Norconsult’s new Sotra Bridge embodies a fully digital approach to infrastructure

Architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) firms have been tested lately by climate change, a pandemic, geopolitical unrest, and economic ups and downs. The best have passed with flying colors. Technology provided some solutions; expertise and creativity did the rest. In a sector where more than 64% of companies describe themselves as digitally mature, pairing cloud platforms with innovation and adaptability has helped AECO punch through and excel, racking up notable successes along the way.

One project making the most of AEC’s data-led approach is Norway’s new Sotra suspension bridge—winner of a 2024 Autodesk Design & Make Award for Most Innovative Use of Autodesk Platform Services. The design, engineering, and project management for the bridge, now in construction, have all been carried out entirely in the digital realm by architecture and engineering firm Norconsult Norway, without relying on traditional drawings. Using a Design and Make cloud platform made it possible to capture and connect huge volumes of data for 3D modeling, reporting, cost control, and facility management. APIs helped create custom end-to-end workflows as well as analyze and optimize digital designs.

New Sotra Bridge is a major component of Norway’s National Road 555 Sotrasambandet project, a public-private partnership initiative with a budget of 19.8 billion NOK (US $1.8B) and currently the largest infrastructure project by contract value in Europe.

When it opens its four lanes to traffic in the summer of 2027, the 900-meter (nearly a half-mile) suspension bridge will tower over the fjord separating Sotra Island from the rest of Norway’s Atlantic archipelago. With towers soaring 145 meters (476 feet) above sea level, the bridge links Sotra with the 9.4-kilometer (5.8-mile) highway from nearby Bergen.

The project was run by the Sotra Link consortium, with design responsibility awarded to Norconsult, with partners Webuild, FCC Construcción, and SK Ecoplant handling construction.

Proving that digital processes can de-risk delivery and give clients greater visibility into progress was key to securing buy-in. “Our clients want to receive a bridge that is built on best practices, and in the best state possible,” says Vegard Gavel-Solberg, group manager for bridge projects at Norconsult. “Digital models really help in reducing errors during construction because they enhance each contractor’s understanding of tasks and their grasp of the bigger picture.”

With the state-backed project’s big budget and Norway’s reputation for eco-friendly construction, there was no doubt the bridges would be designed and built well. But multiple complexities related to the location ensured the project would be no simple feat. “One of the challenges in Norway is that it’s a snowy country,” says Gavel-Solberg. “And we have a lot of weather. We have a lot of rain. We have a lot of snow. We have a lot of topology. This introduces consequences for how we need to design bridges in Norway, to optimize the big economic picture during the lifespan of the bridge.”

Norconsult relied on Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC), which wraps together communication, project management, and cost-control tools, to ensure the complex project was delivered on time and on budget.

Working seamlessly across a consortium of partners required going nearly 100% paperless. Norconsult says it was able to reduce reliance on hand drawings for the new Sotra Bridge by 99.5% compared to similar bridge projects in the past. “Bridges are really geometrically complex structures,” says Gavel-Solberg.” So there’s a lot going on that is hard to capture in a few simplified sections on a physical drawing. Many people are involved in the design, construction, and maintenance of a bridge, and a 3D model gives everyone the opportunity to see the full picture. How does every little part affect other bits in the project? This is what 3D models excel at.”

Autodesk Platform Services APIs helped Norconsult streamline and connect workflows to create this complex digital design. APIs—including the Data Management, Model Derivative, Viewer, ACC, and Design Automation APIs—gave the team flexibility to solve the project’s unique workflow requirements, combining a huge volume of models and files without risking data quality.

“We used the APIs to validate the data and be sure it was factually correct, check that it’s the correct data type, and to format it correctly. The APIs greatly simplified data retrieval and exchange, giving us well-structured data to work with,” says Thomas Ostgulen, Norconsult’s building information management (BIM) manager for the project.

Savings in time, effort, and complexity were impressive. The team was able to cut down on the number of drawings, from 4,000 on the firm’s last comparable project to just 15 for the new Sotra digital suspension bridge. They also captured and stored 60 million data points across 211 different models comprising more than one million separate objects. Meanwhile, automation reduced the sheer number of repetitive tasks on the project and simplified processes around issue tracking, RFIs, and submittals.

While architecture has always led AECO’s shift to digital, Norway’s regulations required digital documents in the tender process. “The government mandated that Sotra Bridge should be delivered via openBIM at every project stage,” adds Ostgulen.

“From design to operation and maintenance and handover, the government is pushing us to be data-driven,” he continues. “Having all their data translated in models compared to drawings opened our client’s eyes to the enormous potential for savings and efficiency. Since 80% of the cost of a building across its lifespan is facility management, construction is just the tip of the iceberg. I think that’s what motivates our clients to do it this way.”

Ostgulen adds that the bridge is required to last for at least 100 years, “so we need to optimize for solutions that are future-proofed across the coming century.”

The Norconsult team’s digital approach also helped them meet their client's sustainability objectives. Public projects in Norway are eco-conscious by default. If a bid isn’t fully sustainable from design through construction and facility management, there’s an informal assumption that overall cost will need to drop by around a third to have a hope of winning the bid.

So why not aim to meet green objectives from the beginning? In the case of the new Sotra Bridge, digital design tools such as Autodesk Revit helped Norconsult’s architects and engineers make better design and materials choices, as well as model the bridges’ performance to ensure they would stand up to extreme weather while emitting less carbon.

That can be tricky, explains Terje Fjellby, a BIM advisor at Norconsult. “When you consider the lead time on some infrastructure projects, the period from when you start planning a project to when it can build becomes a complicating factor. Some of the projects we are doing now were approved long before the Paris Agreement. We now have to adapt decisions made before we knew climate change would drive design. This is a challenge that digital tools help us with. We can load the data and go back to the early phases of projects and rethink. Is it viable to build this road in this way? Do we have to scale it down, decrease speed, reconsider sightlines? That is the next step.”

Having the flexibility to shift operational and maintenance objectives includes the post-handover phase, where the new Sotra Bridge’s managers will be able to use the structure’s built-in sensors to operate a digital twin and assess traffic flow, structural stresses, vibrations, weather, energy consumption, and other issues relevant to the local ecology in real time.

Public projects come with unique challenges and limitations. Using APIs and cloud platforms for digitalized delivery can make infrastructure design and construction nimbler. It can also simplify data harmonization and quality control.

“It’s not possible for humans to do proper QA and QC on 60 million data points,” adds Thomas Ostgulen. “That would fail—definitely. So having automated solutions has been absolutely key.”