World’s leading luxury hospitality and design firm transforms workflow and business
AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs Success Story
For more than 60 years, HBA has brought incredible interior designs to life for the hospitality industry and expanded to include residential, architecture, landscape architecture, food and beverage, lighting, and more.
With more than 1,500 designers across 25 offices in four regions, AutoCAD is their primary design software. But file sharing across geos, effective collaboration, and transparency were huge hurdles.
By introducing the use of Autodesk Docs with AutoCAD, the firm has transformed their workflow and design experience.
As a cloud-based platform, Autodesk Docs offers greater security than onsite servers, from the client name on the file to reducing data breaches.
The implementation of AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs saves a design team of five people approximately 25 hours per week. The drafting team is now able to deliver the equivalent of 50 additional hours of work each day.
“Design that gives form to emotion”
Since 1965, Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA) has defined the ultimate experiences in luxury hospitality and interior design. With more than 1,500 professionals across 25 offices in four regions and clients in more than 80 countries each year, the firm has evolved into a dynamic and multidisciplinary creative collective to include residential, architecture, landscape architecture, and product and furniture design.
From Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton resorts and hotels around the world to exclusive private villas, penthouses, and residences, HBA has completed more than 15,000 projects over the decades. And they continue to move forward imbued with their motto: “Design that gives form to emotion.”
“What first attracted me to HBA – and what I continue to champion – is the spirit of designers in business,” says Chris Godfrey, Global Co-CEO, HBA. “We are not businesspeople working in design. We are designers in business, and we’ve married the two worlds successfully.”
Stepping inside an HBA-designed project is transportive and transformative — all with the help of Autodesk AutoCAD to bring it to life. Now, HBA is taking their innovative work one step further with a dynamic new workflow using AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs together.
Kickstarting a digital transformation
During COVID, it became clear to Godfrey that their process needed to change. A couple of years later, he brought in Chris Smeaton — now Global Digital Design Director at HBA — with a singular goal to advance their digital transformation. Godfrey aimed to break down silos, foster better collaboration, improve efficiency, and implement the right tools so designers could focus on what they do best: designing.
Smeaton set out to get a lay of the land. He quickly identified the challenges HBA was facing as well as opportunities to quickly solve them. One of the biggest issues was addressing file sharing on local servers with AutoCAD files. Teams shared information between offices using WeTransfer and other platforms, which brought an increased, heavy load on IT infrastructure, wasted time, and data security issues. Global collaboration was hindered as well.
Introducing the use of Autodesk Docs with AutoCAD
With many years of BIM experience, Smeaton quickly found a solution that would be transformative for a company relying primarily on AutoCAD for designs. Enter Autodesk Docs.
“I think one of the biggest misconceptions is when people hear about Autodesk Docs, they think it’s just for Revit or other products for BIM,” Smeaton says. “With the Desktop Connector for Autodesk Docs and AutoCAD, you can take advantage of the cloud and centralization for everyone to work and view their AutoCAD drawings and files in real time.”
“Plus, data is much more secure in the cloud than having on-site servers,” he continues. “We don’t have to worry about a server being offline for the day. With Autodesk Docs, teams can carry on working with absolutely no issues and zero downtime. This has already been massively beneficial for HBA.”
For Godfrey, there was little doubt about sponsoring the move to Autodesk Docs with AutoCAD. “I could already see that our processes were laborious and somewhat archaic,” he says. “There had to be a better way. As soon as AutoCAD with Autodesk Docs was explained to me, I knew it was exactly what HBA needed — and what we should all be doing tomorrow.”
Getting started with AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs integration
One of the earliest adopters to use AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs together was HBA Residential, a boutique division focused on bespoke designs for high-end properties around the world. Think palaces in the Middle East, breathtaking penthouses, and private estates to picture the scale of their work. And, like each client, the style is different and unique to the personal style.
But HBA’s process remained broken with the repetitive uploading and downloading of files, not to mention security issues. They are under NDA with many of their clients, and it’s imperative to keep privacy intact.
HBA Residential’s team includes Juliana Galvao, Technical Associate based in London, and Barrie Mark, Technical Director, who works in Singapore. They and the rest of the team collaborate with Eishwarya Chauhan, who heads up the 190-person CAD drafting team in New Delhi. All three were enthusiastic about embracing the new workflow because they could see the immediate benefits — and they would still be using AutoCAD. Their complex projects demand extraordinary precision, and AutoCAD remains essential.
“I need to work with the accuracy of 3D scans down to the millimeter,” Galvao says. “I couldn’t get that done if it’s not in AutoCAD.”
When Smeaton began to roll out the integration of AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs, there was a collective “a-ha” moment. It’s now the backbone of their global coordination for real-time collaboration, version tracking, and secure access control.
“There are so many positives to using Autodesk Docs and AutoCAD. There’s time savings with our production offices, global access across time zones, and real-time collaboration. If your drafting team isn’t right there, this is the next best thing. All these small efficiencies really add up.”
Seeing the results
For the HBA Residential team, the benefits were immediate — and impressive.
“I can see exactly who’s accessed a file and when,” Galvao says. “That visibility is a huge advantage. We’re also able to keep everything much more secure, from the client name on the file to reducing data breaches.”
For the New Delhi office focused on producing drawings for all the HBA designers around the world, the time savings are also telling. “At a minimum, we save half an hour per person, per day by using AutoCAD with Autodesk Docs,” Chauhan says. “The drafting team is now able to deliver the equivalent of 50 additional hours of work each day.”
“The implementation of Autodesk Docs and AutoCAD saves a design team of five people approximately 25 hours per week. On information management alone, the team has demonstrated significant enhancements in coordination and version tracking."
Looking to the future
Company-wide benefits are substantial as HBA continues its digital transformation journey. Now, Autodesk Docs is required globally for all new HBA projects, ensuring consistency and collaboration. Smeaton is also introducing BIM Collaborate Pro and Revit as the firm embarks on more complex masterplans and projects located in countries that mandate the use of BIM.
For Godfrey, the new gains are just what he envisioned to take full advantage of all the software has to offer. And he chalks up success to the right approach.
“You build a team who is the best in their field and defer to them,” he says. “It’s my job to pull the team together, and I want them to challenge me. It’s part of the spirit of HBA to challenge the status quo. With our own digital transformation, embracing a holistic approach is key to success. You can already see it happening.”
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