Between the Poles

3D BIM + geospatial full lifecycle metro rail project aims at eliminating data loss

This year's winner of a special recognition award at Year in Infrastructure was Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Ltd for its Nagpur Metro Asset Information Management System which implemented a digital twin and a tagging scheme right from design with the goal of eliminating information loss over the life-cycle of the project.  It is estimated that this will save US$ 222 million over the 25 years of operation of the metro rail system.

 

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital twin, estimated at more than 40% savings, will be during operations and maintenance, typically representing 80% of the total cost of a facility.  Companies such as BAM who do Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) projects report significant benefits from full lifecycle BIM + geospatial.  But there is little if any quantitative evidence supporting this conjecture.  I have asked people from Finland familiar with the very early BIM developments in that country if there were studies of the benefits of BIM for operations and maintenance, but apparently the BIM focus there has been entirely on design and build.   Crossrail with a budget of £14.8 billion is the biggest engineering project in Europe.  The most interesting aspect of the Crossrail project is a 3D digital twin that has not only been used during design and construction, but is intended to be used for operations and maintenance.  Crossrail appears to be one of the first major projects that may be able to provide support for the conjecture that the biggest benefits of BIM + geospatial are for operations and maintenance. 

 

One of the first quantitative estimates of the benefits of a 3D BIM+geospatial full lifecycle project strategy I have seen was offered by this year's a winner of a special recognition award at Bentley's Year in Infrastructure in London.  Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Ltd's Nagpur Metro Asset Information Management System has implemented a digital twin and a tagging scheme right from design with the goal of eliminating information loss over the life-cycle of the project.

 

The Napgur Metro is a US$1.3 billion project underway in Nagpur, a city of 3.5 million in the Indian state of Maharashtra.  This is the first project in Asia to integrate a digital twin with an asset management system to eliminate information loss about assets during design and construction.   A 23 digit asset code was used to link 3D models developed using Bentley BIM tools with SAP financial management making it possible to track assets right from design through to operation and maintenance. BIM best practices followed the British PAS 1192 guidelines. Since the Nagpur system implements a full-lifecycle approach to project management, the location of each of the 500,000 assets comprising the systems is recorded making it possible to click on an asset in SAP and be shown the location of the asset in a 3D map. QR codes are used to track different versions of drawings. Final deliverables are digital models (Bentley iModels) rather than paper drawings providing a basis for digitalizing operations and maintenance.

 

The benefits of a 3D BIM+geospatial approach have been projected based on a 25 year lifetime for the project.  It is expected that this will result in US$400,000 savings during plan, design and build, a reduction in operating manpower requirements by 20%, and increased availability and reliability.  The really big payoff is an estimated savings of US$222 million over the lifetime of the project. 

 

Geolocation plays a key role in integrating GIS and engineering data and applications for optimizing asset management workflows.  One of the foundations for an integrated system of this type is Bentley's decision many years ago to geospatially-enable all of their products Bentley calls this capability geocoordination. It provides a location-aware foundation for workflows that require integrated engineering and geospatial data and applications.

Firm realizes ROI of 203% by integrating CAD and GIS for fiber network management

Integrating CAD and GIS into an efficient workflow for records management (aka network documentation) has been a challenge for utility and telecom operators for decades.  While utility and telecom operators have found ways to address this problem, it is rare to find the benefits for these systems quantified.  At Year in Infrastructure this year iForte Solusi Infotek presented concrete benefits of a records management system that has been in operation for several years for managing their fiber optic networks in Jakarta and on the rest of Java.

I began working in the utility and telecom sector in 1993, specifically in developing software for records management (called network documentation outside of North America).  At that time the magnitude of the AEC+geospatial cultural mismatch problem was just beginning to be appreciated by utilities and telecoms.  Planners tend to use GIS tools, engineers and designers CAD tools, construction folks in the field paper CAD drawings, and asset managers GIS integrated with their FM tools. Fashioning engineering and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance represented a challenge that remains a problem for utilities and telecom companies. The Between The Poles blog is over ten years old and one of the persistent themes from the very beginning in 2006 was the challenge of integrating CAD and GIS data and applications in an efficient workflow (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ).

The winner of this year's Year in Infrastructure Award for Communications Networks was a project of iForte Solusi Infotek.   iForte is a fast-growing fiber network operator with many large corporate customers all over Java island including Jakarta.  From this base it plans to expand into the rest of Indonesia.  iForte was facing many of the problems associated with paper-based records management in a fast-growing network operator. Prior to implementing the new system, their business processes were characterized by a plethora of paper-based manual processes. The data available for network planning was continually out of date making it difficult to compile an accurate situational assessment. Maintenance crews in the field had to rely on their own hand written notes on paper records. When sales staff met with a prospective customer it took an hour or more to collect the required information to determine the availability of fiber optic capacity at the customer's location requiring subsequent exchanges of emails to get the requisite information to the customer by which time the customer may have contacted a competitor.

The primary benefits of the new system were realized in planning, network maintenance and sales. 

• Maintenance crews could redline existing as-builts in the field so that engineering could see immediately where a problem had occurred and any temporary infrastructure the maintenance team had put in place to address the problem.
• Planning could see real-time cable utilization to identify congested networks. When there was an outage they could see the total capacity that was at risk.  It also enabled them to find alternatives for re-routing the network.  It was also found that network expansion planning could be completed four times faster. They were also able to use less fiber, saving on material costs and CAPEX. For example in one case, by looking at available capacity and utilization, it was possible to reduce new cable requirements from 1,400 meter to 100.
• For sales prior to implementing the records management system, determining fibre availability for a customer required on average of 60 minutes necessitating telephone calls to records. After implementing the new system, they were able to determine availability in six minutes and automatically generate a bill of materials and a job estimate.

For these activities iForte estimated that it has realized a return on investment of 203% over three years.

The primary benefits of the new system were realized in planning, network maintenance and sales, but there were intangible benefits as well.  Management was able to see the status of the network in real-time, review progress in building out the network on a map with demographics, assess the status of their network assets, and identify regions for network expansion.  The intangible value to the company achieved with the new system was operational excellence and improved strategic planning which provided for better performance and growth compared to competitors.

Geolocation plays a key role in integrating GIS and engineering data and applications for optimizing asset management workflows.  One of the reasons for the success of iForte's system is that Bentley decided many years ago to geospatially-enable all of their products including Microstation.  Bentley calls this capability geocoordination. It provides a location-aware foundation which facilitates workflows that require integrated engineering and geospatial data and applications.

BIM and reality modeling eliminate change orders for brownfield substation expansion

Companies are recognizing the benefits of an integrated geospatial and building information modeling (BIM) approach to design and construction. At Bentley‘s the Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference in London, the winner of the Year in Infrastructure award in the Utilities Transmission and Distribution category applied BIM processes and reality modeling on a brownfield substation expansion project. The integrated approach enabled the organization to cut design time, minimize site visits, reduce land requirement and material waste, and, most importantly, eliminate change orders during construction.

This year's award winner, Pestech International Berhad, applied reality modeling and 3D modeling in the expansion of an existing substation located in a rapidly growing industrial area close to the largest airport and port in Malaysia. This was a brownfield project that involved adding 500-kilovolt capacity to an existing 275/132-kilovolt substation. 

Substation design requires coordination between multiple disciplines, including site preparation, electrical design, mechanical design, protection design, and communications design. Traditionally, substation design involves a waterfall information flow consisting of CAD drawings and paper documents among the various disciplines. It is characterized by time-consuming, error-prone manual processes that make it difficult to correct errors, change designs, and keep everyone current with the latest documents. For a brownfield project, substation design also requires frequent visits to the site, which is hazardous and time-consuming. As a result of this fractured process, multiple submissions of the design are typically submitted to the client because of design errors. Often, the land area required for the site is overestimated and the bill of materials, which is generated manually in a time-consuming and unreliable process, results in material shortages during construction.

By automating the design process, the design time to complete the electrical drawings could be reduced from five to six months to one to two months. The bill of materials, which could require weeks to months to complete manually, could be generated instantaneously with much greater precision, reducing material waste and avoiding material shortages during construction. Clash detection could be automated, making it possible to detect clashes during design. For a brownfield project, compatibility with the existing structure can be ensured with the reality mesh, thus avoiding site visits. The combined reality and BIM model represented a single source of truth enabling all disciplines to stay current. In contrast to a waterfall information flow, a centralized 3D model enables different disciplines to work in parallel. The most important project benefit is that design errors could be detected and eliminated during design, rather than during construction. As a result, there were no rework orders due to design errors.

Reality modeling is the key technology contributing to this advancement. Reality modeling is the convergence of reality capture using 3D technologies, point clouds from LiDAR, and generating reality meshes from point clouds and digital photographs with BIM design. Geolocation plays a key role in integrating these technologies. Bentley calls this process geocoordination, and it makes it very simple to integrate data from diverse reality capture sources as well as to reuse existing engineering data together with 3D BIM design models. As I have blogged about previously, integrated geospatial and BIM is essential for a full lifecycle approach for managing infrastructure assets. 

Latest report estimates 400,000 underground utility damage events per year in North America

The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) has released its latest DIRT (Damage Information Reporting Tool) Report covering 2015, 2016 and 2017.   To make it possible to estimate the total number of events and to allow comparison across years, a refined approach for massaging the data was used in this report.  Taking into consideration excavation activity, the analysis reveals that total damages have plateaued over the past three years at about 400,000 damage events per year.

The number of reported damages in 2017 was 316,442, consisting of 10,644 in Canada and 305,799 in the U.S. 

• 2015 278,861
• 2016 317,869
• 2017 316, 442

DIRT is voluntary and does not capture all damage to underground utilities during excavation.  In the latest DIRT report, a subset of states that were substantially reporting damage events was identified. These 10 states were used to correct for under reporting states and to estimate the total number of damage events taking place in the U.S. for 2015, 2016, and 2017.

This year’s also also presents time trends based on stakeholders who have consistently reported damages during excavtions over the past three years.  The damages reported by these stakeholders is a significant portion of the total damages reported through DIRT and the trends in damages over time from these stakeholders are believed to represent a solid representation of the trend in total damages.  When the total excavation activity is taken into account the data reveals that the total number of damage events has plateaued over the past three years at roughly 400,000 events per year.

The  The report also revealed that the type of underground infrastructure that was most frequently damaged during construction was telecommunications cables followed by natural gas lines.  The most common reason for the damage was ascribed to construction practices.  The next most common reasons were inaccurate locates and the one-call centre not being notified prior to excavation.

With an average cost of about $4,000 per hit, the CGA has found that a conservative estimate of the direct cost to the U.S. economy is at least $1.5 billion.  If indirect and social costs are included, UK research suggests that the total drag on the U.S. economy is at least $50 billion.  This is further supporting evidence of the economic importance of mapping underground infrastructure.

State DOT saves millions by creating 3D map of underground utilities prior to design

Unknown or inaccurately located underground utilities can make or break a highway construction project's schedule.  For the largest construction project in the state of Alabama's history, the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) used ground penetrating radar (GPR) and other technology to create an accurate 3D model of underground infrastructure prior to designing a replacement for one of the busiest interchanges in the state.  ALDOT estimates that the 3D model, which was provided to all contractors bidding on the project, saved millions of dollars and reduced the risk of budget and schedule over-runs.

The location of existing underground utility infrastructure is more often than not poorly known which creates significant risk for infrastructure and highway construction projects. Typically on highway construction projects, the right of way is chosen, the highway designed and the project readied for construction before the one-call centre is contacted and the affected utilities arrive to detect and locate their underground facilities, usually in 2D.  The utilities that have been detected are then moved to make way for building the highway.  Not infrequently the location of the identified utilities turns out to be unreliable and during construction other unidentified utilities are encountered both of which can lead to delays and to budget overruns.

I blogged previously about a gas line construction project that was a Year in Infrastructure Award finalist in 2015.  For this project a 3D model of the existing underground and above ground infrastructure was created before design and construction.  The benefit of having the 3D model was clear; during construction there were no utility strikes, there were no change orders and the project was completed in 7 weeks instead of the expected 10 weeks. 

At this year's Year in Infrastructure Awards in London an outstanding project submitted by the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) was selected as finalist. The I-20/I-59 Corridor is the largest construction project in the State of Alabama’s history with a cost of $750 million.   The project has a very tight timeframe.  ALDOT's Design Bureau’s Visualization Group was tasked to provide a complete 3D proposed model for building information modeling (BIM). The BIM model needed to provide the information necessary for multiple uses including: visualizations, design checks, construction analysis, clash detection, right-of-way negotiations, lawsuits, and aesthetics. The model had to be very accurate because it was intended to be provided to the construction bidders to enable more accurate cost estimates and lower bids.

One of the important challenges faced by this project was utility coordination because the interchange is situated in Birmingham's business district.  Realizing that underground utilities can make or break a project's schedule, ALDOT invested a considerable effort in locating utilities and creating a 3D model of above and below-ground utilities. Potholing and scanning with ground penetrating radar augmented existing as-built records to enable ALDOT to create accurate 3D model of underground utilities.  3D is important because what appear to be clashes in 2D may not actually be.  Also it was much easier to explain to utilities in 3D that a costly move of a utility line is not necessary.   ALDOT’s Visualization Group was tasked with detecting clashes between the proposed design with the existing conditions. Every contractor bidding on the project got the full 3D model.  Because of the reduced risk associated with underground infrastructure ALDOT estimated that it saved over $10 million by using 3D modeling of underground and aboveground utilities.  To date the project is on budget and on schedule. After completion of the project ALDOT plans to retain the 3D model which can be reused for other projects in the same area.

ALDOT found other advantages of 3D modeling as well.  Public and stakeholder perspectives of the project was a major concern and using the 3D model allowed the Visualization Group to provide accurate photomatches, renderings, and animation to relay projects impacts to all stakeholders.  While the project is under construction the 3D model is also being used by inspectors in the field so that construction details are relayed accurately to the workers.

This project provides further evidence of the significant benefits of a 3D model of underground infrastructure which can be used during design and construction to reduce the risk of utility hits, reduce the cost of utility relocates, and avoid unnecessary utility relocates.