Between the Poles

Power utility identifies 60-70% productivity improvement by integrating engineering design, GIS and enterprise systems

In the last few years strong business drivers for improving power distribution design productivity including an aging and shrinking workforce, an accelerating transition to the smart grid and a rapidly changing utility business model have emerged which are motivating utilities to transform their century old business practices.  With new technologies utilities are finding that they can improve productivity by up to  60-70 % by integrating graphical design, engineering calculations such as flicker, voltage drop, guying, enforcement of engineering standards, and integration with enterprise systems to automate bill of materials generation and job estimating.

Distribution design in the power industry

Designing electric power distribution systems involves CAD drafting, engineering calculations such as sag, flicker, voltage drop, guying, wind loading, pulling tension and clearance and checking them against engineering standards to avoid under-engineering, using compatible units to compute jobs estimates, and comparing costs of different equipment to limit over-engineering.  In many utilities distribution design remains a laborious error-prone process with redundant data entry, back of the envelope engineering calculations and manual lookups.

Furthermore once a design is completed it undergoes a typically paper-based workflow (especially for major jobs) that is inefficient and error-prone.  The CAD design is printed for construction contractors to use in the field.  After construction is completed the paper "as-built" comes back from the field to records possibly with red-lines that indicate what was actually constructed.  The key metrics for this workflow are the as-built backlog and the accuracy of asset location in the utility GIS.  These metrics are important for utilities because they directly affect key statistics such as average outage duration (SAIDI) reported by utilities to regulators.  As examples: I remember a small utility in upstate New York where an engineer told me he spent two hours in the snow and darkness looking for a failed device and ultimately had to come back in the morning light to finally locate it.  A large telecom I worked with could not locate some assets to within two city blocks which not only added to the time locating equipment that required maintenance but reduced the reliability of availability of services calculations.  Fashioning AEC and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance represents a challenge that remains a problem for utilities.  The result of this broken workflow is an out-of-date, unreliable GIS that inhibits field workers from optimal productivity and complicates reporting of operational performance.

Business drivers for improving productivity

Utilities are facing business drivers that are motivating them to improve the productivity of their business processes and improving data quality including locational accuracy of assets to provide a near real-time digital twin of their assets.  These drivers include an aging work force, the replacement of older workers by younger less experienced workers, a reliable near real-time GIS as the foundation for developing a smart grid, and a rapidly evolving utility business model that changes utility priorities.

With the new business models emerging in New York and other jurisdictions, utilities' focus is shifting from selling energy to maintaining a reliable and resilient grid which makes reducing the frequency and duration of outages more critical.

Benefits of integrating engineering design, GIS and enterprise systems

In the last decade or so technology advances have provided a solution for low distribution design productivity and out-of-date and unreliable utility GIS.  I have described the system developed by Southern California Edison (SCE) to integrate distribution and transmission graphical design (AutoCAD), utility GIS (Smallworld) and back office systems including ERP (SAP), customer service system, crew scheduling (Clicksoft), field operations (eMobile) and finance (SAP and PowerPlant).  One of the workflows SCE focussed on was compatible units (CUs). CUs represent the cost of equipment together with the cost of labour to install the equipment. When combined with a bill of materials (BOM), CUs allow the designer to generate job estimates. The compatible unit workflow involves many systems including design, crew scheduling, materials ordering, and fixed asset accounting. As an example, at SCE designers were required to manually list the bill of materials on the design drawing and reenter it, again manually, in the materials ordering system.  SCE's integrated system was successful in improving productivity by bringing consistency and efficiency to distribution and transmission design, eliminating manual lookup, enforcing engineering standards to reduce the risk of under-engineering and avoiding the costs of over-engineering, and reducing or eliminating redundant data entry. The integrated system enables experienced workers to work faster with fewer errors and younger workers to become productive sooner.  It sped up the design to GIS workflow and resulted in improved quality of the data in the utility GIS.

However, while the system implemented at SCE demonstrated the success of an integrated approach, it was a bespoke integration of design, enterprise GIS, ERP and other products and is beyond the reach of small and medium size utilities. 

Benefits of a productized integrated solution

At Distributech 2019 I linked up with Dennis Beck of Spatial Business Systems (SBS), which took over responsibility for future development, support and licensing of AutoCAD Utility Design (AUD) software in 2016. He explained that SBS has transformed the architecture of the SCE integrated solution into off-the-shelf products that enable it to be cost-effectively implemented at any size utility.  One of SBS's customers has determined in detail the productivity benefits of an integrated architecture with SBS components for their engineering design workflow.

Nashville Electric Service (NES) is a publicly owned, nonprofit company that serves more than 355,000 customers in a large service area in Tennessee.  As part of a major upgrade to their business processes NES benchmarked an integrated automated design, utility GIS and enterprise systems solution for two engineering design jobs using SBS components.  NES performed the two jobs four different ways and assiduously recorded the time required for each step of the design process.  This allowed them to estimate the quantitative benefits of different aspects of the integrated solution.  The major components of the NES solution architecture were

• Automated design -  AUD is an AutoCAD-based desktop application that provides a model-based approach to design and bill of material generation along with a comprehensive set of engineering tools, including flicker, voltage drop, guying, and pulling tension and clearance checking.  It supports both overhead and underground distribution design.

• GIS integration - Integrating graphical engineering design with the utility GIS helps reduce as-built backlogs which are a major contributor to out-of-date utility GIS.

• Enterprise integration - Integrating engineering design and utility GIS with the utility's work order system, material management and financial systems makes it possible to automatically enforce engineering standards, generate construction work orders, layouts, bills of materials, design scenarios and estimated costs.

NES calculated the benefits of each level of improvement as applied to overhead and underground residential distribution design.

	Overhead Time (mins)	Overhead Time saved (%)	Underground Time (mins)	Underground Time saved (%)
AutoCAD	173		81
Automated design (AUD)	145	16 %	63	22 %
AUD with GIS integration	132	8 %	50	14 %
AUD with GIS and enterprise integration	69	36 %	23	34 %
Total savings	104	60 %	58	70 %

The analysis revealed important benefits from model- and rule-based approaches to engineering design. It enabled behind-the-scene calculation of physical things like wire sag, flicker and voltage drop. An important contributor to productivity improvement was to completely avoid the need to lookup or manually find engineering and drafting standards. The largest benefits from a productivity perspective were found by integration with enterprise systems especially compatible units which enabled automated bill of materials generation and job estimation.

NES further broke the overall workflow into subtasks including drafting, annotation, job estimating and enforcing engineering standards and analyzed the productivity improvements for each of these subtasks.

Overhead residential design	AutoCAD	Automated design (AUD)	AUD with GIS integration	AUD with GIS and enterprise integration
Drafting	60 mins	95 mins	82 mins	61 mins
Annotation	36	36	36	8
Job estimating	24	14	14	0
Engineering standards	53	0	0	0

 

Underground residential design	AutoCAD	Automated design (AUD)	AUD with GIS integration	AUD with GIS and enterprise integration
Drafting	25 mins	31 mins	18 mins	18 mins
Annotation	22	22	22	5
Job estimating	24	10	10	0
Engineering standards	10	0	0	0

The analysis revealed that while an integrated approach to design did not significantly change the time required for actual graphical drafting, it dramatically reduced the time required for annotation, applying engineering standards, and job estimating (including BOM generation).  These improvements in productivity were derived primarily from eliminating redundant data entry and manual lookup.  Another significant point is that these timings only represent the time savings to engineering design – they do not include savings on re-entry of data into the GIS from as-builts.

Other benefits that NES did not quantify include avoiding the risks associated with under-engineering, reducing the costs of over-engineering, increased quality of the utility GIS by recording engineering designs directly in the GIS rather than re-entering it from paper as-builts, and enabling less experienced workers to come up to speed faster without increasing the risk of errors or significantly reduced productivity.

Improving productivity of distribution design by up to 60-70% is a huge benefit.  SBS is finding that other customers are reporting similar experiences, although they haven't documented their productivity gains as meticulously as NES has done. For utilities that are facing a significant portion of their workforce retiring, this improvement in productivity can free up experienced engineers and others to accelerate the transition to the smart grid and to adapt to a rapidly changing utility business model.

Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction

Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects.  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", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture.  Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects.   Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the world will need to spend $57 trillion on infrastructure through 2030 to keep up with global GDP growth. This is a massive incentive for the  construction industry to transform productivity and project delivery through new technologies and improved practices.  McKinsey reports that 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.  Construction has been slow to adopt process and technological innovations. R&D spending in construction lags most other industries - construction R&D  is less than 1% of total industry revenue compared to 3.5-4.5 % in the auto and aerospace sectors.  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. 

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital model will be during operations and maintenance, which typically represents 80% of the cost of a facility.  Companies who take on design, build, and maintain and/or operate projects find significant benefits from a full lifecycle BIM + geospatial strategy. For example, EllisDon in Canada considers BIM+geospatial as best practice for its PPP projects, Rijkswaterstaat pioneered design, build, finance, and maintain (DBFM) projects in the Netherlands, Crossrail, which is currently the largest engineering project in Europe, has adopted this approach, Malaysian firm PESTECH International Berhad employs this approach for build, operate and transmit (BOT) projects, and major U.S. construction firm AECOM is applying BIM+geospatial on large design, build finance and operate (DBFO) projects. But to date there has been little reported quantitative evidence supporting the benefits of this approach.  This is changing with several projects providing estimates of benefits including ROI of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction projects.

Integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction

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. A 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.

A full lifecycle facilities information flow starts with a facilities information specification from the owner identifying the building information to be included as part of the final deliverables at the time of commissioning.  The facilities information specification is part of the contract between the owner and the designers and contractors who will construct the building.  The facilities information required by the owner's specification are entered into the BIM database during design and construction by the designers and contractors.  At the completion of construction the facilities information data collected by the designers and contractors and stored with the BIM model in digital form represents a key deliverable to the owner together with the BIM model.   The facilities information can then be used to populate the building manager's asset management/facilities management system database including links to the BIM model of the facility to identify where each element or piece of equipment can be found. 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 including geometry and associated data is adequate for managing the facility. Others augment the BIM model by a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) which adds financial, occupancy, maintenance history and other information.

In an award winning paper at a 2011 conference organized by Britain’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Ann Kemp, then head of GIS at Atkins Global, the design and engineering firm, asked the question ‘BIM isn’t geospatial — or is it?’ and then argued that integration of geospatial and BIM was essential to address the challenges of the 21st century.  The need to integrate geospatial and BIM has been gaining traction for some time.

BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance.  A leader in this space, Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch transportation authority, began offering design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects a number of years ago which has motivated private Dutch engineering and construction companies to adopt an integrated geospatial+BIM approach to construction.

A few firms such as Parsons Brinckerhoff, Atkins Global, and several Dutch firms including Arcadis and Royal BAM, in the construction sector realized a number of years ago that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance.  For example, the firm Royal BAM Group nv/BAM Infraconsult adopted integrated BIM + geospatial because of market developments including more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a 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.

Benefits of Integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle construction

Recently, Microdesk has reported 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 performed by Microdesk relate to maintenance 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. It was estimated that introducing BIM reduced 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.

The Napgur Metro, which is a US$1.3 billion project underway in Nagpur, 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.  Final deliverables are digital models 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 estimated 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.

 

PESTECH International Berhad, the winner of a Year in Infrastructure award, used geocoordinated digital design for the development of a new substation Kratie and Kampong Cham, Cambodia.  The decision to use geocordinated design technology for this project was partially motivated by the requirement that the company would not only be responsible for designing and building the substation but also for operating it for a period of 25 years before transferring it to the utility.

 

A number of projects in the Netherlands have been initiated by Rijkswaterstaat (RWS), the Dutch highway authority, using a design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) approach. The Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) board is convinced of the benefits of BIM and BIM/geospatial integration and rolled out BIM/geospatial for four DBFM projects with the intention to require BIM on all DBFM-contracts in the future. Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult was responsible for several of these projects.  A DBFM project at BAM starts with 2D geographic data that is visualized through a GIS web portal. The web portal gives everyone on the team an early perspective on the project site including underground utilities and aboveground structures before design begins. During the tender process the geospatial data is combined with 3D data including 3D representations of nearby natural and man-made features as well as proposed designs to create a 3D environment for assessing alternative designs. The 3D environment improves collaboration among the team members as well as enabling better communication with the client through 3D visualization of proposed designs. After award, the first step is conducting LiDAR scans of the site/proposed route. At completion of construction, the data collected during design and construction is migrated to an integrated GIS + asset management system system to support maintenance activities. 

 

In Canada public–private partnership (P3) have been remarkably successful for building and maintaining infrastructure. For EllisDon, a major construction and building services company, integrated BIM + geospatial is considered best practices on full lifecycle projects P3 projects in Canada.  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.

 

AECOM, which is a US$18.2 billion a year firm in the construction sector and has been ranked for eight years running it has been ranked #1 in Engineering News Record‘s “Top 500 Design Firms”, uses BIM + GIS on design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) projects around the world.  At AECOM, the discussion has shifted from CAD/BIM alone to include geospatial and its capabilities specifically for design, build finance and operate (DBFO) projects. This mirrors the Dutch experience with design, build, finance and maintain (DBFM) projects encouraged by the Dutch highway authority. AECOM has found that by adding real world coordinates they increase the value and types of data for all stakeholders across the entire lifecycle. Integrated geospatial + BIM connects data types together. BIM holds the utility content and GIS is a visual platform for maintenance linked to a maintenance workflow. AECOM has applied this approach to the external campus of Denver International Airport, and to lease management at Orlando, Hong Kong, and South West Florida international airports. For the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) in Hong Kong AECOM developed and maintains a central repository with district-wide data from various sources including all operational data - architectural planning and engineering- for the district. The advantage of an integrated BIM+GIS approach based on a centralized integration of information is that it allows the client to make strategic decisions during the design, build and operate phases of the construction lifecycle.

BIM+geospatial interoperability

Fashioning AEC 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 owners.  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 ). It is indicative of the importance of the integration of BIM and geospatial data and technologies that Autodesk and ESRI, 800 lb gorillas in their respective areas of AEC and GIS, have announced an agreement (for the second time) to collaborate to help bridge the gap between CAD/BIM and GIS/geospatial. 

 

Over the past decade, there has been impressive progress in developing open standards for the integration of geospatial and AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) views of city infrastructure which provides a standards-based basis for full lifecycle management from design through to operations and maintenance of infrastructure projects. 

 

The Netherlands has led in the development and application of open BIM+geospatial standards‎ in the construction industry. The Netherlands has created a BIM Gateway that is intended to be a national portal for information about open BIM standards including related geospatial standards. 

In the AEC world Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the open and neutral data format standard for the exchange of building information models (BIM) that is widely used in the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction)  sector.  The IFC standard was developed and is supported by buildingSMART International.   The IFC BIM standard is used in the construction industry in many countries and is mandated in countries such as Finland.  The first versions of IFC were intended for buildings (vertical BIM).  Recently buildingSMART initiated the IFC for Infrastructure project to extend the IFC standard to support linear transportation infrastructure (horizontal BIM or BIM for Infrastructure) such as rail, road, bridges, and tunnels. 

In the geospatial world a widely used international geospatial standard for cities is CityGML.  Thomas Kolbe and co-workers are the developers of the CityGML standard that has been adopted by the Open Geospatial Consortium.  Kolbe et al. are translating a vision of the city as an interactive system comprised of functional components, utility networks connecting components, and interdependencies between utility networks into standards-based intelligent models that can be used to analyze urban environments for a variety of purposes including risk- and disaster management energy consumption, carbon balancing and city life-cycle management.

Currently CityGML includes 3D geometry, topology, semantics, and appearance for urban environments. CityGML also supports a standard mechanism for adding extensions, called Application Domain Extensions (ADEs).  There are several Application Domain Extensions (ADEs) that have been developed to extend CityGML to other domains.  For example,  I blogged about a basic extension UtilityNetworksADE that was proposed for city utility networks.  The INSPIRE Data Specifications Annex III contains use case encodings and a data model for Buildings the development of which was strongly influenced by CityGML. There have been attempts to integrate or at least develop a mapping between IFC and CityGML. 

A major breakthrough in bringing the architectural and geospatial views onto a common footing is the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model developed by the OGC in cooperation with buildingSMART International and approved as an OGC standard in August, 2016.  LandInfra  was developed by Bentley Systems, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International and provides a unifying basis for land and civil engineering standards including the OGC's InfraGML and buildingSmart International's IFC for infrastructure standards.  

buildingSmart International's IFC-Alignment project uses this common conceptual model of alignments for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges.  The objectives of the IFC-Alignment project is to enable the exchange of alignment information through the full infrastructure lifecyle from planning through design and construction to asset management. On the geospatial side  InfraGML is the OGC's application schema supporting land development and civil engineering infrastructure facilities.

Open source support for AEC/geospatial interoperability

Where there are recognized open standards, there are more often then not open source projects supporting those standards.  mago3D is a new open source 3D geo-platform.  It is open source and integrates many well-known open source geospatial products and APis.  The importance of this technology is that it shows that it is possible using the available open source, geospatial APis and tools - together with some genuine innovative development - to create an open, non-proprietary 3D geospatial platform for integrating geospatial and BIM. Given the critical importance of addressing the cultural and technical divide between the AEC and geospatial worlds, a viable open source alternative is essential for developing the innovative solutions to the challenge of interfacing the two worlds. 

Bentley has announced that it intends to build its products supporting digital twins around an open source project already on Github called iModel.js.  Bentley is committing its resources to developing an ecosystem around iModel.js. To quote Keith Bentley this is a huge change in direction for Bentley although Bentley had puts its toes in the open source water previously.  Bentley used open source geospatial components to develop a new front-end for its leading road and rail asset management system AssetWise Lifecycle Information Management solution (ALIM).  Bentley has also partnered with AGI to support the open source Cesium project.

Conclusion

As owners see the advantages of design, build, operate and/or maintain projects and are beginning to changing their procurement practices, construction companies are changing their  business processes to optimize facility maintenance and operation.  Construction companies that have taken on the challenge of design, build, operate and maintain projects are realizing that there are significant benefits from an integrated BIM+geospatial approach to full lifecycle construction.   The advantages of an integrated BIM+geospatial approach have remained for the most part company internal.  Now it appears that the word is getting out.  Standards organizations in both the AEC and geospatial worlds are making progress on BIM+geospatial interoperability.  Major software vendors Autodesk and ESRI have announced an agreement to partner for greater interoperability between their products.  The open source community is also addressing the issue of BIM+geospatial interoperability. We are now beginning to see data from real world projects that offer quantitative evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

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.

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. 

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.

ESRI and Autodesk partnership for BIM and geospatial interoperability: one year later

The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.

ESRI and Autodesk partnership

In the mid-1990s Autodesk and ESRI, market leaders in their respective areas of CAD and GIS, attempted to collaborate to address the CAD and GIS interoperability problem. The result of the agreement between Jack Dangermond and Carol Bartz at the time resulted in an unsuccessful product called ArcCAD, which satisfied neither CAD nor GIS users.

A year ago Autodesk and ESRI, again agreed to collaborate. Expected benefits cited by Autodesk and ESRI from BIM and GIS interoperability include "unprecedented reductions in permitting through improved stakeholder engagement, more sustainable and resilient design through enhanced project insight, reduced risk via improved end-to-end flow of materials, resource availability and scheduling during construction," and "providing industry and city planners the ability to design in the context of the real world enabling communities to build connected, resilient, sustainable cities and infrastructure." This time around they are probably more aware of the technical and cultural issues hindering AEC and geospatial interoperability.

Integrating BIM and CAD with GIS

Revit is Autodesk's market-leading BIM application that is utilized by designers for vertical BIM (buildings), although there are landscape architects that have managed to use it as well. Revit models include spatial data and related non-spatial information.  With the release of ArcGIS Pro 2.2 in June 2018 direct reading of Revit BIM (.RVT) files is now supported. In the past Revit models had to be imported through conversion to IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) files and then go through a second conversion to a geodatabase.  ArcGIS Pro 2.2 makes it possible to open a Revit BIM model directly. Tools are provided for correctly georeferencing BIM models in ArcGIS. Revit data added to ArcGIS behaves like any other 3D GIS data and can be queried, measured and analyzed.

ESRI has provided for some time a product for AutoCAD users who want to work with ArcGIS data in a familiar context. It allows CAD users to edit GIS data, navigate drawings using location, imtegrate with GIS, and turn CAD data into GIS data. Shortly after the partnership announcement, an incremental release of ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370 was announced with support for the latest versions of AutoCAD. ESRI product management also promised that the future of ArcGIS for AutoCAD would continue with improved integration with ArcGIS Online/Portal. ArcGIS Pro 2.2 provides updated support for reading and exporting AutoCAD version 2018 and 2019 format files. Furthermore ESRI product management said that other CAD/BIM/AEC applications were being considered for future development using a similar integration pattern as ArcGIS for AutoCAD.

Integrating GIS with civil workflows

InfraWorks is Autodesk's application that allows civil engineers to perform conceptual design for roads and highways in context. InfraWorks 19.2, released in September 2018, now supports the Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS. Designers and engineers can bring GIS content from ArcGIS Online into InfraWorks allowing content such as roads, pipelines, and electrical transformers to be directly imported. The link is dynamic making it possible to build an InfraWorks model directly from GIS data published into ArcGIS Online. When the GIS data is updated, the InfraWorks model can be updated and refreshed. With the release of Autodesk Civil 3D 2019 InfraWorks models can be brought into Civil 3D, Autodesk's civil design product. Together these enhancements enable workflows from ArcGIS through InfraWorks to Civil 3D.

Integrating civil and geospatial workflows with BIM

A major challenge is interoperability between Autodesk's own products. A first step for integrating geospatial workflows into Revit is for site preparation. Autodesk offers a Site Designer for Revit plug-in that is intended to enable architects, designers, and planners to shape the terrain for building sites using grading tools to model pads, parking lots, streets, sidewalks, and retaining walls. But the integration between Autodesk's BIM and civil engineering products still inhibits site preparation workflows. Civil 3D was developed on the AutoCAD platform. Revit, which was acquired from Charles River Software in 2002, was built on different data structures. As a recent post from a landscape architecture site pointed out there remains a "gaping hole ... between Civil 3D and Revit".

Improving interoperability between the two products has now become a priority for Autodesk product management. According to the latest Autodesk roadmap associated with the Revit 2019 release, Autodesk is investing in improving how civil engineers and architects can collaborate better on the site design process. The very good news is that according to the Revit product management roadmap, collaboration with Civil 3D and Revit is now an "Accepted Revit Idea", which confirms that Revit/Civil 3D interoperability has become a development priority. Furthermore new features in Civil 3D 2019 includes enhanced structural and civil design collaboration for Civil 3D with Revit..

In conclusion the new relationship between Autodesk and ESRI is being translated into concrete actions to improve the interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.  There is a considerable distance to go yet, but there are grounds for optimism that there is a commitment to BIM and geospatial interoperability so that in the future workflows that involve both AEC and geospatial data and software will be able to surmount the CAD+GIS barriers that have represented major inefficiencies for the construction, utility and other sectors for decades.

Rapid and safe 3D reality capture of underground utilities reduces risk for construction projects

As a follow-up to an exciting presentation at the SPAR3D / AEC NEXT 2018 event in Anaheim I had the opportunity for a very enlightening conversation with Michael Twohig of DGT Associates which I would like to share.

GZ: In your talk in Anaheim, you and Brent Gelhar of Siteco Informatica described a successful proof of concept in which a towed rig with mobile laser scanners and ground penetrating radar (GPR) arrays collected data simultaneously above and below ground at roadway speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour.  Being able to collect data about underground infrastructure at roadway speeds is a major breakthrough in underground detection. It is much safer because it avoids boots on the pavement and it is more efficient compared to the typical GPR pushcart systems or handheld electromagnetic (EMI) pipe locator wands. Can you tell me about the rig used for data collection and the post-processing ?  How did you combine the above surface LiDAR scans with the GPR scans ?

MAT: The traditional approach for utility detection with a GPR pushcart system of data acquisition requires a trained utility survey technician working on the pavement with an complimentary EMI wand. This traditional service of utility investigation is most often performed on foot and working in a line of grid pattern to trace and mark underground facilities. The utility locator performs an on-site interpretation in the field and the results are frequently painted on the road or street surface with little or no post-processing. Recent advancements with cloud-based systems, such as Geolantis.360, have started to change the age-old work flow and with some GPR and EMI systems the meta-data from a hand-held device can be uploaded live to the office for QA/QC and documentation of work performed on-site. This work while very reliable is not only slow, but also very dangerous when working in, or close to, busy travel lanes. Paradoxically, the more functionality in hand-held devices have added to this equipment being more dangerous as it becomes more complex, because it demands more attention from the operator who also has to lookout for traffic. In most case in the US a utility locator provides locate work in travel lanes and road shoulders without the benefit of police details, traffic flag persons of traffic control measures.

To make the data acquisition process more cost-efficient and safer, we partnered with Sensors and Software, who provided the GPR arrays and the trailer configuration, and Siteco who provided the Faro mobile LiDAR scanners. Siteco had developed software for their highway surveying business in northern Italy a decade earlier that allowed the data collected by a mobile laser scanner to be combined with the output from a pavement scanner. The combined data made it possible to identify drains, hydrants, and other street furniture and relate them to the pavement scans. In our proof of concept in Mississauga, we used a GPR arrays from Sensors and Software with two different radar frequencies, 1000 and 250 Mhz, to collect data down to about two meters. The Siteco software allowed us to combine this data with the above ground LiDAR scans and digital as-builts to create 3D maps of underground utilities. The post processing of the above ground survey was done using Siteco’s software package and the surface investigation data is post processed using Sensors and Software Ekko_Project software program.

GZ: Is the post-processing still pretty much a manual process?

MAT: Yes, it is, but being able to visualize the below grounds GPR scans side by side with the LiDAR imagery and any as-built information in the office really helps speed up the process.

GZ: Does the data collection using the Siteco rig and post-processing require trained specialists?

MAT: An advantage of our approach is that the data collection doesn't require a specialist. Anybody can learn the data acquisition process and calibration with a little training. The post-processing does require a specialist and although a geophysical degree and a background is desirable it is not mandatory. Interpreting GPR scans is as much an art as a science. At DGT all of our staff in the underground detection group are surveyors or engineers and have experience interpreting GPR scans.  If you are just starting out we recommend involving someone like Daniel Bigman to assist with training and developing the necessary geophysical skill sets.

GZ: Who do you see as the market for this technology?

MAT: Anyone who needs to do design, utility locating, GIS inventories of excavation, especially, street or highway excavation projects. If a scan using our equipment is done prior to highway design, it provides information about above and below ground infrastructure over long distances and a relatively short period of time. The benefit is that little of no surveys will be required to work in travel lanes. The designer can then do preliminary design and make informed decisions in the early design phase of a project. Combining accurate above ground topography with that of utilities, above and below ground, will enhance project success and safety by avoiding the risks of unnecessary utility relocations, having to engage with underground asset owners that may need long lead times for relocations and mitigating hitting unknown utilities during construction. Unknown or inaccurately located underground utilities are a major source of project delays, so this removes an important source of major project risk. A recent example of what can happen when unknown utilities are encountered during construction is the 405 Freeway widening project in Los Angeles where workers had to remove nine miles of unexpected utility lines which contributed to delaying the project a year behind schedule and resulted in a $400 million lawsuit. We are seeing a lot of interest from highway engineering firms and contractors in this technology. We also foresee that state Departments of Transportation (DoTs) and municipal roads departments, energy companies and light rail designers will become interested as well, because this data is extremely valuable for a number of applications. For example, comparing scans of the same stretch of highway or road at different times can be used to detect subsidence which may be evidence of a potential sink holes and cave-ins.

GZ: If someone wants to take advantage of this technology what options would they have ?

MAT: One option is to buy or lease the system from Siteco and Sensors and Software. Brent Gelhar of Siteco would be able to design a system that best meets a customer needs. There will be some unique design elements required of a mobile mapping systems that would be based around the customers level of accuracy, level of detail and standard of care requirements. In this case a system can be designed and built to meet the customers needs and geographic requirements and the required training for staff would be tailored to the system. The primary software would be Siteco's software and Sensors and Software's Ekko_Project. GIS and CAD skills will also be required. Training is provided by Sensors and Software for the radar data and Siteco for the mobile Lidar data and GIS and CAD exports. Alternatively, DGT can be contracted to do the work. DGT delivers 2D and 3D CAD files of the underground infrastructure.

GZ: How large is the underground utility detection business in the U.S. ?

MAT: We estimate that it is about a $10 billion a year market. There are firms out there with annual revenues in excess of a billion dollars who have thousands of underground utility locators in the field every day.

GZ: Are you seeing more people eyeing investment in underground utility detection and mapping ?

MAT: Yes, we are seeing investor interest increasing. At DGT we have frequently been contacted by potential investors, but in the last year this has increased by 200 %.

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.

Bringing the games immersive experience to BIM and the AEC industry

The games industry is ahead of everyone in creating a 2D or 3D interactive experience with high fidelity graphics deployable on desktops, laptops, or mobile phones. Unity and Unreal engines are the leaders in providing a game development platform. Over the years there have been various efforts to bring games engines to the AEC world, but this involves programming and is beyond the technical reach of most AEC firms. At SPAR3D/AEC NEXT 2018 in Anaheim in Anaheim, Sanjay Mistry of VIMaec, described how Revit BIM models can be dropped into VIMaec's application to create an easily navigable, immersive mixed reality  3D model that contains all of the BIM data from the Revit file supplemented with building product data, all of the technical data necessary for architects, engineers, and builders to renovate or build structures.

VIMaec has identified why it has taken the average AEC firm so long to begin to use the Unity engine and built an application that can ingest everything in a Revit model into Unity in 15 to 20 minutes. The application, which supports a variety of virtual reality (VR) tools, allows people to collaborate in an immersive graphical environment. By working with architects and designers, the VIMaec developers created a solution that transforms Revit models to a 3D virtual reality model using the Unity game engine to create a Virtual Information Model (VIM) of a proposed design that lets users move around a proposed space as a virtual reality environment.

VIMaec has partnered with the renovation television show Office Spaces (same producers as the Emmy-winning show Designing Spaces). This TV program follows a company renovating its office spaces using the latest tools and technology. VIMaec software is used to provide the immersive experience of different renovation designs allowing viewers to walk through a building that does not yet exist.

Top construction company AECOM applies BIM + geospatial for full lifecycle projects

AECOM is a US$18.2 billion a year firm in the construction sector.  It designs and builds infrastructure around the world for public- and private-sector clients including transportation, facilities, environmental, energy, oil and gas, water, high-rise buildings and government.  For eight years running it has been ranked #1 in Engineering News Record‘s “Top 500 Design Firms”.  I was very happily surprised at Geospatial World Forum 2018 to hear John Kizior, Global Director, Project Technologies describe how AECOM uses BIM + GIS on design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) projects around the world.

A number of years ago, in a paper presented at a conference organised by Britain’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Ann Kemp, then head of GIS at Atkins Global, a design and engineering firm, asked the question ‘BIM isn’t geospatial -- or is it?’ and then argued that integration of geospatial and BIM was essential to address the challenges of the 21st century construction industry.  Kemp wasn’t the first one to speak about this. The need to integrate geospatial and BIM has been gaining traction for some time now and government mandated energy efficiency for buildings is a major driver of BIM/geospatial convergence.  A few firms such as Parsons Brinckerhoff, Atkins Global, and several Dutch firms including Arcadis and Royal BAM, in the construction sector have realized that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance.  A leader in this space, Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch highway authority, began offering design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects a number of years ago which has motivated private Dutch engineering and construction companies to adopt an integrated geospatial + BIM approach for construction projects.  For example, the firm Royal BAM Group nv/BAM Infraconsult adopted integrated BIM + geospatial because of market developments including more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.  As further evidence that the importance of integrating BIM and GIS is gaining recognition on the construction sector, Autodesk and ESRI, 800 lb gorillas in their respective areas of BIM and GIS, have announced an agreement to collaborate to help bridge the gap between BIM and 3D GIS.

At Geospatial World Forum in Hyderabad, John Kizior described several projects where AECOM realized the value of integrated BIM + GIS.   John emphasized that the concept of using BIM and GIS together is not new, but one of the reasons it has been slow to be adopted in the construction industry is that it "requires a lot of effort" (John's words).  With the recent focus on geospatial and BIM at AECOM, the discussion has shifted from CAD/BIM alone to include geospatial and its capabilities specifically for design, build finance and operate (DBFO) projects.   This mirrors the Dutch experience with design, build, finance and maintain (DBFM) projects encouraged by the Dutch highway authority.  AECOM has found that by adding real world coordinates they increase the value and types of data for all stakeholders across the entire lifecycle.  Integrated geospatial + BIM connects data types together. BIM holds the utility content and GIS is a visual platform for maintenance linked to a maintenance workflow.  AECOM has applied this approach to the external campus of Denver International Airport, and to lease management at Orlando, Hong Kong, and South West Florida international airports.  For the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) in Hong Kong AECOM developed and maintains a central repository with district-wide data from various sources including all operational data - architectural planning and engineering- for the district.  The advantage of an integrated BIM+GIS approach based on a centralized integration of information is that it allows the client to make strategic decisions during the design, build and operate phases of the construction lifecycle.