New Utility Infrastructure Projects are Driving the Digital Transformation

Beichen East Road is located in North Tianjin New District, with the current Outer Ring Road to its west and Jinwei Highway to its east, spanning approximately 5.12 km. It is an important carrier and splendid card of the scenery in the region. Beichen East Road is planned as the main road of the city, with 50 m width of streets. Located in the green belt in south road, the utility tunnel needs to pass through the Irrigation Canal in the south of the lake. It includes feed water, reclaimed water, heat, electricity, communication and pipe network, which will be set up as a three-class structure involving electricity, water power and thermal power. In addition, a corresponding monitoring center for utility tunnel was also established.

BIM Application

i. Road Landscape Planning & Design

BIM Forward Design: Use the Revit Platform unanimously and adopt BIM forward design method in design, construction and operation & maintenance.

Collaborative Design Between Different Specialties: Designers add the elements of their own specialties on a uniform three-dimensional platform to make the design more visualized.

Collision Check & Space Optimization: During modeling a three-dimensional utility tunnel, designer discovered conflicts between pipe network, equipment and civil work. Therefore, we conducted a collision check on the pipe network to optimize its design during the comprehensive design of the pipe network.

Visualized Presentation: Carry out visualized presentation to contractors to illustrate the collaboration details in the coming construction stage.

ii. Utility Tunnel Construction

a. Pipeline Process Simulation

In the construction process, the project team conducted a three-dimensional modelling on important construction process including scaffold erection, pouring process and steel bar binding and presented it to site managers and operators to improve the construction quality of the project.

b. Pipeline Cross-River Process Simulation

The project team formulated a pipeline cross-river construction scheme with the BIM technology to solve the challenges and decrease the uncertainties of the pipeline in crossing the Irrigation Canal in the south of the lake.

c. Labor Management

Through construction site dashboard, site managers easily have an overview of the status of the on-site workers regarding different operation teams and different construction jobs (brick mason, roofer, concrete finisher, etc.). With this information, site managers can predict the labor use demand, and conduct human-resource plan in a convenient manner.

d. Real-Name Management

Real-name turnstile of facial recognition can record real-time information on the attendance of the workers, to provide true attendance basis for salary settlement and avoid labor dispute.

e. Material Tracking Management

Record the detailed production, transportation, warehousing and dispatch of rebar, concrete and other materials with Glodon BIM+ Smart Construction Site Platform. Meanwhile, log material specifications, approaching numbers, used parts and store requisition date to improve the efficiency of material management and control material loss reasonably.

f. Dust Environment Management

Monitor the environment of the on-site operation with dust monitoring equipment and analyze the data. If the dust on site exceeds the setting value, the intelligent water spray system will open automatically to keep down dust on the site.

g. Safety Management

Workers can report site safety and hazard source on BIM5D platform with their mobile. Various types of the project can be viewed on both the mobile terminal and the website so that the duties will be shouldered by responsible persons to realize rechecking and closure.

h. Progress Management

Managers on site can monitor the implementation of the weekly plan, monthly plan, quarterly plan and the overall plan of all sections. They also provide feedback on the implementation status via their mobile phone and then report it to Glodon BIM5D platform. Besides, they can adjust resources plan such as labor, materials and machinery according to the current situation to guarantee the construction progress on-time.

iii. Operation & Maintenance

In the operation & maintenance stage, the building information model is processed in a formatted and lightweight way. By establishing an unified GIS+BIM Smart Pipeline Management Platform, the project team has improved its performance in operation & maintenance. It has also achieved big data decision-making and intelligent operation & maintenance while facilitating the establishment of a smart city.

Key Insight

This project has made progress on new infrastructure projects’ BIM application approach throughout the entire life-cycle. Such new infrastructure construction with informatization at its core will drive the digital transformation and upgrading of traditional AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) sectors and equipment renovation, and inject new impetus to the economy.