How Premise Improved CAD Workflow Management and Multi-Office Collaboration Across 13 Offices
Premise used 12d Synergy to create a more connected and controlled CAD workflow across its growing multi-office business. By centralizing project data, strengthening version control and streamlining drawing, PDF and transmittal workflows, Premise improved collaboration across 13 offices, reduced manual errors and built a more scalable Common Data Environment for its teams.
Premise is a full-service engineering, design, and management consultancy providing solutions in areas that include urban development, transport, agriculture, energy, and surveying. The organization has over 150 staff across 13 offices in Australia, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea.
Consultant
Engineering and Infrastructure
Make project information easier to manage with 12d Synergy.
From documents and drawings to emails, models and workflows, 12d Synergy brings everything together in one secure system so your team can work more efficiently from day one.
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The Challenge
As a rapidly growing and geographically distributed consultancy, Premise needed a better way to manage CAD workflows across multiple offices. Civil projects were designed in Australia using 12d Model, then packaged to an international office to generate final deliverables in AutoCAD. That process created significant data management challenges, particularly around multi-office access, file references, version control and quality assurance.
Initially, Premise tried using a VPN to connect remote staff to its Australian server, but the performance was too slow for CAD work. A fallback process of zipping and transferring project data introduced its own risks, with referenced files needing manual updates whenever data was returned to Australia. According to Andrew Langdon, this could take 15 to 30 minutes every time data was received, and that happened daily for each project.
Duplicated CAD files also created unnecessary QA and access control issues. Staff in different locations could potentially open and edit the same file, while outdated data or missed updates risked confusion, rework and lost productivity. Andrew Langdon noted that ensuring every office was working from the latest data had become the business’s biggest challenge.
The Solutions
Premise selected 12d Synergy because of its full integration with AutoCAD and 12d Model, along with its QA, version control and flexibility across multiple disciplines and office locations. The platform provided a centralised Common Data Environment where staff across all offices could access the latest drawings, references and project data without relying on local storage or manual file transfers.
12d Synergy also strengthened document control and CAD QA. With check-in/check-out in place, teams could see who was working on what, maintain a full history of changes, and roll back to earlier versions when needed. According to Premise, this helped remove the speed and QA roadblocks that existed when data was stored locally in each office.
The business also expanded its use of 12d Synergy into title block attribute management, server-side PDF publishing and transmittal workflows. By moving drawing title block information into 12d Synergy and using its bulk attribute editing and PDF Publisher capabilities, Premise created a more automated process from CAD to PDF to transmittal, reducing manual handling and eliminating common human errors in issuing.
The Result
- Improved collaboration across 13 offices and 150+ staff in Australia, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea.
- Saved around $20,000 per month in travel costs, or $240,000 per year.
- Reduced IT costs by around 40% after migrating infrastructure to Microsoft Azure with 12d Synergy support.
- Passed ISO 9001 recertification despite the acquisition of 3 new businesses.
- Automated the workflow from CAD to PDF to transmittal, reducing manual effort and eliminating human error in issuing.
- Increased worksharing across offices and disciplines, including teams not located in every office.
“Ensuring all offices were working from the latest data was the biggest challenge. There’d be hundreds of different revisions going backwards and forwards between our offices. Ensuring what I was looking at in Brisbane was the same as a colleague in another office was a challenge that often created errors.”
A growing multi-office business needed a better CAD workflow
Premise’s challenge was not tied to one project, but to the way CAD work was being delivered across its wider business. With teams spread across multiple countries and disciplines, the business needed a more reliable way to share project data, manage references and maintain control over revisions. The old combination of VPN access and zipped project transfers was too slow, too manual and too vulnerable to errors for a growing consultancy.
This made the broader CAD workflow itself the real spotlight. Rather than solving one isolated delivery issue, Premise used 12d Synergy to redesign how drawings, references, title block information, PDFs and transmittals moved across the organisation.
Spotlight: Transforming Premise’s multi-office CAD production workflow
12d Synergy helped turn that into a more controlled and connected process. Staff across all offices could work from the latest drawings and references in a shared environment, while check-in/check-out and version history improved visibility and reduced the risk of conflicting edits. Premise also reported a large increase in worksharing between offices, including across disciplines that were not represented in every location.
Strengthening quality assurance and issuing workflows
12d Synergy also supported Premise’s quality assurance processes at a broader business level. Terry Tran noted that the system helped the business pass ISO 9001 recertification despite the acquisition of three new businesses, with auditors particularly impressed by the document control, simplicity and redundancy built into the platform.
Beyond QA, Premise used 12d Synergy to improve its issuing workflow. PDF Publisher enabled title block information to flow from 12d Synergy to CAD, then into PDFs and finally into auto-created transmittals. As Andrew Langdon explained, one of the biggest benefits was the workflow from CAD to PDF to transmittal being auto created through 12d Synergy, which helped eliminate human error and ensured transmittals were always correct.
That replaced a more manual Sheet Set process and gave Premise a more efficient and reliable way to issue project documentation.
Extending value beyond CAD
Although Premise initially adopted 12d Synergy to improve CAD workflow management, the platform quickly became the Common Data Environment for a much broader range of business data. Beyond CAD and 12d Model, Premise was able to manage most of its software environments within 12d Synergy through a combination of native integrations, single-file handling and Managed Folders.
This broader adoption also supported Premise’s move to cloud infrastructure. By migrating to Microsoft Azure and linking with 12d Synergy file replication servers, the business improved data transfer performance for remote offices while reducing IT costs by around 40%.
Premise is a full-service engineering, design, and management consultancy providing solutions in areas that include urban development, transport, agriculture, energy, and surveying. The organization has over 150 staff across 13 offices in Australia, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea.
Consultant
Engineering and Infrastructure
Make project information easier to manage with 12d Synergy.
From documents and drawings to emails, models and workflows, 12d Synergy brings everything together in one secure system so your team can work more efficiently from day one.
Book a DemoPositioned for more scalable collaboration
For Premise, 12d Synergy became more than a CAD management tool. It helped the business create a more scalable, controlled and connected way of working across offices, disciplines and software environments. With stronger version control, better QA, more automated issuing workflows and lower operating costs, Premise built a Common Data Environment that could support both growth and day-to-day delivery more effectively.
The result was not only smoother collaboration across a multi-office business, but a measurable improvement in cost efficiency, flexibility and quality assurance.