Last week, the BIM community within the AEC industry received a big piece of news with three companies who are all part of the Nemetschek Group have come together under one umbrella. That umbrella is ALLPLAN, an established provider of BIM solutions, and they will be merging with SCIA and FRILO. The new ALLPLAN, the company says, “will accelerate the path to data-driven multi-material design and pre-fabrication.”
As a result of the merger, in other words, ALLPLAN believes they are now in a position to even better serve their goal of being a true “design to build” provider for the entire construction process. More specifically, this merger opens up new avenues for the company to better serve structural engineering concerns, the sector that is served by both SCIA and FRILO.
“Combining modeling and structural engineering competence will create a unique solution technology stack in the market from conceptual design through structural analysis and design to structural detailing and prefabrication that supports the growing demand for lean delivery processes. This will foster digitalization in the AEC industry significantly empowering engineering professionals with the end-to-end workflows they need to deliver their projects more productively, with higher quality and greater sustainability,” Dr. Detlef Schneider, CEO of ALLPLAN, said in a statement.
As noted, while this is a merger of three companies, there are plenty of similarities between them, not the least of which being that they are all under the Nemetschek umbrella. Additionally, they are all European-based, which is another piece of the motivation behind the merger. In the release of the news, they say the move “strengthens its market position in Europe.” On top of that, all three companies champion the idea of “OPEN BIM,” a way of ensuring “workflow transparency, longevity and accessibility of data for built assets,” and is based upon open standards such as IFC.
In terms of the specific companies being merged into ALLPLAN, SCIA is a software provider whose flagship offering, SCIA Engineer, is a structural analysis and design tool. The software allows users to model, analyze, and optimize a 3D model of any structure, material, or load condition. Meanwhile, FRILO is also serving the structural engineering space, providing solutions for calculation of load-bearing capacity and stability of structures.
This specific move, while certainly news and something that does provide a more streamlined workflow – a product manager said on LinkedIn, “We definitely want to improve workflows when several of our products are involved. The goal is to enable better collaboration between structural engineers and structural detailers.” – is something that was not hard to envision given the Nemetschek connection between the companies.
However, it can also be a look into the next few years in the BIM space, and more broadly within the AEC technology sector. We all know that the industry took longer than many others to embrace new tools and technology (though perhaps that hesitance has been overblown by some), but the last decade or so have seen an explosion of tools and innovative products. One of the drawbacks of this explosion in tools, though, is the proliferation of separate apps and products needed to complete a project. It’s probably the number one complaint I hear from people in the industry when I ask about the current state of technology. As a result, it seems very likely that consolidation will be a major theme in the coming years, whether that be via mergers like this one or partnerships and integrations. The technology was necessary to bring the AEC industry into the 21st century, but now those who use the tools need easier ways to complete projects efficiently, something made much simpler when tools are under one metaphorical roof.
