The city of Salvador, through the Municipal Secretariat for Urban Development (SEDUR), is implementing a platform to streamline the project approval process in the city. Developed by Torch Engineering , the tool, based on BIM, promises to speed up this process in 90%.
Entitled “Metropolis Solutions”, the idea is to reduce bureaucracy and thus benefit construction companies, individuals and the city.
According to Jealva Fonseca, Sedur's Urban Development Manager, the biggest question from construction companies was the time it took to release permits, especially those for large works, which took an average of 12 to 14 months. With the implementation of BIM, the expectation is to reduce the time to between 3 and 4 months.
“We started to think about how to make this process more intelligent and thought about an integrated system with BIM modeling, in order to automate the analysis taking into account the technical and legal details”, explains Jealva.
The platform allows Salvadoran professionals in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) sector to project with access to information about the municipality's parameters, through the detailed information that BIM provides.
“With this, there is an optimization of the information flow and the deadline for approval of permits is reduced by up to 86%”, says Ricardo Torreão, responsible for the development of the platform by Torch Engenharia.
Another feature of the platform is that there is an automatic pre-checking of registered information, as there is in the Income Tax system, preventing the project from being sent for approval if there is any incorrect or missing information.
“Our objective is one day to extinguish the printed plant in this process. And this was a very important step for this to become a reality”, says Jealva.
“The cost to deploy a platform like this is very low compared to the return on investment it provides,” said Ricardo.
The platform is fully replicable, just adjusting the details and peculiarities of each municipality. City halls from various regions of the country have expressed interest and are in an advanced process for hiring. It is noteworthy that the solution can serve cities anywhere in the world.
“This is a way to show how BIM and Autodesk solutions can positively and directly affect the population. Our technology can make all the difference and make the process, in large or small projects, easier, faster and less bureaucratic”, says Ricardo Bianca, senior technical specialist at Autodesk Brazil.
