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You have seen the benchmarks. You know a 44-minute drawing package can become a 3.6-minute one inside Octave Forte 3D (formerly Hexagon Smart 3D). What you may not have yet is a version of that argument your Project Director will approve. Engineering leaders decide on margin, schedule, and risk, not on minutes per drawing. The gap between those two languages is where most automation proposals stall.

This article shows how to bridge that gap: how to turn task-level benchmarks into project-level numbers, how to present them in the terms a Project Director uses, and how to answer the objections you will get. It is written for the BIM Manager or Lead Piping Engineer who has to make the case.

1. Why Good Benchmarks Still Fail to Get Approved

Most automation proposals fail for the same reason: they describe what the tool does, not what the project gets. “Control point detailing drops from 24 minutes to 1 minute” is accurate and persuasive to an engineer. To a Project Director it raises an immediate question: so what?

A Project Director is accountable for three things: the contract margin, the delivery schedule, and the risk exposure from rework and claims. Every proposal that reaches them needs to answer one question in those terms: what does this do to margin, schedule, or risk on this project, and what does it cost?

Shinsei Vietnam’s benchmark data answers the first step of that question. The rest of this article shows how to finish it.

2. Translate Minutes Into Project Hours

Start with the unit that the benchmarks measure, then multiply by your project’s actual volumes. Use the same four core drawing-production tasks used across the series:

Then apply the formula your team can verify:

Manual hours = (manual time per unit × your units) ÷ 60 Automated hours = (automated time per unit × your units) ÷ 60 Hours recovered = manual hours − automated hours

For a worked example, take a 2,000-drawing package that uses the full four-task workflow. Manual effort is about 1,467 hours. Automated effort is about 120 hours. The difference is roughly 1,347 hours. These numbers come from the benchmark scope and are illustrative for your planning; replace the volume with your own package size before presenting anything.

Tip: If your team cannot give you a reliable drawing count, do not guess. Count the support drawings in the current issue register. A proposal built on a verified count is far harder to challenge than one built on a round estimate.

3. Translate Hours Into Money and Margin

Hours alone are not a Project Director’s currency. Convert them using your loaded engineering rate, and then express the result as a share of the contract margin, which is the number the Director already tracks.

Labor value = recovered hours × loaded rate

At an illustrative loaded rate of $80 per hour, 1,347 recovered hours is about $107,760. Replace $80 with your firm’s real loaded rate before presenting. Use the loaded rate, which includes overheads, not base salary.

Then compare the result with margin. The useful framing is not “we save $107,760.” It is:

• On a fixed-price contract, labor saved is margin protected. Every hour that does not get consumed by manual detailing is an hour that does not erode the bid estimate.
• As a share of the margin target, state how large the recovered labor is relative to the planned profit. A figure expressed as a percentage of margin is usually what gets a decision.

[Internal link: “The Real Cost of ‘Almost Right’ in Octave Forte 3D”] Covers the risk side of the ledger, the cost of errors that never appear in a labor-hours calculation. Useful as a companion to the financial case.

4. Add the Risk Side of the Ledger

Labor savings are the easiest part of the case to measure, and they are often not the strongest argument. Rework and rejection cycles are where the larger money sits, and they are harder to pin down, so state them carefully.

Two sourced points help frame the risk, without overstating it:

• Construction rework is commonly estimated at about 4 to 12 percent of project cost, depending on the study and the definition used (PlanRadar, 2025).
• Industry data attributes a large share of rework to design and documentation errors, and it shows that firms with consistent QA/QC discipline report lower rework rates than firms without it (Dan Cumberland Labs, 2025 review of QA/QC impact).

Connect this to the automation argument carefully. Native automation does not replace QA/QC. It removes the category of error that fatigue creates during manual repetition, so the QA/QC process checks a more consistent output. Present it as a reduction in exposure, and show the exposure you are reducing:

Use your own rejection log for these numbers. A Director trusts the company’s own history more than any external benchmark.

5. Build the Model Around Your Project, Not Ours

Benchmarks are measured under defined scopes. They are a credible starting point, but a proposal that relies only on vendor figures invites the question: “Would this happen on our project?” The stronger approach is to make your own project the base case.

Work through these inputs before writing anything:

1. Drawing volume for the package in scope, from the issue register.
2. Support count and CP-bearing drawings, from the model and the support schedule.
3. Current manual time on one representative package, measured in week one. A short time study by a single engineer is enough.
4. Current rejection rate from your QA/QC log.
5. Loaded engineering rate from your finance team.

Once these are in hand, the model reflects your reality. If your measured manual time is lower than the benchmark, say so and adjust. A proposal that shows you tested your own assumptions is more credible than one that does not.

6. The One-Page Structure a Director Will Read

Directors rarely read full proposals. Plan for a single page with a clear structure:

The ask matters most. A proposal that asks for a full rollout is harder to approve than one that asks for a two-macro pilot on a single drawing package with a decision in 90 days. The 90-day structure is covered in Blog 11 and in the 90-Day Playbook white paper.

[Internal link: “The First 90 Days: A Realistic Implementation Timeline for Forte 3D Automation”] Use this timeline as the basis for the ask.

7. Anticipating the Objections

Expect these objections, and prepare a short, evidence-based answer to each.

“The benchmarks are the vendor’s, not ours.” Agree, and show your own time study next to the benchmark. If the two diverge, investigate before the Director does.

“We already have a catalog engineer and a QA process.” Both are valuable. Automation does not replace them. It removes repetitive execution from the same people so they spend time on checking and catalog governance rather than on data entry.

“Shouldn’t we wait until the next project?” Ask what the next project will look like. If it has the same drawing workflow, the same pilot question will still be open. A bounded pilot on the current package answers it sooner.

“What about disruption to the current project?” A pilot on one drawing package, run by two to five engineers, uses native custom commands and leaves the wider team’s workflow unchanged. The disruption question is answered by scope, not by promise.

“What does it cost?” Shinsei Vietnam pricing is quote-based and depends on scope. Ask for a quote built on your volumes, and compare it with the labor value from your own model. Do not put a number in the proposal that you have not verified.

8. Start Small to Strengthen the Case

The strongest business case often comes from the pilot itself. A week-nine result on your own drawings, with your own rejection data, is more persuasive than any amount of modeling. Build the proposal so that the pilot produces the evidence the Director will ask for.

Before the pilot starts, agree on three things with the Director: the metrics, the threshold that counts as success, and what happens if the threshold is missed. Then the decision at the end is about the result, not about the argument.

9. References and Further Reading

Rework and Cost Context

• Cost of Rework in Construction: Causes, Data and Prevention (2025) — PlanRadar: Consolidated industry data on rework as a share of project cost and the share attributable to design errors.
• How to Run a Pre-QC Pass That Saves Architecture Time — Dan Cumberland Labs: Review of 2025 research on QA/QC discipline and rework outcomes.

Software Investment and Rollout

• The Ultimate Guide to Successful Software Implementation Plan — Capterra: Guidance on pilot sizing and phased rollout that supports the “start small” recommendation.

10. FAQ

Q1. Which number should I lead with: hours, cost, or margin? Lead with the margin effect, then support it with hours and cost. Directors respond to protected margin. Hours are the evidence behind it.

Q2. What if our measured manual time is much lower than the benchmark? Use your measurement. A smaller number that you can defend is better than a larger number that you cannot. Even a modest recovery on a large package can justify a bounded pilot.

Q3. Who should be in the room when I present? The Project Director, the finance or cost controller who owns the loaded rate, and the QA/QC lead who owns the rejection log. Each one can confirm one of the three inputs the model depends on.

Q4. Should I include the full 16-macro suite in the proposal? Not at first. Propose the two or four drawing-production macros, which have the clearest benchmark and the most direct link to rejections. The wider suite can follow once the pilot has earned it.

Q5. How do I handle a Director who asks, “Why not just hire two more engineers?” Compare the cost of two additional engineers with the recovered capacity from the same team. Recovered hours do not add headcount cost, and they remove the repetitive work that new hires would also have to do. Note that hiring also takes time, and a new engineer needs ramp-up before becoming productive.

Shinsei Vietnam is a specialist Octave Forte 3D automation partner, part of Tatsusei Giken. Our 16-macro suite is built exclusively for Octave Forte 3D (formerly Hexagon Smart 3D) using native API integration. We serve EPC firms globally on oil and gas, petrochemical, LNG, and industrial plant projects.