricsCAD® can support your company’s success, download a free 30-day trial today.
Barcelona, Spain
Concrete Structure Solutions
Alsina
- www.alsina.com
