MasterSeries Blog

At MasterSeries, we're excited to introduce our new Lean Design Tools, a powerful feature inspired by the Institution of Structural Engineers' Climate Emergency Task Group. One of their key initiatives is to encourage structural engineers to adopt strategies for reducing carbon emissions, particularly by focusing on more efficient use of materials. The concept of lean design plays a crucial role here, pushing us to design structures that are not only strong and safe but also minimise material waste.

What Are Lean Design Tools?

Our Lean Design Tools are designed to help you identify where excess material is being used in your projects, allowing you to make informed decisions that reduce waste without compromising on safety or performance. While you've always had access to tools like Unity Ratio reports to assess your design’s efficiency, Lean Design goes a step further by helping you pinpoint exactly where the most material is being wasted.

The Lean Design Tools are currently available for MasterKey: Steel Design, Composite Design, and Timber Design. Plans are underway to expand this feature to MasterKey: Concrete Design, which will require additional considerations due to the complexities of concrete usage, particularly in balancing volume reduction with reinforcement needs.

Webinar Preview

Jump to 29:57 to get an Overview of our Lean Design Tools.

How Does It Work?

When you run a design through the Lean Design Tools within the integrated Steel Design Module, you get a comprehensive report on material design efficiency. This report highlights areas of your design that are underutilised, showing where material is being wasted. By analysing this data, you can quickly identify and address inefficiencies in your design.

For example, the report offers a breakdown of each design brief, showing member lengths, section numbers, total mass, and efficiency scores - essentially an extension of your Unity Ratios presented in a more actionable format. You can easily zone in on members that have low efficiency scores and assess whether changes can be made to improve material usage.

Real-Time Feedback and Optimisation

The Lean Design Tools don’t just give you a static report. They are deeply integrated into the design workflow, allowing you to make adjustments on the fly. When you modify a design, such as switching out a member for a more suitable section, the report updates in real time to show you the impact of your changes on overall material efficiency.

For example, if you identify a column that is only 40% utilised, you can modify its section size and see how that change improves the design's efficiency.

You can also group members with similar designs and assess whether they all need to share the same section size. By analysing standard deviation within a design group, you can decide whether it’s more efficient to adjust individual members rather than forcing them all into the same section size.

Practical and Sensible Material Reduction

The goal of these tools is not just to reduce material but to do so in a practical and sensible way. Sometimes, certain design elements may have to be over-engineered for practical reasons, but Lean Design Tools help you ensure that such instances are kept to a minimum. By focusing on optimising material usage where possible, you can make significant strides toward more sustainable and cost-efficient designs.

What’s Next?

While these tools are already available for steel, composite, and timber designs, we’re working on extending them to concrete designs. In concrete, the relationship between Unity Ratios and material efficiency is more complex, but we’re committed to offering similar insights and optimisations in future updates.

In summary, our Lean Design Tools provide an intelligent, real-time way to optimise your designs, reduce waste, and ultimately contribute to more sustainable construction practices. With this feature, you can make your designs leaner without compromising on performance or safety.

Stay tuned for more updates by subscribing to our Mailing List below, on how you can continue to make your designs smarter, greener, and more efficient with MasterSeries.

Find Out More

Read more on our Blog Post: Introducing the MasterSeries 2024