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.

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.

A tale of BIM4D and two iconic buildings in the heart of London's financial district

At the Year in Infrastructure 2018 conference this morning, I heard a fascinating tale of two buildings in a talk by Tom Dengenis of SYNCHRO. which was recently acquired by Bentley. I had always wondered about an abandoned construction project in the middle of the City, London's financial district. Construction on the Pinnacle, at 22 Bishopsgate in the heart of the City and the now iconic Shard began about the same time in 2006. Both had significant demolition to do before commencing work, but the Shard had more. But what we heard this morning is that because the Shard construction team adopted an innovative approach to building the substructure called "top down bottom up", the construction team on the Shard managed to start on the superstructure six months ahead of the Pinnacle and to complete the project on schedule in July 2012. SYNCHRO provided the graphic simulation along with a real time based 4D BIM model for this project. In contrast construction on the Pinnacle was halted abruptly in 2007. The lesson here is that in today's competitive environment with project durations getting shorter and shorter, being innovative in design and build is essential, an approach that Bentley calls constructioneering.

After construction was abruptly halted on 22 Bishopsgate, the site remained deserted with a seven story core concrete structure which came to be known as the "Stump". In 2015 the superstructure of the Stump  demolished to be replaced by a classic American-style, big floorplate building which will be second highest building in Europe (after the Shard) but which will be the most uninteresting building from an architectural perspective in the City - the City is the site of several iconic buildings including the Cheesegrater, Walkie-talkie, Scalpel, and the Gherkin.

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.

Virtual reference networks workshop

Speaker lineup Virtual Reference Networks

Canadian Geodetic Survey Tools and Services for Accurate Positioning
Brian Donahue, Geodetic Survey Division, Natural Resources Canada

TopNET Live – GNSS Survey Grade Corrections Where and When You Want
Jonathon Ball, Infrastructure Businesses, Topcon Positioning Systems
Dilip Lal, Director Sales and Operations - Canada, Sokkia Corporation

CAN-NET - A GNSS Real Time VRS Corrections Service
Otto Jurgenson, M.Sc., Technical Support Specialist, Cansel

The RTK+ Network, by New-Net (TeraPro Group)
Paul-André Hénault, Coordinator, Precision Agriculture, New-Net
Aaron Appelblom, Territory Sales Manager, CNH Industrial

How Emerging Markets Are Refining Traditional GNSS Networks
Tyler Collier, SmartNet North America

The Current and Future Status of Precise Point Positioning (PPP)
Omid Kamali, Geodetic Survey Division, Natural Resources Canada

Virtual Reference Stations (VRS) and Coordinate Systems
James Ferguson, OLS, General Manager, Tulloch Mapping Solutions

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.

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.

New study reports growth in BIM usage in France, Germany, the UK and the US

In a new study The Business Value of BIM for Infrastructure 2017 released by Dodge Data & Analytics it was found that BIM implementation for transportation infrastructure projects has grown dramatically in the last two years.  Dodge surveyed engineers and contractors in France, Germany, the UK and the US. Three quarters of the respondents reported that they had used BIM on transportation projects. Dodge measured the change in BIM implementation by asking respondents what proportion of their transportation projects involved BIM. The chart shows how many of the respondents used BIM on 50% or more of their projects in 2015, are using BIM on 50% or more in 2017, and expect to use BIM on 50% in 2019.  It reveals a dramatic increase in BIM in the last two years.  The increase is expected to continue though at a slower rate.

Of those repondents who reported using BIM nearly 90% said that they had seen positive benefits from it. The top five benefits reported by over 50% of respondents are

• improved ability to show younger staff how projects go together
• offering services
• establishing consistent and repeatable project delivery processes
• maintaining business with past clients
• less time documenting and more time designing.

The top ways that BIM improved project processes are

• fewer errors which includes reduced conflicts/field coordination problems during construction and reduced errors and omissions
• greater cost predictability and better understanding of the project
• better multiparty communication and understanding from 3D visualization
• reduced costs
• reduced rework
• improved schedule performance
• design optimization.

Most respondents had not quantified the return on investment from using BIM but nearly two thirds reported their perception that they had got a positive ROI from their investment in BIM. About one quarter believe that the ROI from their investment in BIM is 25% or more.

One quarter of the survey respondents do not use BIM in any way for transportation infrastructure, but it is interesting that the survey revealed that their attitude toward BIM is generally positive - two thirds reported that they were open to BIM or were actively evaluating it.

3D model-based design is transforming construction in the Netherlands

At the GeoBIM Building and Infrastructure Conference in Amsterdam, Ingeborg Ligtenberg, Senior Project manager for Mega Projects, described how the Dutch highway authority Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) is piloting a very different approach to highway construction.  Rijkswaterstaat is responsible for the design, construction, management and maintenance of the main infrastructure facilities in the Netherlands including the national road network, waterway network and sluices. 

Background

By way of background, the highway plan-design-build process that has been used over at least the past 25 years, starts off with a complete (re)survey of the project terrain to create a basemap on which the design is based. Existing as-builts in the area are rarely if ever consulted.  The deliverables from the design process are paper drawings which are used by construction contractors to build the project.  After construction is complete construction as-builts are submitted to the owner, but these are not "sealed", meaning nobody signs off on them putting their professional reputation behind their accuracy and reliability.  Practically what this means is that in the transportation industry, as-builts are treated as unreliable information and are rarely consulted.

At SPAR 3D 2013 Ron Singh, Engineering Automation Manager/Chief of Surveys, Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) made a startling proposal that would stand the traditional highway construction process on its head. He proposed that the DoT should specify the data it needs and this data including BIM models and LIDAR scans would be collected by the DoT from the contractors during and after a highway construction project.  The data would be saved in a geospatially-enabled database maintained by the DoT.  One of the implications of this approach is that when a new project is initiated in the same area over 80 % of the necessary survey-grade information would already be available in the DoT's database, which would make the traditional complete resurvey unnecessary - saving time and money. 

As an example of how data reuse can save time and money, the Oregon DoT's first automated machine guidance (AMG) project was in 1997.   At that time in Oregon a few forward-looking contractors had invested in AMG technology foreseeing that it would save them money.  These forward-looking contractors were winning bids by lowering their estimates just enough to beat other contractors. They found that AMG technology did save a lot of money.  But the savings were going to the contractors, not to the DoT.  To redress this, starting in early 2015, the DoT began specifying on its bid web site that projects were "AMG ready" meaning that the DoT was making available provide all the data it had which could be download to see design BIM models, mobile LiDAR, overflight data, and so on.  The effect has been to drive bids down, because there is less risk for the contractor.  As a result the DoT is now sharing in the savings.

Rijkswaterstaat pilots

At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of highway construction transformation based on GIS+BIM integration including using laser scanning/LiDAR for reality capture at the beginning of a design/construction project. 

The Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) board is convinced of the benefits of BIM and BIM/geospatial integration and decided initially to roll out BIM on four design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects with the intention to require BIM on all DBFM-contracts in the future.

One of these projects is a highway expansion project for the highway connecting Schiphol-Amsterdam-Almere or SAA.  The objective of the SAA project was to improve the accessibility and quality of life within the SAA corridor. This includes the improvement of the natural and social environment and economic development and employment opportunities in the northern Randstad region.  A stretch of the highway is shown before and after the highway widening.

On many highway projects RWS had experienced information flow problems due to different formats and data models.  This not only necessitated major data conversion efforts, but also inhibited collaboration.  One of the goals of the SAA project was to improve information flow which was expected to also improve the flow of asset information for reuse during the maintenance phase of the highway.

A critical part of the RWS' new approach was the Information Delivery Specification (ILS). The ILS specified the general aspects of the required information including formats, standards, structure, and expected quality (timeliness and reliability) of the information.  The ILS was a contractual obligation that also required the contractor to accept new versions of standards on a yearly basis.  The standards that were adopted to ensure a uniform flow of structured information include VISI (an open communication standard for the construction industry based on XML), National Concept Type Library (CB-NL), Object Type Library (OTL), and COINS.

Today RWS is receiving a quarterly delivery of data from the contractor compliant with the ILS.  This is a remarkable achievement that required a lot of hard work during this first project.  But now that contractors are familiar with the standards and the ILS concept, it is expected that ensuring a uniform flow of information will be easier in future projects.  The next challenge is enabling this data to be used for asset management during the maintenance phase of the project.

Reusing data on future projects

 In response to a question, Ingeborg Ligtenberg said that this new approach was still in its initial phases but that the data would likely be made available to designers and contractors for future projects.  It would be made available on an "as is" basis, which sounds similar to how the Oregon DoT makes its data available on its bid site. 

As Ron Singh has pointed out, there is tremendous value in this data, but the value is only there if in the future engineers feel confident in using the data.  If very accurate and rich data were collected during and after construction including, critically, its lineage in the form of metadata about how and when it was captured, so that a future engineering user would have no reason not to trust its provenance and reliability, then there should be nothing to prevent the data from being reused in future projects - saving time and money.

Autonomous vehicles

One of the consumers of this digital highway information may be autonomous vehicles.  In-vehicle sensing is limited in its ability to enable safe and reliable driving under all conditions.  For example, on snowy roads, lane markings may not be visible. Such driving conditions will require the autonomous vehicle to be equipped with ultra-accurate maps to augment in-vehicle sensing systems.  Pre-loaded high-precision maps would enable autonomous vehicles to overcome many of these challenges – staying within lanes when wintry conditions obscure the lane markers. This will require sophisticated mapping systems and ultra-accurate and reliable DoT data to enable vehicles to navigate under challenging conditions.

Be Inspired Awards 2016: 3D design helps 1.8 GW hydro project generate power 10 months ahead of schedule

At the Year in Infrastructure 2016 conference in London, the Be Inspired Awards attracted over 300 submissions.  Many of these were impressive in how they applied digital technology to designing, constructing and maintaining buildings and infrastructure. The winner of this year's Power Generation sector award was a remarkable full-lifecycle BIM project for a hydropower projects in a remote part of Yunnan, China.

Longkaikou hydro-power station is located in Heqing County, Dali Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province.  The primary focus of the project is generating electricity, but it also supports irrigation, water supply and flood control. The dam is a concrete gravity dam.  There are five turbine-generator units with a total installed capacity a 1,800MW.  Construction began in 2007 and in 2012 the reservoir began to fill.  By January 2014, all power generation units were fully operational.

The Longkaikou hydropower station is the first hydropower station in China that fully employed 3D digital design technology from the start of the project. Design of the power plant began in 2005.  More than 20 different disciplines were involved including geology, hydraulic, plant, water diversion, construction, road & bridge, metal structure, hydro-machinery, electrical, HVAC, and drainage.

PowerChina Huadong Engineering Corporation  (Huadong Institute) was responsible for design of the project.  It was the first institute in China's hydropower industry who migrated from traditional 2D CAD design to 3D collaborative design.  The project employed digital model throughout the lifecycle.  The project survey, design, construction and operation are all digital.  This is considered a revolutionary technical innovation in the Chinese hydropower industry.

3D digital design greartly improved the efficiency of the design process by enabling collaborative design.  Clashes between designs from different design teams were greatly reduced and product quality was significantly improved.  For example, equipment clashes were reduced by 95%.  The amount of on-site design change was reduced by over 80%. In the design of some equipment systems and the preparation of drawings, design time reduced by more than 50%.

The efficiency of collaboration between disciplines was significantly improved.  Being able to view designs from different design teams in one unified model greatly reduces the time for review and signoff. In the past, it usually took more than one month to review and signoff a power plant's layout drawings.  With 3D modeling, collaboration between disciplines improved design efficiency by over 40%.

The digital design platform made it possible to assess alternative design scenarios in order optimize designs. It is estimated that optimization of the dam's foundation surface construction based on a 3D geological model saved about CNY 194 million in engineering costs. The dam's foundation's is unique and complex and required innovative engineering because there was no previous model to follow. Using a 3D model of the geology (digital terrain model) made it possible to design and compare alternative construction scenarios to optimize the design. As a result of design optimization, the project was completed about 10 months ahead of schedule, creating economic benefits of up to CNY 1.79 billion.

With the use of 3D digital design and geo-coordination, the Longkaikou Hydropower Station project not only enjoyed a shortened design cycle, improved project and service quality, and reduced construction costs, but also provided the basis for digital operation and maintenance of the facility by the owner. Geo-coordination, a term minted by Bentley, is key to integrating data from many different sources including reality modeling, 3D building models and associated information.  Bentley recognized the value of geo-coordination very early on. With all Bentley applications in the last 12 years every infrastructure asset has geo-coordination in the form of real world x y z coordinates. It is recognized as essential for full-lifecycle (design, build, maintain and operate) BIM.  In this project it was fundamental not only for integrating the dam and hydropower plant design and the digital terrain model, but also for making it possible to reuse the BIM model and associated data during operation and maintenance.

The design was praised by both the construction contractor and the owner.  It enhanced the core competitiveness and reputuation of the Huadong Institute, establishing a strong foundation for winning future hydropower projects.