Sweco Developer Dayz – a great way to digitalize Sweco
The Sweco DevDayz Hackathon concept was created in 2016. This autumn’s event brought together 66 participants from Finland and abroad between 5th and 7th of October.
For organizations, hackathon can be adapted to greatly accelerate the process of digital transformation. Hackathon shows that organizations are capable of deliver breakthrough innovation at start-up speed. And that’s never been more critical: speed and agility are central to driving business value, making hackathon a valuable tool for accelerating organizational change and fostering a quick-march, customer centric, can-do culture.
During DevDayz23, the developers had time to create hacks, things that help our design teams in their, and their client’s, day to day activities. There were 45 hacks created on the topics of:
- Design Automation: using Grasshopper, Dynamo, and FME to automate the design processes
- BIM tool development: using C# and Python to automate Tekla Structures and Revit design using the software APIs
- D&A: Using data modeling systems and Microsoft Power BI
- FEM design: automation of FME design software using C# and the software APIs
- VDC services: Create extra solutions to the existing digital products we have in the VDC team (SmartDrawings and VirtualSite)
- M365: Created automation solutions using the M365 tools, e.g. Power Automate, power Apps, sharepoint
- Business hack: where business leaders conseptualized Sweco’s data engineering services
Hackathons are a good way to test concepts that we might not have time to test during the busy workdays. During those events, we have a limited time to solve the problem at hand. This forces us to split down our visionary concepts to actionable solutions, which often can be rolled out to Sweco’s production environments rather quickly.
Most of the tools built during the event will be integrated in the existing design processes, and will help us, speedup those processes while delivering better quality design to our clients. Also most of the 46 hacks produced at last year’s event are still in use today.
Ricardo Farinha, CTO, Sweco, ricardo.farinha@sweco.fi