Innovation
Innovation and automation in MEP design
What SDE is committed to, and how those commitments are actually delivered rather than asserted.
- 01
Innovation
Building services design still runs on a great deal of manual transcription — the same information re-entered between calculation, drawing, schedule and specification. SDE invests in removing that work rather than absorbing it into fees. The parts of design that require engineering judgement are the parts an engineer should be spending time on.
- 02
Optimisation
Design option appraisal has more influence over a building’s lifecycle carbon and running cost than any decision taken after Stage 4 — and it is the first activity compressed when fee and programme are tight. Automating the mechanical parts of the process buys back the time to appraise options properly, which is where the value actually sits.
- 03
Client value
Faster, more certain delivery is worth more to a client than a marginally lower hourly rate. SDE prices on the basis that automation reduces the hours a job takes, and passes that through — a budget MEP fee in minutes rather than weeks, and a design programme that does not slip because someone is retyping a schedule.
- 04
Environmental impact
Every system SDE designs commits a building to decades of energy use. Reducing that is an engineering problem, not a marketing one: better load modelling, more options tested, plant sized to real demand rather than to a safety factor stacked on a safety factor.
- 05
Accuracy
Automation is only an improvement if the output is checked. Every automated calculation SDE relies on is reviewed by a named engineer who is accountable for it. A result nobody can defend is not a time saving — it is a liability with a shorter production time.
PARTNERSHIP
Delivered in partnership with WYRM
The engineering automation behind these commitments is built with WYRM, whose MEP platform automates the repetitive, rule-driven parts of building services design — calculation, schedule generation and model coordination — so that engineering time goes into judgement rather than transcription.
The division of responsibility is deliberate and does not change: WYRM builds the tooling, and SDE remains the appointed designer. Every output that leaves this practice is reviewed and signed by a named engineer who carries professional responsibility for it. Automation changes how quickly a design is produced. It does not change who is accountable for it.
Disclosure.WYRM is a company in which SDE’s Project Director has an interest. The relationship is stated here so that any client can weigh it for themselves.