/> COWI is a leading, innovative consultant firm which has operations worldwide and extensive experience in delivering consultancy services within engineering, environmental science and economics.

Every year, COWI employees spend more than one million hours using Autodesk CAD applications. Now, in a move that it expects will reduce costs and facilitate teamwork across the organisation and regional boundaries, COWI has signed a three year agreement with Autodesk that will give its CAD users access to a suite of 28 different Autodesk applications.

Throughout the duration of the three year engagement, COWI will have access to a dedicated Autodesk support manager and pre-paid support credit that will facilitate training and consultancy to help guide and improve product adoption.

“CAD is now becoming a truly globally shared service,” says COWI CIO, Claus Hagen Nielsen. “Collecting all Autodesk licenses into one global license pool saves costs and gives the business new possibilities.

COWI executive vice president, Keld Sørensen, added: “I am very happy that we now have a contract with Autodesk which will benefit business units and their CAD users. With a contract sum of potentially €5.4 million over five years, it is actually one of the biggest agreements I have ever signed as a chief financial officer, but I am confident that it will ultimately both reduce costs and support COWI’s one company network strategy.”

The agreement allows the Autodesk licences to ‘follow the work’ as when engineering and drafting is started in one COWI region, the work can be finished in another. With 28 applications to choose from, users can select the application best suited for the purpose.

“In COWI Denmark, Autodesk products are used approximately 180,000 hours per year,” says Jørgen Storm Emborg, chairman of COWI's Group CAD Management Network (CMN Group). “This translates to about 15 per cent of COWI Denmark’s turnover being directly or indirectly related to COWI’s use of Autodesk products – and the same pattern emerges in other COWI regions.

“This new agreement gives much more flexibility for the individual user to actively select the best Autodesk tool for the job and also supports dynamic co-operation across COWI’s regions. This agreement therefore meets, in the best possible way, the needs of the business and helps promote one company network.”

The global contract includes the 300 consulting/training days during the first three years. Head of department, Jesper Hjerrild and senior IT manager Carsten Ahm from COWI’s Group IT have been responsible for negotiating the agreement with Autodesk:

“The free choice of application and the ability to move from drafting to model based (BIM) and analysis tools increases flexibility while maintaining standardisation,” they say. “More and more of COWI's clients are specifying BIM models as a part of the project deliverables. The availability of the newest versions of a wide range of CAD applications will increase productivity and also attract key personnel who wish to work with state-of-the-art CAD tools.”