CASE STUDY
Arcaero is a UK-based consultancy, specialising in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), wind engineering, and building physics, that helps architects and developers design buildings that are safe, comfortable, and resilient through CFD analysis and wind tunnel testing.
The company provides wind microclimate, wind loading, and environmental airflow assessments to optimise building performance while preserving architectural intent.
Arcaero’s work involves highly complex, large-scale simulations that model turbulent airflow around buildings and urban environments, often requiring advanced computational methods and significant processing power. As a result, these simulations rely on high-performance computing (HPC) systems to deliver accurate results within practical timeframes.
As issues with a previous provider drained their time and limited their ability to scale, the team sought a reliable HPC solution that could support demanding simulation work.
They found the ideal match in Advania’s Gompute platform, which gave Arcaero more control over its simulation pipeline, human-led support should issues occur, and the flexibility to build, run and optimise workloads in a way that suits the team’s own processes, rather than conforming to the platform limitations of their previous provider.
Industry:
Wind engineering and building physics
Size:
15 users in multiple worldwide locations
Solution:
Gompute high-performance computing (HPC) platform
From day one, Arcaero has needed access to cloud-based HPC – as a lean, remote business operating in multiple countries, running HPC in-house has never been an option. Before moving to Advania, Arcaero was using another HPC service, which was holding back their progress. The platform lacked transparency and the level of customisation Arcaero needed to streamline their workflow.
These issues were compounded when the platform experienced downtime – while these events were infrequent, when they did strike, the supplier’s support model forced Arcaero to prove that downtime had occurred and service credit had still been spent in order to claim a refund. This imposed a frustrating manual process on the team and distracted them from their fee-paying work.
Ultimately, Arcaero needed to find a new platform, one that would support a highly-customised engineering workflow without creating extra operational overhead.
After a chance encounter, Arcaero realised that Advania’s Gompute platform provided the private-cloud HPC environment they were looking for. Gompute supports direct command-line access for the team to run processes of their own design, enabling a smoother pipeline for running complex simulations.
That meant the team could use Gompute in a similar way to if they were running their own in-house HPC environment, with the freedom to precisely tune processes and integrate with other parts of their pipeline, without the overhead of running on-premises infrastructure.
The biggest change Gompute has enabled is the level of control the Arcaero team has over their day-to-day work. With a smoother, hands-off workflow – the direct result of their customised processes and automations – the team has been able to scale to 15 members, with 10 regularly running simulations for clients. Newly-hired graduate engineers can get up and running quickly, contribute to live projects sooner and spend more time on aerodynamic analysis instead of peripheral tasks that do not utilise their skillset.
Arcaero can now also move faster, letting jobs run overnight or running multiple simulations at once, freeing up time to focus on other priorities instead of over-investing in nursing individual simulations through an HPC platform manually. Tasks that would have taken hours or even days can now be actioned in minutes. Gompute’s flexibility also opens the door for further automation, with Arcaero currently developing an integration that automatically transfers CAD files to be run in a simulation, streamlining their process even further.
On the occasions when issues do arise, Arcaero benefits from Advania’s human focus, having immediate access to experts who can help resolve issues quickly, and who work as genuine partners. Advania’s proximity to Arcaero’s work on the platform and high levels of trust built over 5 years working together make for a seamless experience.
Since their formation, Arcaero has been at the forefront of innovation in architectural simulations, and Gompute continues to enable them to operate as a pioneer of the industry.
Joe Osman
Director, Arcaero
