Infrastructure development is in a state of transition. Though everyone involved faces new pressures to deliver and innovative new technologies hold great promise, not all of the traditional ways of doing work are stuck in the past, said Kaushik Chakraborty, senior vice president and regional executive, APAC at Bentley, who's leading the charge to better make traditional methods more efficient.

“Today, we’re at a state in the infrastructure sector where we’re neither in the old ways, nor are we fully in the 3D digital era,” he explained. “We’re somewhere in between.”

Tried-and-true methods of project delivery still hold great value, and some areas aren’t quite ready for full disruption. But at the same time, these methods are colliding with higher expectations and pressures to deliver sustainable infrastructure quickly. Fortunately, there are ways to give older methods a boost without having to suddenly abandon them and take a leap into the unknown.

 

Challenges with Tradition

Today, traditional methods of project delivery face three main challenges. The first is the inefficiencies of paper-based workflows. Having to babysit a printer is bad enough, but 2D-first approaches tend to create data silos between teams in every step of the process.

“Silos lead to clashes and lack of coordination between design firms, construction contractors, and, of course, the owners and funding agencies,” said Chakraborty.

Far too often, design firms that now design projects in 3D still keep them to themselves and only supply 2D drawings when the project moves to construction and handover. As a result, much of the incorporated data, insight, and design intent can be lost in the transition. Design doesn’t have to be the only development phase that benefits from 3D models.

The second challenge comes from a lack of awareness about site-based risks. In the past, designers frequently did not examine potential issues with the development site. Suddenly, a design that worked well on paper can’t hold up if construction crews discover the subsurface conditions are not strong enough to support it. Without the full knowledge of geotechnical and environmental challenges, a project’s design might need to be revised after construction begins, resulting in significant delays and construction overruns.

Finally, there’s the challenges relating to a lack of a shared data platform. Individually, designers, construction teams, and operators can undertake top-quality work. But without clear communication, they might not become aware of critical changes and issues that can affect teams down the road.

“When they work separately, it becomes very difficult to coordinate decisions, resolve issues on time, and correct clashes during construction,” explained Chakraborty.

Though the infrastructure sector has relied on 2D design for many decades and continues to rely on that methodology, it lacks connectivity. In this era of tighter deadlines, shrinking budgets, growing pressure for sustainability, and increasing workloads, infrastructure development organizations can no longer afford to keep each step of the process separate from one another.

 

Linking Every Contributing Team

The answer is to keep the entire lifecycle of the project in mind from the very beginning of design. With the right technology, 3D models can become useful well beyond the design phase. They can be used to create detailed construction animations to better plan each step of the build. They can be seeded with detailed technical information to help them inform operations and maintenance. Projects can be upleveled even further by using them to build a digital twin, establishing a digital replica of the state of the project site, the assets to be built, or even the current health of each element as it ages. This insight can be combined with existing workflows, preventing upheavals and easing the transition.

The key is to use open technology and connected data so that models and information can be easily passed from application to application, rather than having to adapt the information into a new format for each step. Not only can open technology break down silos and improve communication, it can also eliminate the errors that spring up when material is shifted into different formats. When the design and construction teams connect on the same digital models, they can more easily detect clashes before breaking ground, saving significant time and costs.

Furthermore, providing intuitive 3D models and animated flythroughs in addition to static documentation can improve public transparency, Chakraborty explained.

“Public consultation has become very common nowadays,” he said. “Interactive digital twins help with that, as they let the residents of the area better understand the asset that will be built there. It helps with buy-in.”

 

Coordinating Development of a Nation's Water

A prime example of how digital models can help with project development is the state-of-the-art Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (WRP) in Singapore. Singapore’s national water agency, PUB, is building a second phase of the plant that will extend to the western and southern parts of Singapore and diversify the nation’s water portfolio, creating sustainable used water management for the country’s future.

Designed to maximize water recovery and reduce energy consumption, the Tuas WRP will be the world’s largest membrane bioreactor facility when completed, treating 800,000 cubic meters of used water per day. But such advanced technologies posed significant development challenges, including how to visualize the unprecedented work and manage massive amounts of data transfer between 16 different contract packages.

Their solution was to leverage the Bentley iTwin platform to create a digital twin of the project at the very start of development, Chakraborty said.

“Everyone is working off one model, which will persist through the lifecycle of the project,” he commented.

Connecting all teams and establishing a clear vision of the project has already brought significant benefits. The time to contract out to construction and the tendering process were both reduced by 50%. The time needed for drawing production fell by 70%. As a result, the digital twin has reduced the forecasted capital expenditure by over 5%. All while contributing teams continue to rely on their existing ways of work.

 

Combining the Past and Future

Beyond digital twins and connected workflows, software developers and project managers continue to find new ways to use technology to connect teams early and save time. Artificial intelligence is an especially promising area. Generative AI can already automatically place elements in 3D models as needed. AI also has the potential to automate the still-necessary production of 2D drawings, which can take roughly one-third of project development time.

“If we can cut that time down and make it more efficient, it saves a lot of manual labor,” Chakraborty explained. “The engineers can take on more exciting work and not have to be stuck on mundane tasks.”

The adoption of new technology can be daunting. No one wants to abandon what they know and spend time learning new systems that might not provide what’s needed. But connecting existing workflows can bring the best of both worlds—proven ways of work blended with improved insight and greater connections to the rest of the project teams.

 

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Author Bio

Senior Vice President, Regional Executive, APAC Kaushik Chakraborty has more than 28 years of experience holding senior management positions in international sales and business development across multiple industries including government, defense and emergency services, utilities, transportation, and geospatial. He joined Bentley in 2015 and is focused on growing Bentleyʼs breadth of engineering and geospatial solutions to accelerate project delivery and improve asset performance for the infrastructure that sustains our economy and our environment. Prior to joining Bentley, Kaushik was Vice President at the Hexagon Group and served in leadership roles at both Intergraph and Leica Geosystems in the Asia Pacific and EMEA regions. Kaushik holds a Masterʼs degree in electrical engineering and has earned certificates in management and leadership.