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Retaining Wall & Excavation Documentation Automation

Automating construction documentation for retaining wall and excavation designs—without sacrificing accuracy or compliance.

Client

Strata Geo Systems

Workflow Type

Drawing & Documentation Automation

Primary Outputs

Drawings, BOQs, excavation plans

Industry

Civil & Geotechnical Engineering

The Problem

Strata Geo Systems delivers retaining wall solutions for large civil infrastructure projects. Producing consistent construction documentation—including drawings, layouts, BOQs, and excavation plans—was a manual, time-intensive process that varied across projects and engineers, making scaling difficult.

Constraints & Challenges

  • Standardization: Standardizing retaining wall documentation across projects.
  • Complexity: Automating complex wall drawings while adhering to predefined templates.
  • Accuracy: Generating accurate BOQs for block and panel wall designs.
  • Derivation: Producing excavation plans derived directly from design data.
  • Agility: Supporting regeneration of all outputs when inputs change.

Our Approach

FDES developed a suite of custom AutoCAD plugins tailored to Strata’s engineering standards and workflows.

Retaining Wall Automation Output
  • Encode retaining wall design logic directly into AutoCAD.
  • Use structured input data to drive drawings, layouts, and reports.
  • Automate multi-output generation from a single source of truth.
  • Ensure all outputs follow predefined templates and libraries.
  • Enable fast regeneration when design parameters change.

What Was Automated

Retaining wall drawings for block and panel walls
Placement of rebar, geogrids, drainage, and leveling pads
Layout creation and viewport configuration
BOQ generation for materials (concrete, geogrids, etc.)
Excavation drawings showing cut-and-fill areas
Strip charts reflecting wall and layer details

Impact

Speed

Reduced documentation time from 2-3 days to under 4 hours per retaining wall design package.

Consistency

100% consistency across all drawing sheets and calculation reports — zero formatting discrepancies.

Accuracy

Eliminated BOQ calculation errors entirely — automated quantity takeoffs match drawings exactly.

Focus

Engineers spend 80% of time on design optimization vs. 20% previously — inverting the old ratio.

Before vs After

Before Automation

  • 2–3 days per retaining wall calculation set
  • Copy-paste between Excel sheets and documents
  • No audit trail for calculation changes
  • Report formatting done manually each time

After Automation

  • Under 4 hours — fully automated
  • Calculations flow directly into branded reports
  • Full traceability from inputs to outputs
  • Professional reports generated automatically
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Automating Civil Engineering Documentation at Scale?

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