Imagine working on an enterprise engineering project with multi-disciplinary teams based in Scotland, London and India and never once being required to visit the site you are working on thanks to digital twins, reality meshes and BIM modelling. The sustainability, cost and logistical benefits seem obvious, but how does this work in practice? At Bentley’s […]
Imagine working on an enterprise engineering project with multi-disciplinary teams based in Scotland, London and India and never once being required to visit the site you are working on thanks to digital twins, reality meshes and BIM modelling.
The sustainability, cost and logistical benefits seem obvious, but how does this work in practice?
At Bentley’s 2023 Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards in Singapore TechInformed spoke to two of the finalists from design and engineering firm Arcadis in the Enterprise Engineering category.
Chris Conroy, digital and information management lead for Arcadis Railway Business in Scotland and Santosh Kumar Chitti, an Arcadis principal engineer both saw an opportunity take a digital approach to the design and planning work for improvements at Carstairs Junction in Scotland.
The Rail Systems Alliance Scotland is a group comprising of Network Rail and contractors Babcock and Arcadis which, in 2019, won a 10-year track and rail system framework contract to deliver track renewals and enhancements in Scotland.
As part of this work, Arcadis was charged with designing the electrification system to increase junction speeds from 40 to 110 miles per hour, providing capacity for high-speed services to Edinburgh and Glasgow, while reducing carbon emissions by 20% to 30%.
With ten different disciplines involved in the design, Arcadis saw that workflows for the review and clash detection process would not meet the project challenges, so it decided to create a digital twin to co-ordinate the designs.
While Network Rail specified the use of Bentley System’s multidisciplinary design software ProjectWise for collaboration, Arcadis decided to use the US vendor’s iTwin platform to speed up the decision-making process.
Using Bentley several applications, Arcadis developed a 3D federated model, facilitating coordinated modeling and web-based virtual design reviews.
Digital twin of Carstairs rail junction
“We primarily used iTwin to lead the conversation with the client, who wouldn’t normally have access to the BIM model, so we used the iTwin to make the models accessible,” Conroy explained.
Conroy added that this set up made it much easier to collaborate with the eight design houses involved in the Carstairs project, which were situated in cities across the world in different time zones, including some of Arcadis’s own personnel in India.
This method improved data exchange by 80%, according to Arcadis, while the team identified and resolved 15,000 clashes during the design phase and reduced design time by 35%.
Conroy also claims that the use of a digital twin cuts down on the number site visits: although he is based in Scotland and shares an office with the contractors, he claims he only visited the site once, “and that was because I was giving a presentation at a local primary school, so I decided to visit the station and take photos while I was there”
Chris Conroy and Santosh Kumar Chitti, Arcadis
Likewise, Chitti has only paid one visit to Carstairs, for a construction check, “and only because I happened to be visiting the UK,” he says.
“If it’s a greenfield site it doesn’t help to visit it at all; if it’s a brownfield site then 80% of the site knowledge we can get from digital files and topographical survey,” he adds.
According to Conroy, using reality mesh and photogrammetry has transformed the way the industry now interacts with digital models.
“There are things in the reality mesh model that might not be picked up in an on-site survey of what you might find in UK along railway lines, such as pieces of equipment that construction teams discard. Photogrammetry picks that up,” he explains.
Conroy maintains that the digital twin application also enabled the project design to continue during Covid despite lockdowns.
Some of the digital models created with other Bentley tools included a scan from within the driver’s cab that were also used to help familiarise drivers with the new train layout and to test whether they could read signs and signals while travelling at the new train speeds.
Arcadis calculated that going digital saved £50 million in costs with project delivery 14 days ahead of schedule.
Twin transformation
According to Conroy, persuading some stakeholders of the benefits of digital collaboration on Carstairs was initially a challenge.
He recalls: “When I started work with the alliance one of the lead contractors said to me “great that you can do all that digital stuff Chris, but if we can’t fix it with a hammer and a saw then we’re not interested.”
However, over a five-year period, the digital lead resolved to change their minds.
“We’ve been slowly chipping away, and the person who initially resisted, who I share an office with, has become one of the biggest advocates for using the iTwin,” he says.
“He could see the value of the spatially coordinated models and how it resolved issues that would have cost time and effort to address during the construction,” he adds.
Arcadis’ competitors also recognised the benefits: after hearing about the Carstairs project, rival design and construction firm Atkins approached the company to help adopt the technology to work on another major infrastructure project, the £116m Levenmouth Rail Link.
“Our knowledge was recognised by a competitor who then came to us for help to adopt this technology, but I don’t see iTwin as a tool that gives you a competitive advantage – it’s a tool that helps you work in collaboration with other companies because if we all collaborate, we can all help Network Rail really move forward with this,” says Conroy.
Ownership
But is Network Rail moving forward? A recurring theme that came up during the Bentley event in Singapore was that of digital ownership: When many digital stakeholders are involved, who owns the digital twin and who is responsible for its upkeep once the project has finished?
According to Arcadis, in this instance, Network Rail owns all the assets created, but, as Conroy acknowledges, right now there are few people who know what to do with them.
Arcadis is creating the data that it thinks Network Rail wants because the client is unable at this stage to tell the contractors what they need. It’s something that’s going to require more collaboration and education moving forward, Conroy admits.
“We are working very closely with Network Rail’s digital information team in Scotland and this summer they had their first conference on digital and information management.
“Lots of us came together from across the supply chain Acon, Atkins, WSP – we were all in the room challenging what Network Rail needs to do. The client wants to do this four times a year and give feedback on the changes it makes in the supply chain.
Some digital transformation projects involve taking incremental steps and choosing smaller projects to trial new technologies, but with bigger firms and larger infrastructure projects, this approach is harder to take, and there’s nowhere to hide if things go wrong.
Clearly, Carstairs was the right project start digital twin implementation, but what advice does Conroy have for other design firms thinking of taking the plunge?
“I would say crack on and use the tools in every project you can. Get yourself familiar with them and learn. One thing we have talked about Arcadis over the last four to five years is try something new, if it doesn’t work then move on and try something else. Fail fast and try something different.”
