Parametric design tools save material and time
Under the heading "We make the drilling industry go digital," CloudPiling was born in May 2020. CloudPiling has a clear goal in mind: to support deep foundation engineers and geotechnical engineering companies by digitizing and automating the geotechnical industry.
The independent software company (SaaS) is committed to unlocking the full potential of every engineer. CloudPiling automates what is repetitive and predictable, creating time and space for the engineer to think about concepts and further develop their engineering judgement. And in doing so, it creates exceptional material and time savings.
Foundation design today: some pitfalls
Calculating the most economical solution is extremely labour-intensive and time-consuming. Why? There is no comprehensive software worldwide that integrates all calculation tools. The bearing capacity of the piles, vertical and horizontal settlement behaviour, shear force and bending moments must each be mapped and calculated separately. As a result, the iteration process is long and often uncertain. Moreover, the clock keeps ticking: the stability calculation would rather be delivered today than tomorrow. Because of this urgency during the construction process, there is often no time to compare all the alternatives, so we often struggle with over-dimensioning. Result? Redundant resources are wasted and margin is left with both the general contractor and the deep foundation contractor.
Solution: parametric design
CloudPiling has integrated the existing calculation tools into one comprehensive platform in accordance with the Eurocode. The application for the Belgian market is now fully developed. At the time of publication of this article, CloudPiling will be able to serve the Dutch market as well.
By tackling all calculations in an integrated way, and not switching sequentially, CloudPiling's software has a particularly high calculation speed. In this way, you can calculate different alternatives in a minimum amount of time and drastically optimize the execution cost. Moreover, important changes are often made during the course of a project. In such a case, all the labour-intensive calculations have to be done all over again. Not with CloudPiling: there, you just change one parameter, and automatically the system calculates all the consequences in real time. Such speed and flexibility are unheard of in the industry of deep foundations.
CloudPiling always starts from the following basic package: projects, clients, material & tooling and soil investigation. Depending on your core business, two features can be activated: Foundations Piles and/or Retaining Walls and Soil Anchors. Depending on your business, additional features can be added and/or links can be made with existing APIs.
Technically the two features contain the following design methods: bearing capacity according to WTCB based on method De Beer, vertical settlement of the pile/wall, horizontal displacement of, shear force and bending moments in the pile/wall (through all construction phases), cross-sectional calculation in ultimate limit state based on Eurocode 2, 3 and/or 4 or ‘Handboek soilmix wanden’ and finally the calculation of soil anchors according to WTCB.
Why have our customers chosen for CloudPiling?
CloudPiling allows you to do up to half as much work with your existing team. So the growth of your company is no longer constrained by the scarcity of technical profiles. Your engineers are simply more profitable than ever.
Next, there is material gain. "We have worked out several cases of executed projects where we were able to demonstrate a 30% material reduction." The software succeeds in calculating many more alternatives in a short period of time: does it work with more and shorter, or with fewer and longer piles, for example? The platform is many times faster and more accurate than human reasoning and computing power.
"An often heard comment is that our software is very pragmatic. That is immediately one of our greatest strengths. Normally, software is built by a team of developers and IT people. This is not the case with us. CloudPiling is built by a team that has been in execution for years. That may be taken literally: with their boots in the mud between deep foundation machines. Every little detail is present in the tool. You can fully automatically render both a bill of quantity and a calculation note."
Four hours of training suffice to get started with it. So there are no long implementation phases involved. Finally, CloudPiling is built in the Cloud, which means you can access it anytime, anywhere. Especially for the deep foundation contractors, this is usefull considering they mainly work on site.
Partnerships
The deep foundation company Omni-Tech was one of the very first believers. Thanks to their orders, CloudPiling was able to fully fine-tune the web application. "CloudPiling really makes a difference for me because of their speed and transparent communication. To save time, the client is often contacted directly after which I get all feedback one-on-one. Their way of working is extremely efficient and professional. Their experience in the sector is also a great asset," says managing director Thomas Gheyle.
The deep foundation company of Limburg (Belgium), Dominique De Coster, also did not hesitate to purchase the web application. Co-owner, Tom De Coster, is normally always sceptical about IT and digitization, but for him this is right on the money. Especially the fact that CloudPiling is so pragmatic.
And CloudPiling is looking beyond Belgium. The first reference in the Netherlands is a fact. In early September, CloudPiling joined forces with ‘Funderingstechnieken Verstraeten’ (also known as Fundex) to make the web application compatible for the Dutch market. "We see the potential of a calculation tool in which the combination of soil investigation, calculations (e.g. pile bearing capacity) and data evaluation are possible. Moreover, it is our mission to be a frontrunner in looking for and cooperating with new developments," according to general manager Davy Maes.
Curious about what we can do for you? Contact us at info@cloudpiling.com or +32 478 44 58 60.
