Being close to the market is an integral pillar of a company’s success, which involves quick and responsive cooperation with a customer. With this philosophy in mind, a Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) solution provider wanted to automate, simplify, and shorten in time their process of preparing proposals for their customers. AMC Bridge’s proven history of delivering successful complex solutions, solid expertise in cutting-edge technologies, and highly praised recommendations from multiple clients were strong points for this company to engage AMC Bridge in the digital transformation of their HVAC sales pipeline.
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Customer Benefits
- Reduced proposal cost, iterations, and delivery time.
- Easy, intuitive, and fast creation and correction of proposals and equipment-placing schemes.
- Fully automated CFD simulations of HVAC project proposals and equipment-placing schemes.
- Easily understandable HVAC CFD simulation reports with visualized results.
- Lower qualification requirements for preparing proposals and equipment-placing schemes and running simulations.
- Ability to make a valid proposal immediately on the site.
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Project highlights
- Successful delivery of a tailored cross-platform progressive web solution working online and offline on mobile and desktop devices.
- Development of a user-friendly intuitive editor with capabilities to create and edit 3D models of facilities from 2D floor plans and drawings, add various components from the built-in product catalog, and upload custom assets.
- Investigation and implementation of fully automated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of HVAC projects running in the cloud.
- Development of easily understandable PDF reports on HVAC CFD simulation results, displaying air flow movement, contaminant levels, and ventilation effectiveness.
- Integration of the solution into the production environment with strong security requirements.
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Why AMC Bridge?
- Proven track record of delivering successful complex client-server solutions.
- Demonstrated expertise in creating PaaS and SaaS solutions based on desktop software.
- Solid reputation supported by recommendations from former and current clients.
Client
The client is a multinational manufacturer and provider of filtration solutions, including filters and HVAC products, for various industries and environments, including construction, manufacturing, vehicles, buildings, and others.
Challenges
Having observed that preparing a valid and easily understood HVAC solution proposal for a customer was more prolonged than desired, the client decided to automate and unlock their domain expertise and improve their sales pipeline by digital transformation.
The initial sales workflow required the following significant efforts:
- Manual measurements and calculations at a customer’s production site.
- Conducting simulations in the research department.
- Numerous iterations to validate the equipment setup and finalize the proposal.
The client came up with the idea of an application for their sales engineers to quickly create a 3D scene from a 2D floor plan, set up HVAC equipment on the scene, and validate the choice of their project onsite using CFD simulations.
To create the application, the client’s unique domain-specific knowledge needed to be augmented with proven expertise in developing cross-platform progressive web applications, such as the one in possession of AMC Bridge. The positive recommendations of AMC Bridge’s former and current clients solidified their decision to entrust AMC Bridge with the solution development. The collaboration aimed to leverage the client’s industry expertise with AMC Bridge’s technical prowess to deliver the custom-tailored sales-streamlining software solution.
Solution
Addressing the given requirements, AMC Bridge provided the client with the service of developing from scratch the complex software solution consisting of the following parts:
- Front end: a progressive web application with a 2D and 3D editor, tablet and desktop support, offline mode, and integration with the client’s cloud environment.
- Back end: an HVAC simulation cluster based on a CFD simulation core running on a cloud platform within a strict security setup.
The solution enables the sales engineers to do the following without any assistance or technical guidance from other departments:
- Create 3D scenes from 2D facility plans on the go.
- Add selected models of filtration equipment to the 3D scenes.
- Run CFD simulations against the 3D scenes with placed equipment.
- Quickly receive the simulation results, equipment placement schemes, and estimations.
- Easily update the scenes and equipment setup according to the simulation results and rerun the simulation.
- Work offline.
Process
The client reached out to AMC Bridge with their idea of the application, overview of the required technical features, and expectations on the technology stack. AMC Bridge provided them with the full spectrum of services necessary to deliver a working software solution:
- Solution architecture design
- UI and UX application design
- Software development
- Functional and regression quality assurance
- Postproduction technical support
During the work on the project, the AMC Bridge team faced the following main challenges:
- Analyzing technical requirements to provide a valuable solution.
Having studied the cloud technologies used by the client and their list of technical requirements, the team prepared a detailed project specification covering all nuances, including architecture design, technology stack, and infrastructure. - Setting up the HVAC CFD simulation core on the back end.
Although it was AMC Bridge’s first experience with this complex simulation core, the team engineers mastered its API and formulated the best approach by applying AMC Bridge’s extensive expertise with other simulation cores. It proves that AMC Bridge’s profound experience with most engineering software solutions and platforms helps accomplish tasks related to similar software products even without experience with particular APIs. - Bringing the solution in line with the client’s security policy.
As a global enterprise, the client highly values safety and adheres to strict security policies. The team studied the policies and developed and configured the project infrastructure in compliance with them.
To identify underwater rocks, the project passed through all main stages:
- Discovery
The AMC Bridge team prepared the comprehensive functionality specification based on the business and technical needs raised, discussed, and clarified during multiple workshops between both sides. - Proof of concept
The AMC Bridge team reviewed the client’s cloud technologies and provided recommendations on the technical stack, focusing on reusing the already used technologies to optimize costs.
The phase resulted in a solution more robust than a simple prototype, including the UI and UX application design developed from scratch, finalized technical stack, and master test plan. - Minimum viable product
It comprised a set of milestones, where the AMC Bridge team delivered the results to the client for testing and evaluation.
Results
The solution proved its effectiveness—the client has acknowledged AMC Bridge as a reliable partner on their list of solution implementers and decided to launch the second implementation phase after using the solution for a year. Such a high satisfaction level roots in the following benefits that the client has gotten from the solution:
- Their sales specialists prepare valid and easily understandable proposals, including equipment placing schemes and CFD simulation reports, without the involvement of other departments because the engineering qualification required for such tasks has lessened.
- Proposal preparation time has decreased as the sales staff can make and update proposals during visiting production sites.
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