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Floating Bridges & Submerged Tunnels: Norway's Ambitious E39 Highway Project
42 Plays7 days ago
From floating bridges to billion-dollar tech partnerships, Jason and Carlos explore three recent developments from the world of construction:
🏔️ Discover Norway's audacious E39 Highway project replacing ferry crossings along 1,000km of fjord-lined coastline with groundbreaking engineering solutions. Norway is building the world's longest subsea tunnel (27km), a 5km floating bridge, and potentially the world's first submerged floating tunnel, cutting travel time by 11 hours.
💻 Jason and Carlos analyze the recently announced $1 billion partnership between Microsoft and engineering giant WSP. Microsoft aims to accelerate data center construction to support AI initiatives, while WSP secures a steady stream of work in one of construction's fastest-growing sectors.
🏠 The duo examines HiArc's impressive technology that converts simple 2D sketches into fully-formed 3D models with real-time cost estimates. Currently focused on residential buildings, this innovation could revolutionize design meetings, field changes, and subcontractor engagement.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
05:52 - Norway's E39 Highway project
20:44 - Microsoft-WSP $1 billion partnership
31:44 - HiArc's 2D to 3D design conversion technology
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Personal Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Are you all going to try ah Well, you have to eventually say them at some point. So let's do a quick run through.
00:00:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's the... I'm... i'm i'm hit
00:00:26
Speaker
Sognerfjorden, Björnerfjorden, Lange Null, Boknerfjorden. There we go, done. I've done my turn. Off you go Carlos. Hauserfjorden.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yep, good. I think so. I'm Mark here like I know. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Romsdelfjorden, Söderfjorden, Vartdelfjorden,
00:00:50
Speaker
Nordfjorden. Is Fjorden Fjord then? I'm guessing. hey That's my take. Very ah good. Well done. book nephew and So in the other article, the version I'm reading, it's Fjord instead of Fjorden.
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's the English word. I'd say we were pretty back on there. Again, I'm answering like I know. yeah
00:01:16
Speaker
Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast. I am Jason Lansini, joined once again by Carlos Cavallo. Carlos, you're in London. How are things, mate?
00:01:26
Speaker
Yep, we're all good, thanks. The weather is warming up. My son has started sleeping and things are looking up. So all good. How's Germany? Very good. I will start off with weather chat. This is the new opening segment. So it's snowing again.
00:01:42
Speaker
very cold. Sorry, was that too British for you? No, no, I just I figured that's what any of the listeners are here for is weather updates. Weather update from a week ago. That's what they want. Yeah, yeah.
00:01:56
Speaker
But no, it's actually interesting there from a weather perspective. it's It's been snowing. It's been like maybe getting to plus one in the entire day the last couple of days.
00:02:07
Speaker
It suddenly goes tomorrow. The low is five and it goes up to like 15. It's like a 15 degree swing in the course of a day. It's almost concerning.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah. I was like, I was starting to do like what's going on. And no one seems alarmed by it at all. Yeah. A lot going on in the news. ah Natural. Sorry. Carry on.
00:02:29
Speaker
No, i was just going to a lot going
Technological Innovations in Construction
00:02:31
Speaker
on in the news this week. Anything ah worth covering? oh Let's maybe introduce the the topics for the week and then we'll and then we'll circle back actually. So the things we're going to cover on the list today are actually one of the most interesting and amazing projects that you've never heard of, I've never heard of, I don't think many people have heard of,
00:02:50
Speaker
which is a plan to replace that they've actually started work on to replace every ferry crossing across over a thousand kilometers of coastline in Norway.
00:03:01
Speaker
Amazing project that I was totally enthralled by. we'll Revisit the news from about ah about a week ago, which was the announcement of a partnership between WSP, the engineering um design house firm, ah with Microsoft, where they're doing all sorts of things with regards to data centers and AI.
00:03:22
Speaker
And then ah you actually came across a really cool piece of technology that seems to be able to magically turn 2D sketches into 3D BIM models, which we independently spent some time diving into and will posit about what where that could go into the future. but Anything else that was in the news this week or anything that's worth covering? yeah One notable new project announcement is that China is developing a i think it's the world's first deep sea research station.
00:03:53
Speaker
um that will house up to six people ah but can be controlled remotely. But um it's a thousand meters down on the seabed, concrete structure, which they've sort of branded as exploration, scientific marine-based research and all sorts of things like that. But then there's an article that sort of highlights the fact that the world's biggest methane resource is underneath that patch of land.
00:04:20
Speaker
um So are they actually looking to um extract resources there? Because obviously methane could be used as a source of energy. Yeah, it looks a bit James Bolland super villain and who knows what they're really intending on doing
China's Deep Sea Research Station
00:04:34
Speaker
there. But I'd love to see how you build a concrete structure a thousand meters under the sea.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's like they it's like we're going to do this research project in the middle of, i don't know, maybe the South China Sea. And then you'll see them packing it up with all the gear that they're bringing. It's like a bunch of flags, you know, you like plant territory flags.
00:04:52
Speaker
yeah What are they for? I bet they keep mistakenly saying lab. I don't know, research facility. yeah um so Another really weird point from the the article is um the the research station can be remote remotely operated even from space. It's like why is that the land to space thing relevant and what are they planning on doing to Earth? Are they going to operate this thing from space? It like yeah it was all a bit Dr. Evil for me but um it it will be cool to see how they actually ah build it. but um
00:05:25
Speaker
yeah If anyone does a like order of like where they can save money across the Chinese government, ah but I've got a few suggestions. Maybe the space controlled undersea research facility. Yeah. yeah Yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
And not to put a pun in there, but there's something a bit stinky about this. Is methane smelly?
Norway's Ferry Replacement Project
00:05:47
Speaker
I was like, is he underwater spelling? right, we'll move on. um So I've been, I've been, i've spent an unfair amount of time diving into and learning about this project that we're talking about. So let let me give you a bit of a setup.
00:06:03
Speaker
Along the western coast of new Norway is effectively just a coastline full of these epic beautiful fjords which effectively, anyone not looking at the picture that I have in front of me, is a bunch of like kind of narrow stretches of water and big towering cliffs that dive like straight into the the water.
00:06:27
Speaker
And you can imagine from an infrastructure perspective, building roadways along that coast is ah difficult. Currently, if you drive the thousand odd kilometers from top to bottom, it takes about 21 hours, which if you do the math is really slow. I won't attempt to do the math in real time.
00:06:46
Speaker
So that is, that has a big like cost of the ability to move people around ah goods around the country. So it's this E 39 highway runs the the sort of thousand kilometer length along the coast along there, there are several, ah ferry crossings. Basically you drive to you hit one of the fjords and then you get a ferry across and then you keep driving.
00:07:08
Speaker
And they have had these, the Norwegian government um has had a long term plan to create this uninterrupted ferry free route that could basically halve the travel time. So saving almost 10 hours or 11 hours for every person doing that top to bottom route, especially from a goods transport perspective would be epic. What is particularly interesting is that it involves several very unique and sometimes first of its kind type of mega projects to create ways to span these these fjords.
00:07:42
Speaker
And so the project itself is still, the overall highway project is still largely up for discussion inside of the country, but they have started on some of them. So there are three probably bits that are most notable to probably double click into. So along the route, there is a currently under construction Rogfaar subsea tunnel. So it's a 27 kilometer long tunnel, which will become the world's longest and deepest subsea road tunnel when it's supposed to open in 2033. It gets to almost 400 meters below sea level ah to replace one of these ferry crossings.
00:08:23
Speaker
along the way. And the budget of what's currently being delivered is about two and a bit billion US s dollars, which in the scheme of like world's largest and deepest tunnel seems very reasonable. And, but in the scheme of like, this is one of many ferry crossings, you add all that up, it starts to get expensive. But so this section is currently under construction by a couple of different ah contractors, including Skanska.
00:08:48
Speaker
The other two notable elements of what the what's proposed is a crazy five kilometer long floating bridge that has 300 meter suspended spans for one of the fjords, the Björnfjorden, and effectively a floating bridge.
00:09:07
Speaker
um So just to give context to the scenario, you've got these, yeah, you've got these fjords with very, very, very steep walls and very, very, very deep water. And so that makes traditional bridges that would have to have pontones sunk to the depth to bedrock ah increasingly infeasible.
00:09:26
Speaker
And so the idea is that you have in this scenario, a set of floating pontoons that then support a floating bridge across this five kilometer span.
00:09:37
Speaker
The third bit, just if that wasn't ambitious enough, is there is a kilometer or more wide fjord.
00:09:48
Speaker
ah Sorry, there's a kilometer deep fjord, I think called Sognyafjord. I'm going to botch every one of these. ah They are looking at submerged floating tunnels, so a kind of like Archimedes bridge style structure, which would have these yeah ah segments that were tethered to ah floating ah pontoons um that hold the bridge in place and effectively this sorry hold the tunnel in place and it's effectively like below the surface of the water.
00:10:21
Speaker
This is a super interesting collection of projects in this overall scheme in some of the most unique landscapes in the world. Yes, some of it has real wood behind it and underway. So that's kind of this the setup.
00:10:36
Speaker
Each one of these things is a topic to dive into. I don't know where if you've got someone that jumped out to you to start. I think just ah also in terms of the landscape, we've got these thousand meter deep fjords.
00:10:47
Speaker
The mountains are two and a half thousand meters high around them as well. so they're The elevation you've got to deal with, and which is why there's such an extreme design is is is wild. And it must be it must be an engineer's dream for the type of project to work on based on that.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, engineer's dream, QS's nightmare. Because basically you end up with this scenario where you know traditionally you're when you're building a tunnel, there's like some trade offs, right? You've got like a bridge becomes feasible up to certain widths and up to certain depths.
00:11:16
Speaker
and then suddenly a tunnel starts to make more sense. But then the problem with the tunnel is you need to be able to get traffic progressively at a reasonable gradient down to the depth that they need to to cross the whatever you're crossing.
00:11:29
Speaker
And traditional, say, bored tunnels need to tunnel through the the um the ground underneath the water. You're actually going underneath the body of water. And so when you're in a when you're in these unique places where you've got people driving at like plus 1,000 meters and the need to like get to more than minus 1,000 meters in depth ah in order to actually get to beneath the water body.
00:11:55
Speaker
When you start like plotting how far it would take on a gradient, you end up having to start tunneling like so far back that it becomes like, i think, economically infeasible. Not to mention that it doesn't look like there's ah any shortage of very hard rock in the images here as well.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. Obviously, the Scandinavian countries are very well known for being environmentally friendly and very considerate of the climate around them. and The design very much looks pretty nailed on in terms of minimal disruption to everything around you because by floating these pontoons, you're not tearing up the seabed, you're not throwing TBMs through, you're not causing too much damage. It feels like quite a nice happy medium. And I think they have quite a lot of cruise liners that go through.
00:12:38
Speaker
So these spaced out pontoons with either a suspended tunnel or a floating bridge above them. feels like a good space to be because you it's kind of minimal disruption.
00:12:50
Speaker
um So it's quite impressive how they've managed to do that. um And that the the length of this thing is is crazy. um like We know the coastline and Norway is extremely long, but 21 drive is that's a serious amount of time to be heading down one of these highways.
00:13:08
Speaker
um But it does make you think how tough this must be logistically. um It's not like it's a bit of a flat coastline with all these fjords. So from a logistical point of view, transporting all of these materials into these sites must be ah a serious challenge in itself, which is kind of doubling down on the value that actually adds to the residents of the local community when these things are open.
00:13:29
Speaker
yeah You wonder if yeah you'd be setting up many construction villages or temporary stations along this route to sort of pull in materials, house them and have these sort of logistics hubs to be able to actually operate each construction site rather than just endless stream of trucks trying to navigate their way through um what looks like quite complex systems.
00:13:49
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you get the problem of the trucks need the same the trucks have the same problem that the problems that the solution is trying to solve. Yeah, exactly. A fun ah quiz time.
00:14:00
Speaker
Do you know why it's called an Archimedes bridge? I must have been sleeping that day in philosophy. No, I don't. Archimedes was more of the engineer type.
00:14:13
Speaker
ah So he has this like this Archimedes law is that basically defines this idea of buoyancy where effectively um the buoyancy of an object equals the weight of the displaced water.
00:14:25
Speaker
Right. um And so you obviously have these tunnels made of, ah well, when I say these tunnels, first of all, it's worth noting that no submerged floating tunnel has ever been built. They've been proposed a bunch of places around the world.
00:14:40
Speaker
And going back to many of our previous conversations about in construction, you probably don't want to be the first person to do something. Yeah. There's been a lot of proposals of these around a lot. There's been a few of proposals of these around the world and never built um due to the hesitation of of the engineering um challenge.
00:15:00
Speaker
There are many engineering challenges with them. So first of all, um you've got very heavy materials that need to be floated. So you have to get a way through ballast to float them. They also need to be they also need to kind of have like a equilibrium of buoyancy so that the amount of ballast has to equal the weight of the thing that it's, ah you know, there'll be something, some level of ballast tank connected or supporting the tube. And you've also got a tube that the weight is shifting based on the traffic.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah. And it's in in a super dynamic environment. It's in the water. So there's currents and stuff moving the whole time. And so you would typically propose to build these things in sections and then join them. Usually the common methods are like some sort of like mechanical coupler and then you grout the joints.
00:15:49
Speaker
Similar to, I think, the Ferman Belt Tunnel, I think that typically these are like connected and there's water in them. And then once they're like all connected up, then the water's pumped out so that you don't have like a buoyancy problem at the time. But it's all theoretical. How are the pontoons floating? Is that like a floating concrete or is there something else involved?
00:16:09
Speaker
There's i'm typically like a ballast tank, so it's full of air. is you're trying to make You're trying to make the tank as light as possible um yeah so that it it basically is displacing maximal volume of water because that's what's pulling that's what's offsetting the weight of the the rest of the thing.
00:16:25
Speaker
if it if it If it's a watertight tunnel, it will have its own buoyancy as well. So it may not be a separate pond. Because that what's proposed, there's different designs that that I've seen. Most of them have the pontoons sat on the bottom of the seabed.
00:16:39
Speaker
And they have cables coming up to the the tunnel. And so that would imply that the tunnel itself, including any like ballast tanks on the outside of it, is the buoyant thing. And these pontoons are like anchoring it down to the seabed.
00:16:53
Speaker
as opposed to there's some other designs where it looks like they're on top. And um obviously there's going to be movement in these floating pontoons. So from a from a tube point of view, how do you deal with the connection points to give it flex?
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, no idea. Like a train on the tube. It's got the like the rubber bit in the middle. You obviously can't have that because of the pressure of the water. but Yeah, you would normally have like movement bearings or elastomeric bearings and stuff, but you also want it to be watertight, ah which yeah adds another level of ah complexity.
00:17:25
Speaker
And the whole thing kind of hinges on it. Hence probably why they've never been built. um Yeah. I think there is the part of the proposal for this one in particular is that the the actual shape of the um structure, if you look at it from top down from a bird's eye view, it has a big arc to it.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah. And I believe that's because that's like arcing into the direction of the water flow. So same as like you would, it was, I guess, the opposite of what you would see typically for a dam structure.
00:17:54
Speaker
where it's kind of arced back towards the retained side so that the pressure pushes it into its, the walls. This is like curved away so that, um, it's not trying to hold itself like perfectly straight.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, but it is a one of a, it's a one of one project, which, uh, opens up all sorts of epic risk associated with it. So it'll be interesting to see what they end up trying to do here. It'll be interesting to see because we've got the obviously the the floating tunnels or the floating bridge, which one's actually more difficult from an engineering point of view because the bridge you don't have the issue then of like water pressure and obviously the elements beneath the water.
00:18:37
Speaker
It must be much, obviously, it's much heavier because you haven't got the support of something being placed in water, which is actually going to make like a concrete structure lighter. Yeah. I wonder how much, I wonder which one is the bigger and engineering challenge.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah. The bridge one has a whole bunch of other questions on it because you've got, um you've got as you said, this heavy structure sat atop the where the the buoyant thing is And whenever you have the like weight above the buoyancy, it's inherently unstable. Like if the center of gravity, it wants to tip over basically is what your typical, like if you've got it the other way around, what typically happens is if the center of gravity is below the buoyant thing and it becomes like off center, it wants to correct back to under the center of gravity. Whereas if it's on top, it wants to flip over.
00:19:22
Speaker
So, you know, when you start thinking about designing for storm events and wind and all that sort of stuff, you've got this thing that kind of like if it gets too far out of kilter, the whole bridge wants to just do a big ah flip on top of itself. Yeah.
00:19:36
Speaker
And if you remember the opening of the um Millennium Bridge in London, you see remember that when it opened on the day, it started to like wobble and then eventually it was doing like that. um And that's like shut it and something to do with the tension of the yeah the steel running through it.
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah. It pretty rapidly became some sort of freak. ah ah theme park ride um so yeah i think i think the i think there's some question marks on some of the more these are obviously out there proposals for some of the more difficult to cross fjords and they're for the ones that they have like let's say slightly more conventional solutions for the there's some work underway so are super interesting to see what they end up deciding to do and um and obviously the probably helped by a successful continued delivery of the first
00:20:27
Speaker
of the tunnels over the next, well, six, seven years at least. Yeah, for sure. That'd be good one to drive one day. Yeah. um The article starts with, for those of you that have driven the the Western coast of Norway, so I don't know how big tap that list is.
WSP and Microsoft Partnership
00:20:45
Speaker
All right, so jumping to a totally different topic. In the last week or so WSP and Microsoft have announced they've entered into a seven-year global strategic partnership valued at over $1 billion, dollars ah which was the catchy headline, with the aim to accelerate digital transformation in the built environment through AI and engineering innovation. So it's like a big number and every buzzword that we can think of in the announcement.
00:21:13
Speaker
The collaboration positions WSP as Microsoft's preferred engineering consultant, while Microsoft becomes WSP's preferred partner for digital and AI transformation, ah which includes the global rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot to WSP employees.
00:21:32
Speaker
There's a lot in this. um I think probably the the first question to kind of ground on is ah how consequential do you think it would be for either or both both parties?
00:21:47
Speaker
yeah it's It's an interesting one because all we can see is what we can see online. But there's some quite sort of obvious pros and cons for each party for the deal itself. And I guess if we think about from WSP's perspective first, obviously it's a great announcement for them because it will help build their reputation and brand in that space on probably one of the fastest growing sectors of construction at the moment Yeah, so just to add context for people that don't know the announcement, one of the big elements of it from a WSB perspective is that Microsoft have elected them as their preferred partner in design, specifically with regards to the pipeline of data centers and energy and stuff that that Microsoft has to be able to meet its like data center and cloud and AI ambitions.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, so with repeatable business over a long period of time, like they will build a lot of experience in the space. um It's so and attractive proposition for other organizations wanting to pull in their expertise.
00:22:48
Speaker
So it's good. Yeah, it's a good steady stream of work and it's such a so steady stream of work. They can really strategically focus on potentially building out that as its own isolated division or sort of part of their offering. So that's a clear win for WSP you would expect.
00:23:04
Speaker
The flip side of that is I guess they're betting on Microsoft to an extent going into a partnership like this. Yeah,
00:23:15
Speaker
they're yeah that If they go in all in on a partnership with Microsoft, are they potentially limiting what they could do with Google, with Amazon, with other players in the space?
00:23:26
Speaker
um Obviously, she pointed out it's not the worst bet in the world. But um yeah, if if Microsoft doesn't end up being the high performer in the space, you've you've bet on the wrong horse is a risk.
00:23:39
Speaker
And they those partnerships, we don't know the details of this agreement. There might actually be limiting factors that Microsoft have given WSP for having this exclusive As in like you're, you're, you're talking about the idea that they have a, like a non-compete kind of restriction. Exactly. Yeah. maybe yeah So, um, yeah, is it an all eggs in a, in one basket type kind of proposition?
00:24:00
Speaker
Uh, but it almost doesn't matter whether Microsoft let's call it wins or what they are offering. is because ultimately from a WSP perspective, it's like, will they build infrastructure? And the inputs to that are like, do they have the money and do they have the opportunity to kind of like go and win?
00:24:19
Speaker
And it's definitely like a yes and a yes. so even if even if they don't, even if they spend all the money and it doesn't win-win for a WSP, it's like, yeah, WSP is still happy.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah, from the Microsoft. Sorry. Yeah, and no, no, that's all I was just going to I was going to prompt exactly that. So, yeah, keep going. Yeah. So from a Microsoft perspective, um like is partnering with a engineering company like part of their strategy because they've sort of they do bits and pieces in the construction space. So is this a two way street in terms of learnings and opportunity for them to potentially try and capture more of a market or think more in that space because otherwise it's hard to see like what's in it for them.
00:25:05
Speaker
ah Yes, WSP, things might become more efficient. So each each one's better than the last and they could win from that gain. But it feels quite a heavy win for WSP. So maybe there's something in it that we don't know with Microsoft and Microsoft's ruling.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah i think I think you've captured um the what's in it for WSP pretty well. um the For Microsoft, I think the game that they're in is, like if you think about it, we've got OpenAI, which runs historically exclusive on Azure, which is Microsoft's cloud.
00:25:38
Speaker
um basically needing and running out of compute capacity on Azure. And that's part of why this big Stargate announcement, et cetera came. So Microsoft's under a lot of pressure to build out compute capacity for AI.
00:25:52
Speaker
And so for them, it's a speed game, I would guess. and so this agreement probably gives them committed resources, as a team. They don't have to go to every time they're going to build one, go and find the right partner, see if they've got capacity, compete in the market for other designers. They've got a team that's just going to keep doing it for them. so It's probably optimizing towards speed over cost is what I think is the primary win for Microsoft. There's also, like you said, that maybe they're repeating the design over and over again and that starts to drive some like efficiency on top of itself.
00:26:26
Speaker
Then there's this whole other part of the deal, which is to do with like rolling out Copilot across WSP, which ah seems like someone decided to pop that in at the last minute. It's into the end. Yeah, fine.
00:26:42
Speaker
yeah fine and so like they've got 73,000 employees, WSP. So rolling out any tool across that many people is non-trivial.
00:26:52
Speaker
ah So I don't want to like be like overly dismissive. um But at the same time, there is a lot of conversation about how Microsoft co-pilot AI offering has been somewhat of a flop.
00:27:10
Speaker
So for context, um and this is like a little bit talking his own book, but Mark Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, has repeatedly called co-pilot a failed product.
00:27:24
Speaker
He has referred to it as Clippy 2.0. And that he said customers barely use it. Microsoft was obviously pushed back and their claim, which seems like super woolly, to be honest, is ah that they had 60% year on year growth of the product, which I don't think it's that old, but I can't imagine that um they were starting from a very big base and 60% on not a very big base feels like not very much.
00:27:51
Speaker
So it's hard to fully validate. There's a lot of like conversation on the internet if you're hunting through Reddit threads, basically roasting this co-pilot product. So I can't imagine back to the WSP discussion that they were like chomping at the bit.
00:28:05
Speaker
It does feel like a, can you build a house for me and then I'll also walk your dog in like contra payment. like It seems like unrelated to the things that they're trying to do, which is design and build data centers. Yeah.
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah. Is that have you used it? Have you tried it? I have like um i've I've obviously we typically run on a Mac and I have a like a virtual Windows machine. So I do play around with it from time to time. I can't claim to be a daily Windows user. So I haven't really i don't think I've like fully tested its like integration to all workflows.
00:28:37
Speaker
But no, it's it's pretty bad. like It's ah disconnected. you You have to really know. It's kind of like a Siri in that you really have to know what it can do or what it can't do deeply.
00:28:48
Speaker
Otherwise, you spend a lot of time asking it to do stuff that it's like, I attempted to do this and it's bad answer. um yeah So you know when you like ask Siri to do stuff and it's like, here's this some internet results.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah. yeah yeah it's You get a lot of that happening. so if um so Do you think from Microsoft's point of view, this 70,000 boost in Copilot user numbers,
00:29:10
Speaker
Is that a sweetener for a deal? Is it just something thrown in? Because if it's just something thrown in, then what is the sweetener for Microsoft? It still isn't that clear why they benefit greatly. think they need the WSP committed resources to help them build data centers quickly. they They're getting a lot of pressure, which is basically they had exclusive rights to the be the cloud provider to open AI.
00:29:31
Speaker
And the Stargate deal basically opens that up now to Oracle and other people. um And so I think they're under a lot of pressure to build compute capacity ah for AI. And I think this deal is basically like, hey, we're going to build X number of data centers.
00:29:46
Speaker
Who wants to come and bid to be the design partner on all these data centers and can resource it and have the team and stuff? I think that's ah that's the like crux of it. Yeah, yeah. And obviously for WSP, having that sort of deal in place, you really can go at it with confidence of be going mass hire, upskill and do everything you need to do for that steady stream of data centers. So if that's going to be part of your sort of core strategy, it's such a huge lift to get you going into that space and potentially try and Yeah, really good win for, yeah, it's certainly a definitely a good win for WSP. It's also like an attacking move from Microsoft.
00:30:22
Speaker
So, ah you know, the like strategy, like if you and I were going to go ah go to court over an issue, yeah there is like a strategy I can run, which is engage every good lawyer in town yeah so um yeah so that they're conflicted.
00:30:36
Speaker
um yeah So if Microsoft basically can turn up and offer to pay whatever rates that WSP go, this is awesome. It's another like big player. One of the biggest players with 70,000 people out of the market that now a Google Cloud or an Oracle may or may not be able to employ because they've got their resources committed. Yeah, for sure.
00:30:56
Speaker
It'll be good to be a fly on the wall of that meeting that was had ah when they were running through the strategy. Yeah, it's interesting the numbers that build up to the it's worth $1 billion. dollars That bit there, I wonder if they're including the 72,000 seats of Copilot in there. um which ah it's a Yeah, it's an adjustment on the end of the invoice. Oh, and negative to however many million dollars for your licenses to Copilot.
00:31:22
Speaker
Thank you. I think it's like eight bucks a month or something. Just if I, this might be totally wrong. I think the Copilot add-on is like eight or 10 bucks a month or something per seat, which that's only worth 7 million a year.
Hiarch's 3D BIM Modeling Technology
00:31:34
Speaker
So there's still 993 million to make up the the billion dollar announcement. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, interesting. Righto.
00:31:44
Speaker
I'll intro this third topic and I might just hand straight to you because you you you were the one that like found this. But basically there is a ah company that called Hiarch, H-I-G-H-A-R-C, which um demoed or showed off a new feature slash product. So it's a broader company that does other things, but I think they've got this core functionality that they have deployed, which effectively it allows ah someone to take a sketch of currently like a residential building project, so a house, and it will magically convert that thing into three d models and like fully compliant designs of the house. So it's built on top of this whole bunch of repository around
00:32:32
Speaker
codes around room sizes and positions of all these things inside of residential builds. And so yeah, the the videos are pretty cool. you just You're literally sketching the floor plan of a house and then suddenly there's this house coming to life in front of you.
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, what are your thoughts? Yeah, really cool looking tool. And you can imagine if you're the person looking to purchase a house and you're sat with someone who in real time is sketching together this plan, it's changing in real time and you're looking at the model output.
00:32:59
Speaker
Obviously, great way to communicate what the thing that you're designing looks like without this huge lag in going away and producing drawings and the things that take a lot of time and a lot of cost. So I was trying to think if we could take that sort of technology, because at the moment it is within the context of like houses, super simple.
00:33:16
Speaker
How could that sort of technology be applied to complex projects? And a few things would be firstly, real time exploration of design options. If you could be doing that in a complex scheme,
00:33:29
Speaker
with the right people in the room, the efficiency of that time to think through ideas, ah ah ultimately update the model in real time. The model then comes to its strength of doing things like crash detection from a design point of view um and have the sort of metadata related to the whatever you're building behind it.
00:33:48
Speaker
um You could have super productive meetings where you could be exploring multiple options within a very small period of time where at the moment you've got teams of consultants going away and doing very in-depth stuff to try and work out if these things are a reality or not.
00:34:02
Speaker
So that feels like it could be a huge win. You've got changes in the field. So those sorts of things, obviously you'll give me a lot more ah light on what that process actually looks like. but and anything from rebar cage that doesn't quite match the space or whatever that might be.
00:34:20
Speaker
The process of going through and getting the field change approved, if it's something that you can pretty quickly get into a model and then the model validates that it works within the space. could be a huge win.
00:34:32
Speaker
And then the third one that jumped out was like subcontractor engagement during tenders. and you could be They could be presenting you these option options in real time tied to a model which they would never have the resources or want to commit the resources to doing that sort of level of depth.
00:34:52
Speaker
for a tender, but now suddenly it's quite easy because you can do it in a small amount of time. You can be going, here's three different options for this space and the design that's required. It just opens up so much time to explore ideas without the huge cost behind it.
00:35:06
Speaker
um I immediately get drawn to the like the feasibility of the, ive ah I totally align with the you know what would be possible and I immediately get drawn to like the feasibility of that.
00:35:20
Speaker
And so the like the reality is that the the housing market, a lot of the building or the design of ah of a residential house is like code dependent.
00:35:32
Speaker
So there's rules around spacings of batons and walls. There's space, you know, have to. It's like pay book for every object basically. There's a playbook. There's not a lot of bespoke design that's typically happening, usually maybe a little bit on a foundation, but like the actual layout of the house is often like basically rule dependent.
00:35:51
Speaker
um And so this is able to take in the fact that there's like all of these rules. There's things like, you know, a broom needs to be at least this big or, a you know, um there's like rules in different geographies of like the PowerPoint needs to be this far from a water source.
00:36:08
Speaker
Um, they can do, you know, code in there like door swing clearances. Um, and they've even, i think got like, uh, a fully, um, digitized library of, uh, all of the like typical components people would buy and put in their house from like Home Depot and other providers.
00:36:30
Speaker
So like islands and cabinetry, like that all, like the rules around all that can kind of be known. one And in civil or larger building type projects, there's a lot of first principles engineering that is happening that goes back to like the size of a beam, the so you know, that go that are not rule-based, but they're like under,
00:36:54
Speaker
underpinned by like physics calculations and engineering calculations, which means that the data set and the the availability of the information to do such a thing is like fundamentally different.
00:37:06
Speaker
But the physics physics is still a set of rules, right? So even if you go back to first principles, it's still a set of rules that like AI could understand and know and apply alongside any project-specific rules within the works information.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah, you get into like, it's kind of describing maybe some structural design software that's out there. What's hard is the interaction of like, okay, we've got the structural design.
00:37:31
Speaker
Real-time considerations. What does the architect want from the light to look like? like It's just, you don't have this. There's a bunch of other considerations that aren't um kind of like encoded into the system. But even if you strip it back to...
00:37:43
Speaker
like on most major major schemes, there's a concrete box or structure involved. And just having that for concrete would be a huge time saver because that's mostly where the space that you end up with is is sort of contained within irrespective of architectural finishes. Or like almost, if even if you take like a, like let's say we took like a station box and you said that that's like a concrete group box, like 99% of that, some vast majority of the design consideration for that is the earth conditions on the other side of the concrete box, which is driven by like borehole data and surface loading data. So it's not just like sketch a box, you know, I draw a box and then there's the...
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of like fundamental design inputs that have to kind of go into it. And that's, yeah, it's it's a much harder and well, it's just a different problem to solve and probably harder.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And it's definitely not. Yeah, I can't see it popping out somewhere this year, but the concept of it it's is pretty cool.
Podcast Conclusion
00:38:45
Speaker
And then they even had spin offs on that of it's it's updating your bill of quantum real time.
00:38:49
Speaker
You go, yeah, cool. I like that design. Cool. Here's the price. like Yeah, that's what I thought that was really cool because obviously they've got, like I mentioned, like that library of things from Home Depot and all that. They know the typical components that people would build the house out of.
00:39:01
Speaker
So you can yeah you can generate option a costs this much, option B. It's very, very compelling. um Would love to see it in broader, but it would take a smarter person than me to solve it.
00:39:14
Speaker
Yeah. but So anyone in the world, basically. It would be really nice and comforting for anyone that's doing an extension to have that sort of software because you know you're not being fleeced by a builder who's just plucking numbers out of the sky too.
00:39:29
Speaker
So yeah yeah, that would be handy. on that slagging off of builders. Do you want to show me Raf? Do you want read us out? Yeah. So thank you very much everyone for tuning into today's show. If you did enjoy today's episode, please do think about liking the video or following us on your chosen podcast platform.
00:39:47
Speaker
and We really do appreciate your support and we'll catch you all next week. Bye-bye.