Between the Poles

British guidelines for BIM targeting 33% savings in TOTEX to become international ISO standards

The BS 1192 suite of guidelines and best practices developed under the auspices of the BSI, the national standards body of the UK, are designed to help the UK construction industry adopt BIM Level 2 and applies to both building and infrastructure assets. These standards target 33% savings over the full life-cycle of a building or infrastructure asset. BSI has announced that beginning this year the BS 1192 British standards will become international ISO standards.

An introduction to BIM Level 2 for folks for whom BIM is new can be found here.

BS 1192 (2007 + 2016)

The principles for information sharing and modelling of BIM Level 2 are outlined in this standard. BS 1192 provides a ‘best-practice’ method for the development, organization and management of production information for the construction industry and provides the template for common naming conventions and approaches to collaborative working for use in architecture, engineering and construction. It is also designed to assist efficient data use in facilities management.

Will be replaced in 2018 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650–1 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 1: Concepts and principles."

PAS 1192-2 (2013)

PAS 1192-2 focuses on project delivery, specifically, the graphical data, non-graphical data and documents that are accumulated from design and construction activities.

Will be replaced in 2018 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650-2 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 2: Delivery phase of assets."

PAS 1192-3 (2014)

PAS 1192-3 addresses the recognition that the cost of operating and maintaining buildings and facilities can represent up to 85% of the whole-life cost of a facility. PAS 1192-3 provides guidance to asset managers on how to integrate asset management during operations and maintenance with the accumulation of information about assets during design and construction. The UK government has targeted cost savings of 33% across the entire life-cycle of a facility by implementing the processes outlined in PAS 1192-2 and PAS 1192-3.

Will be replaced in 2020 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650-3 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 3: Operational phase of assets."

PAS 1192-5 (2015)

PAS 1192-5 outlines the cyber-security vulnerabilities to hostile attack when using BIM and provides an assessment process to determine the levels of cyber-security for BIM collaboration which should be applied during all phases of the life-cycle.

Will be replaced in 2020 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650-5 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 5: Specification for security-minded building information modelling, digital built environments and smart asset management."

The announcement by the BSI did not include two other parts of the suite;

• BS 1192 4 (2014) outlines the UK usage of COBie, an internationally agreed information exchange schema for exchanging facility information between the employer and the supply chain.
• BS 8536-1 (2015) aims to involve the operator of the facility from the outset by documenting building performance requirements early in the design phase to ensure that designers design for optimum performance of a facility.

First quantitative ROI analysis of the benefits of BIM for FM

Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years and in many countries an increasing number of which are mandating BIM for public projects. There is hard data supporting the benefits of BIM for design and construction.  While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", there has not been hard data to support this. At SPAR3D 2018 in Anaheim George Broadbent of Microdesk reported the first results of a quantitative ROI analysis of the application of BIM from construction through operations for several large projects.

The question that George asked at the beginning of this project was "Does BIM really benefit facility operations ?' There has been a lot of interest in the benefits of BIM for facilities and asset management from people in the facilities management (FM) sector and from owners, but concrete ROI data has been lacking.

On many projects information provided by the construction contractor is handed over months after completion of the project.  It can take the operator of the facility a year to go through this information to find the information required to operate the facility. This period is what is called the "blind spot" corresponding to the time the facility operator is managing the facility with limited information. Since for many types of equipment the highest probability of failure is in their first month or two of operation - just during the period that the building operator often doesn't have access to information about warranties and extended warranties - this increases the risk of equipment and even facility failures. In addition there is a cost associated with just finding the information required to service equipment. An NIST study across several industries estimated that the cost associated with this is 23 cents/square foot which adds considerable cost to operating the facility.

Most of the spatial and non-spatial data collected during construction is useful during operations. 100 % of floor plans and most of the 3D model (geometry and associated data) are needed in operations.  Some owners find that just the BIM model is adequate for managing the facility.  Others augmented the BIM model by a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) which adds financial, occupancy, maintenance history and other information.

For this proof of concept study the implementation of BIM for FM involved a web-based tool providing mobile and desktop access to the BIM 3D geometry and tabular data of the as-built model and Maximo for managing work orders.

George described several case studies including hospitals, a medical research facility, an airport and a university. For each facility several use cases were included in the ROI analysis.  For example, dealing with plumbing leaks, electric power shutdowns, passing on tribal knowledge from senior staff to new hires, and conducting infectious risk assessment (ICRA/PCRA), and so on.  After introducing BIM models for facilities and asset management, FM staff were surveyed and asked whether they found dealing with a plumbing leak, for example, using BIM easier, the same or more difficult than the traditional approach. The analysis quantified the time required to resolve a plumbing leak before and after the introduction of BIM.

Two very interesting examples of the ROI analysis were given by George relating to maintenanace operations in a hospital. Passing tribal knowledge on from the older generation of FM staff to the younger involves a junior FM staffer accompanying a senior staff member walking the building for about a month. This requires about 200 hours of staff time. The hospital hires about 12 people per year so this amounts to 2400 hours per year. With BIM and virtual reality (VR) this was reduced to 22 hrs per person, a very significant staff time savings.  In another example, a review of infectious risk assessment (ICRA/PCRA) analysis in a hospital takes about 152 hrs and this has to be repeated 200 times per year. With BIM the time required to conduct these analysis was reduced to 74 hrs per review saving 15,600 hrs annually.

At the conclusion of five years running on the projects, the ROI analysis found a positive BIM in all cases, and estimated that introducing BIM for FM saved on average 5 % of operating costs per annum. George said that it was estimated that introducing BIM reduced to the time looking for things by 83% of the 23 cents per square foot cost for doing this from the NIST study. Since operations and maintenance are roughly 75% of the total cost of a facility, these results represents a substantial savings over the full lifecycle of a building.

National digital twin is key to the UK government's transformation of the construction industry

The conjunction of the release of three UK government reports, Industrial Strategy Building A Britiain Fir for the Future, Transforming Infrastructure Performance, and Data for the Public Good, has set the stage for a transformation in how infrastructure is built, managed and operated in the UK. National digital twin is now a key concept for the UK government and BIM and geospatial are foundational for this digital replica of the national physical infrastructure.

Mark Enzer, chief technology officer at Mott MacDonald UK and proposed chair of the Digital Framework Task Group (DFTG) which is tasked to drive these reports’ implementation forward in his keynote at Geo Business 2018 in London, explained that there will be a greater focus on existing infrastructure.  Digital abundance where the cost of everything digital has dropped dramatically over the last couple of decades has transformed many industries from banks to airlines automobile manufacturing. Construction represents about 10 % of GDP and construction productivity has plateaued over the past 40 years whereas general industrial productivity has doubled. Mark pointed out that the UK has primarily mature infrastructure to maintain and operate and construction has to change to reflect this.

Based on the concept that data in the form of a national digital twin is just as important as physical assets, digital delivery and physical delivery go hand in hand. Key to digital delivery are BIM, geospatial, a common data environment, and asset information management.  A national digital twin would include above and below ground assets.

Managing this data is about making sense of it for better decision making. Fundamental to this process is rethinking value, not just the value of a finished building or infrastructure asset, but output per ‎£ over the entire lifecycle of an infrastructure asset. This means moving beyond BIM Level 2 to full lifecycle BIM including operate and maintain.

A coordinated digital transformation landscape is required to achieve this digital transformation strategy for economic transformation. He sees the many organization in the UK infrastructure and construction sector coalescing around ICG, representing Highways England, Network Rail, Crossrail, Highspeed Rail 2 (HS2), Heathrow Airport and others and Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) representing the UK BIM Alliance and others to enable this to happen.  The Centre for Digital Built Britain is a partnership between the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the University of Cambridge to deliver a smart digital economy for infrastructure and construction for the future and transform the UK construction industry’s approach to the way the UK plans, builds, maintains and uses its social and economic infrastructure.

P3 drives integrated geospatial + BIM in the Canadian construction industry

Several years ago Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch highway authority, initiated Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) highway projects. Private Dutch engineering and construction companies bidding on these projects found that adopting an integrated geospatial + BIM approach on DBFM projects yielded significant benefits. I blogged previously about the firm Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult that adopted an integrated BIM + geospatial full-lifecycle approach to construction because many of its projects were DBFM projects. In Canada public–private partnership (P3) have been remarkably successful for building and maintaining infrastructure. At the CanBIM 2018 Regional Session in Vancouver I had a chance to chat with Thomas Strong, Managing Director VDC at EllisDon, who said that at EllisDon integrated BIM + geospatial was considered best practices on full-lifecyle projects including P3 projects in Canada.

Background

McKinsey & Company suggests that the construction industry is ripe for disruption and two of the technologies that it believes will be key in that anticipated transformation are geospatial and BIM. Large construction projects typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget. Construction productivity has actually declined in some markets since the 1990s and financial returns for contractors are relatively low and volatile. McKinsey has identified five technologies that it believes will be transformative in the construction industry. Two are geospatial technologies and BIM.  Integrated BIM + geospatial is essential to enable the full capabilities of both technologies.

Geospatial + BIM at EllisDon

Thomas Strong has an interesting background that prepared him for the 3D digital construction world. He started his career in plastic injection molding making steel molds to fabricate plastic parts for cars. In this world engineers use 3D models to fully define to the fabricators what they are going to fabricate. In 2002 he transitioned to the construction industry and found that design business processes were quite different - in the construction industry things don’t get fully defined until they are built. When he joined EllisDon, he got involved with a couple of Frank Gehry projects including the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) where contractors worked from 3D models that were provided by the architect right from the beginning. After that experience, EllisDon started to implement the use of 3D models for design, quantities, and logistics to produce schedules. Now when EllisDon tender work, they use 3D models to define the geometry and the scope of work.

Thomas has been tracking trends in the geospatial + BIM world since joining EllisDon. The use of Laser Scanning is an important new technology driving significant business at EllisDon, who did their first 3D scans in 2003 on the AGO project. EllisDon now routinely conducts scans for deviation analysis, progress tracking and to capture existing conditions related to their core business construction work as well as offering scan-to-BIM as a service. They have developed a leading edge capability for converting LiDAR scans to 3D BIM geometry very quickly and accurately. They use this capability to reverse engineer existing buildings for renovation or heritage projects. The EllisDon VDC group, which was established in 2008 and which Thomas leads, provides consulting services around 3D scanning and developing as-built models.

EllisDon was involved in its first P3 project in Canada fifteen years ago. Since then the P3 business has grown and now P3 is a big part of EllisDon's business.  For P3 projects EllisDon builds a wide variety types of structures including hospitals. In the P3 world the contractor often shares the risk of operating and/or maintaining a facility for an extended period. This means that people who are going to be running and managing a facility need to be involved in designing the facility right from the beginning. It is necessary to cost out the lifecycle of each piece of equipment whether it be a carpet, baseboard or cooling unit because you have to be able to maintain it and at the end of the 30 year period you are expected to turn over a hospital that looks brand new. For this reason P3 projects are very different from design+build projects.

Integrated geospatial+BIM is critical during the operations and maintenance phase of a building. Utilities, transportation, emergency planning, first responder access, energy performance, and evacuation management all require information about internal and external infrastructure. A common geospatial coordinate system enables a comprehensive operational view of all infrastructure including internal and external structures. Thomas explained to me that at EllisDon best practices on full lifecycle projects is to use real world coordinates. He has found that it is sometimes necessary to put a little pressure on architects and others to do because there is predilection among some architects for (0,0) coordinate systems.

It was P3 projects that got EllisDon into full lifecycle projects and led to them developing their own in-house facilities management (FM) group.  As EllisDon's P3 business has grown, their FM has also continued to grow.  Since they are in-house, the FM folks are at the table right from the beginning of a project. EllisDon recognizes the value of the data that is collected over a project lifecyle, and the entire team is aware it's important to deliver the data for the asset in a way that can plug and play in an organized way into the asset management/facilities management platform.

Large public project in U.S. mandates BIM for full-life-cycle construction

One of the largest municipal bond-financed construction projects in the United States has mandated building information modeling (BIM), targetting not only design and construction, but as a permanent record of college assets for use during operations and maintenance.  The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) is the largest community college district in the United States and serves more than 250,000 students annually at nine colleges, spread throughout the greater Los Angeles area. More than 70% of LACCD students are underserved minorities and over 40% of students are over the age of 25.

LACCD has received funding through taxpayer-approved bonds and the State of California to launch its BuildLACCD sustainable building project. BuildLACCD is a $9.5 billion building program is funded mainly by bonds approved by Los Angeles voters in 2001-2016.  The objectives of the project is modernizing and improving campus facilities to enhance opportunities for students from lower-income communities and involved designing and constructing more than 65 new buildings, as well as remodeling many others.  The LACCD consuders itself a leader in environmentally responsible construction. The BuildLACCD Sustainable Building Program is enabling LACCD to not only modernize its colleges but to build more than 40 new structures that will meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.  LACCD is generating solar power on its campuses and taking other steps to reduce the colleges' carbon footprint. The final phase of the project has mandated a building information modeling (BIM) approach, requiring that each building be modeled in 3D and managed using BIM processes.

I have blogged about the innovative BIM program at LACCD.   About twelve years ago it was decided to capture 3D BIM models of all the buildings on the LACCD  campuses. One of the most important motivations for creating these models was that BIM models would facilitate energy performance analyses of LACCD buildings - which supports the current building program, which targets zero energy usage.  The models include interior power, water, mechanical, and lighting systems together with 2D models of underground infrastructure on the nine LACCD campuses.

There are interesting and unique aspects of how these models were captured.  Perhaps most importantly, the models were created entirely by LACCD students.  Existing structures were laser scanned and BIM models were developed from the point clouds by students. In addition to creating the models themselves this has created a large BIM skilled labour pool in Los Angeles.

The second important aspect of capturing BIM models of college buildings is that to ensure a uniform representation of all the buildings across all of the campuses and interoperability with various applications,  standards should be used wherever possible.  The initial standards adopted include Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), Spatial Data Standards for Facilities, Infrastructure, and (SDSFIE), OMNIClass, and COBIE.  The BIM models were stored in a spatially-enabled relational database using real world coordinates.  Real world coordinates and spatial SQL enabled the models to be easily integrated with geospatial data from a variety of sources. The models could then be used for a variety of purposes including visualization, energy performance modeling, predictive maintenance,  and safety and security simulations.

The final phase of the BuildLACCD project involves more than 500 participants representing nearly a thousand different trades. The plan targets capturing data associated with assets in the planning and design phase so this information can later be utilized by facility directors and campus project directors for maintenance and operations. For the widespread community college with nine campuses this requires a common geospatial coordinate system so that all facilities can be viewed on a map and users can see each building spatially in reference to other facilities including utilities and roads and vegetation. The LACCD database buildings currently houses more than 3 million files totaling five terabytes of data.  The data is stored in Bentley Projectwise which provides a common interface and foundation for a standardized, collaborative BIM approach. ProjectWise is the central repository for all information, including models, drawings, specifications, photographs, and all other project data.

Electic power utility uses reality capture to rapidly develop grid data model

Duquesne Light is typical of many of North American small to medium electric power utilities.  It does not have an outage management system  or an electrical data model which means it is difficult to connect customers to transformers and to determine upstream devices when customers report power problems.  It has become clear to Duquesne Light that an electric data model is essential for moving forward on modernizing their grid. At Distributech 2018 Jim Karcher, Manager, Operation Technology Projects at Duquesne Light Co. (DLC), gave an overview of a remarkable project that compared different approaches including reality capture and a traditional foot survey for developing an electric grid data model.

Duquesne Light still uses paper tickets for tracking outages and other problems.  Currently Duquesne Light's circuit maps are AutoCAD drawings.  These drawings are designed to be used by electrical engineers and are not spatially correct.  The reliance on AutoCAD drawings means that  tracing from transformers to customers or from customers to controlling devices is a manual process.  However, Duquesne Light is moving to modernize its grid.  It  has implemented distribution SCADA (DSCADA) and has over 1100 DSCADA controlled field sectionalizers, about 400 DSCADA controlled field capacitors and is implementing an AMI deployment which will be completed in 2019.  And it plans to deploy and Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) including outage management (OMS), DMS and DSCADA.  But the ADMS will require developing a complete distribution electrical data model.

A quarter of a century ago there were two ways to do this.  Either walk the entire network and plot it on a USGS map or attempt to conflate the AutoCAD drawings onto a USGS basemap.  Today's technology advances have created new alternatives.  One of these is to use modern reality capture, typically LiDAR and photo and infrared cameras with a GPS which can be mounted on a truck. 

To compare alternative ways to create a grid data model Duquesne Light decided to run a pilot on about four of its circuits comprising a 100 miles of its distribution grid.  Quantitative criteria were defined to allow comparison of cost, schedule, and electric data model accuracy of different approaches.  Electric data model accuracy included location accuracy, phasing, ability to trace customers to transformers, asset inventory and attribution.  The data model had to be captured in a form that was compatible with Duquesne Light's GIS.

Reality capture was done with a pickup truck with side mounted photo and IR cameras and LiDAR laser scanners.  Pictures were taken very second which enabled a 270 degree picture of each pole.  Location accuracy was about a meter.  To drive the entire 100m miles of distribution network required about a week.

When the model captured by reality capture was compare to the result of a traditional survey (on foot with a GPS), only one discrepancy was found that could be attributed to the reality capture approach.  Comparison with other approaches revealed that the reality capture data provided the most geospatially accurate asset location data.  The reality capture survey only required two Duquesne Light employees in the field for a week and at no time during the survey did they have to leave the truck - meaning that the survey was completed rapidly and safely.  Actual development of the data model was completed in the office without the necessity of going to the field for quality checks because the imagery provided all the data that was required to create and verify the data model.

Duquesne Light found several significant advantages of the reality capture approach.  The first was asset accuracy - both location and asset attributes.   Reality capture provided a visual record that could be checked in the office obviating the need to go to the field.  The captured imagery could be used for other purposes.  It could be used for a joint-use audit.  The LiDAR data allowed distances between poles and cables to buildings and structures to be accurately measured to ensure regulatory clearances and to verify third party attachment heights.  The infrared imagery could be used to detect hot spots.

This is critically important because it shows that reality capture is a feasible alternative to a traditional foot survey.  Duquesne Light has shown, based on a quantitative comparison of alternatives for developing a data model including a traditional foot survey, that reality capture provides a cost-effective and safe way to rapidly develop an accurate electric data model.  It also concluded that reality capture also provides significant additional benefits.

Open source geospatial application reduces copper cable theft by 70%

A highlight of the SA Geotech conference in Johannesburg was a presentation by Ryno Goosen of Suritec Geospatial.  Ryno, who was awarded the Best Paper prize at SA Geotec, gave a fascinating presentation about how he developed an open source GIS solution to fight copper cable theft.

In Canada copper cable theft costs the Canadian electricity sector an estimated $40 million annually.  In South Africa in 2014 there were 72,533 reported incidents of copper cable theft resulting in 10,736 arrests.  Copper theft incidents in the U.S. have tripled in the last 5 years.

Goosen Goosen's solution architecture was based on open source geospatial software.  He chose open source for several reasons.  First and foremost, it enabled massive scalability by providing an elastic IT infrastructure.  Secondly it provided open interoperability with other open source software as well as proprietary systems. He also emphasized the importance of using software that was "battle-tested" in both military and commercial environments. 

His solution architecture was built on Cesium, GeoServer, Boundless Desktop/QGIS, Protobuf, Cassandra, WildFly, Solr and GeoTrellis.  Using this solution he was able to combine data from different sources including ground patrol and remote sensors.  By analyzing this data geographically and temporally he was able to determine spatial and temporal patterns of copper cable theft.  This enabled optimum deployment of resources.  The results were impressive.  Over a 30-month period cable theft was reduced by 69%.

The success of Goosen's shows that open source GIS software has become a viable alternative for building complex and highly scalable solution-oriented architectures.  He also suggested that it levels the playing field for small to medium size enterprises by providing them with similar intelligence capabilities to their larger counterparts.

Importance of implementing cybersecurity for engineering projects using BIM

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Hugh Boyes, a Cyber Security specialist outlined some of the security risks of digital engineering and the importance of cybersecurity for engineering projects.  BIM models, floorplans and 3D LiDAR scans of sensitive buildings and infrastructure can often be found on the web.  He mentioned the floorplan of a major police station, a BIM model of a young offenders facility, and a BIM model of the Victoria Underground station.  All of these could potentially be very useful to anyone interested in disrupting infrastructure.  It is well-known that mapping underground infrastructure reduces risk during construction and also during disasters, natural and man-made.  However, it can also provide information about sensitive infrastructure.  Hugh mentioned substations as particularly sensitive elements of the energy grid.  With traditional centralized generation, substations are critical elements of the grid and are particularly vulnerable.  In many countries disrupting a small number of large substations can leave significant parts of the country without power.   (An advantage of a decentralized grid comprised of many microgrids with their own generating and storage facilities is that it is much less vulnerable.)

For people who are designing and building sensitive infrastructure using BIM, he recommended following the PAS1192-5 guidelines and incorporating security into the design from the start.  PAS 1192-5 specifies processes which will assist organizations in identifying and implementing measures to reduce the risk of loss or disclosure of information which could impact the safety and security of personnel and users of infrastructure or the built infrastructure itself.  PAS 1192-5 is applicable to any built asset or portfolio of assets which is deemed sensitive. It is for use by asset owners and organizations involved in the design, construction, maintenance and management of built assets, especially those who wish to protect their commercial information and/or intellectual property.  Hugh is the joint technical author of BS PAS1192-5 - Specification for security-minded building information modelling, digital built environments and smart asset management.

Simplifying the integration of reality capture and asset management

The construction industry in the UK, as in many of the world's advanced economies, suffers from low productivity compared to other industries, a situation which hasn't improved in 25 years according to Simon Rawlinson of the Construction Leadership Council.  Various types of laser scanners, software that creates point clouds from photos, and handheld scanners have the potential to dramatically improve productivity, but users of these devices in the construction and asset management industries are finding that these devices are creating a major data management problem which has to be addressed to enable the technology to achieve its full potential.  At Geo Business 2017 in London I had a chance to chat with Pascal Martinez, Director Business Development at Bentley Systems about Bentley's vision for converging reality capture, reality modeling, and asset management assist in improving productivity in the construction and maintenance of building and infrastructure assets.

Pascal was originally with Acute 3D which was acquired by Bentley two years ago. Acute 3D, now called ContextCapture, was originally targeted at creating point clouds from photos captured with an ordinary digital camera.  The latest version of ContextCapture is able to integrate point clouds from LiDAR and photo cameras to generate a common 3D mesh using imagery from both sources.  

Bentley's vision for the evolution of reality capture is to be able to integrate data from multiple sources, both 2D and 3D, to create a common 3D mesh, classify it by associating areas of the mesh with existing data from other sources stored in databases such as Bentley's Assetwise and Projectwise and then link objects in the mesh to information about the specific assets stored in the databases.

At the conference the model of what already exists or what has actually been constructed was frequently referred to as the digital twin of a building or other type of infrastructure (previously BIM).  Associating classified elements of 3D meshes from reality capture with vector elements in the digital twin has a number of applications.  In the case of a new building or new infrastructure it enables monitoring compliance with design during construction, even on a day by day basis, to catch issues early.

Being able to automatically associate areas of a 3D mesh with buildings, facilities and equipment in plants, and linear assets such as transmission lines, railways, and roads would have a dramatic impact not only on the efficiency of construction monitoring but also on asset management by reducing the time require to scan all or part of a facility and compare the captured reality with the digital as-builts. Pascal showed a very simple, but very cool, way to do this now, by placing a QR code on each piece of equipment which then can be clicked on in the mesh (scan) to bring up information stored in Assetwise about the piece of equipment.

Utility industry vendors urged to adopt data model standard

Software comes and goes, but a utility's data model persists. A shared electric power data model enables electric power utilities to move away from incompatible point solutions toward tightly integrated solutions which are essential for real-time monitoring, situational assessment and decision making.  Based on today's smart devices and sensors and utility-wide communications network, decision making in a real-time, big data world requires tight integration between applications.  To realize the full potential of the smart grid, utility industry vendors need to move rapidly to adopt data model standards, that's the recommendation of Geoff Cameron of AGSI. which has developed a platform based on a utility data model standard that provides real-time access to critical infrastructure, customer and operational information. 

 

Traditional electric utilities are typically departmentalized and rely on manual, paper-based processes. Sharing knowledge is relatively slow, cumbersome, and reactive in nature and characterized by redundant data, many incompatible point solutions and non-real-time.  Facilities are inspected periodically, data is accumulated and analyzed, a report is written and sometime in the future do something is done.  Today's intelligent electronic devices, bidirectional communications networks, and automation provide the basis for dramatically improving a utility's SAIDI and SAIFI outage statistics.  It also provides a foundation for transactive energy.  What is required to realize the full potential of the smart grid is a platform that enables real-time integrated applications.

 

At Distributech 2017 Dan Guatto, COO and VP of Engineering and Operations, described how Burlington Hydro (BHI), a distribution utility with 65,500 customers, has evolved from a point solution environment to an integrated, secure, and real-time utility.  As is typical of many distribution utilities, BHI was facing increased technology sophistication, the need integrated business workflows (operations, engineering, customer engagement, financial) to improve efficiency.  BHI had to address siloed legacy systems and business processes.  Many industry solution offerings fixed individual problems but were expensive and did not take into account integration and long term data management.  Many “enterprise” offerings in the marketplace were proprietary black box solutions with little flexibility that made BHI feel that it was surrendering control of its data and processes.  One of the major problems BHI identified was the lack of O.T. / I.T. convergence for true enterprise efficiency.   Solutions required quite expensive capital outlay and deployment.  Projects became too big and and bogged down and were unable to address fast paced industry change.  In Ontario some of the larger utilities made significant technology investments, but at the end of the day these projects were extremely expensive, disjointed and largely underutilized (or even abandoned). BHI was also concerned about the infancy of smart grid technology and rapid future changes and didn't want to be tied to an inflexible system as the speed of industry changes accelerated.  BHI was convinced that a sound system architecture had to be based on electric industry standards and was aware that AGSI had been working with EPRI on a real-time platform based on Common Information Model (CIM) and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.

 

Over the past decade open electric power data model standards have been developed for transmission, distribution, smart substations and other electric power functions.  Worldwide the Common Information Model (CIM) has become the standard for transmission.  CIM is also widely used outside of North America for distribution.  In North America the Multispeak standard is the most widely used distribution data model standard, although CIM is used by larger utilities.  These data models are mature and cover virtually all aspects of electric power utility operations.

CIM was originally developed for standardizing electric utility information exchange.  It was designed by electrical engineers, adopted by the IEC and supported by EPRI and multiple electric utility partners, vendors and organizations.  The IEC, EPRI and partners continue to extend the model to cover asset health, station design, work, smart grid integration, IoT Integration, and network operating protocols.  CIM is able to support all aspects of electrical operations (OMS/DMS), electric analysis / smart grid, distributed energy (DER), work orders, crew management, and assets.  AGSI has implemented the CIM Core, Topology, Wires, & Assets object models in a relational database (Oracle Spatial).  Its implementation represents a real-time network model of the CIM electric system data model and provides a centralized view and interaction with the network in real-time.

 

Today this technology connects and integrates engineering, SCADA, AMI, GIS, load analysis, other smart grid deployments such as EV charging, customer, and asset databases into a single accessible platform and enabled BHI to evolve from a point solution environment to an integrated, secure, and real-time utility.  Real-time data unification provides a basis for transparent workflows and a centralized reliable source of truth enables advanced analytics for optimized investment planning.  An open architecture based on industry standards provides the flexibility to adapt to rapid changes in technology as the smart grid evolves. Real-time information sharing enables faster decision making and increased customer satisfaction via real-time situational awareness about outages and planned work.  Don Guatto believes that it provides the foundation for transactive energy which is looming on every utility's horizon.