WSP
Methodical by Design: How WSP Is Shaping the Future of Substation Design
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WSP is a leading global engineering and professional services firm active across infrastructure, energy, and environment. As substation demand grows through new builds, expansions, retrofits, and brownfield upgrades, WSP’s Power Delivery teams are supporting an increasingly complex grid transformation.
To meet these demands, WSP has made digital transformation a strategic priority. Within this effort, the Power Delivery BIM team launched an evidence-based evaluation of software for substation design, building information modeling (BIM), and digital twin creation to identify the best tools for future delivery.
A Global Firm with a Clear Ambition
A rigorous internal evaluation, driven by WSP’s global digital transformation strategy, charts a new course for intelligent 3D substation design and digital twin delivery.
The challenge
The Gap Between Familiar and Fit for Purpose
The electric grid is under pressure from aging infrastructure, renewable integration, electrification, and rising load growth. For WSP, maintaining quality, speed, and scalability requires more capable digital workflows.
The US Power Delivery BIM team identified limitations in existing tools, including a lack of automated design checks for sag and bend calculations, clearance verification, and short circuit effect analysis. Brownfield projects based on LiDAR point cloud data often required workarounds, and collaboration workflows remained inefficient.
WSP’s digital transformation strategy created the opportunity to adopt tools purpose-built for substation design, BIM, and digital twins.
We wanted to see if we could improve our processes and work more efficiently by shifting our approach and adopting a new tool. That meant comparing the tools we already use with one another and with emerging alternatives.
The Key Findings
Where the Evidence Pointed
The evaluation showed a clear leader: primtech 3d, which achieved more than double the score of the next alternative. Its advantage came from strong performance across the criteria most important to substation design teams. Integrated engineering checks such as automated sag and bend analysis, short circuit effect calculations, lightning protection analysis, and real-time clearance verification significantly reduced manual effort. For brownfield projects, dedicated point cloud tools and AI-assisted optical symbol recognition accelerated model creation from LiDAR data. primtech also improved workflow efficiency through automatic conductor updates, integrated multi-user collaboration, and rapid onboarding. During Technology Week, engineers created a complete station model from a point cloud scan in less than two days.
Our designers were trained and productive in less than a week, which has never been the case with other BIM software.
Real World Application
From Evaluation to Successful Project Implementation
Following the evaluation, WSP applied primtech 3d on a pilot project for a major North American transmission utility involving a new 115 kV switching station. The project provided an opportunity to validate a model-based engineering workflow under real project conditions while adopting the new design platform. By combining the expertise of BIM specialists and substation engineers with client-provided reference models and standardized templates, the team accelerated project development, improved multidisciplinary coordination, and established a repeatable workflow for future projects.
Despite implementing a new design platform for the first time, the project was delivered on schedule utilizing only 70% of the originally allocated design budget.
Evaluation Process
Structured, Platform-Agnostic, Built Around Real Conditions
The US Power Delivery BIM team conducted a platform-agnostic evaluation of software for substation design, BIM, and digital twin creation. Four platforms were assessed using nearly three dozen criteria covering usability, file quality, calculation capabilities, performance, and workflow support.
To validate the results, WSP held a 10-dayTechnology Week event in Fort Worth, Texas, where BIM experts and software specialists created 3D models of 11 substations using real utility data, including 2D drawings, CAD models, and LiDAR scans. This allowed the team an in-depth assessment under realistic project conditions.
The Results
Setting a Standard for the Industry
The evaluation and the pilot project confirmed that model-based engineering can deliver measurable benefits in efficiency, collaboration, and project execution. Building on these results, WSP is expanding the use of BIM and digital twin workflows in North America and their subsidiaries globally to help utilities accelerate substation delivery and improve asset lifecycle management.
Adoption of these new technologies has business drivers and goes beyond just automation of tasks. With primtech, we can radically transform how we deliver our engineering work.
HUNDREDS OF HAPPY CUSTOMERS TELL THEIR OWN STORY.
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