- Location & Date: Italy, ongoing.
- Description: High Speed railway Verona – Vicenza – Padua.
- Project components: Final and detailed design in BIM.
- Client: Consortium IRICAV 2.
We developed a pilot project that can be defined, to all effects, as “innovative”: BIM was
applied to a linear infrastructural work that contains both physical features (railway
works) and advanced technological features (High Speed Railway system).
This experimental in-depth study carried out on a 2-kilometer segment on the HS/HC
Verona-Vicenza-Padua section (from km 725+10 to km 725+12), is symbolic for the
amount of relevant data that was collected, combined, and digitally linked to the
models of the different disciplines that define the infrastructure.
- 2 km of railway design
- 840m of road design
- 2 rail viaducts 422m and 25m long respectively
- 1 road bridge 25m long
- 1 underpass
- retaining walls
- 9 hydraulic culverts
- Platform drainage
- service tracks, fences and delimiters
- 443m of noise barriers
- soil and geological characterization
The entire design process began with the planning of the pGI and the development, in
specific platforms, of three-dimensional models representing the work as a whole. Crucially,
it was possible to combine the models from different disciplines, analyse critical issues and
solve possible problems with the realizability of the work already at the design stage. In
addition, the entire process of exchanging and sharing project data was managed in a
structured manner within a Data Sharing Environment, which was appropriately
implemented.
Therefore, the design model became a “drawing” that was no longer static, but a dynamic and
effective reference for the entire life cycle of the work, from design to construction to
maintenance and management for possible reuse.
By focusing attention on the activities and processes implemented during this experimentation
pathway, it can be made clear what were the basic building blocks behind the efficiency and
operational capabilities gained:
• The clearly planned training.
The company, in order to continue to experience the impact of BIM in business processes and to
make the new design methodologies an increasingly real and effective working tool, planned
training aimed at implementing knowledge on innovative software, considered indispensable, but
above all to create new reference figures
capable of managing the new processes;
The use of modelling methodologies innovative
parametric (computational design).
A linear infrastructure develops in space with more
complex rules than a building. In a building the position
of objects can be easily identified, while in a linear
infrastructure we have a continuous variation of fixed
points along the line.
Thanks to a team of young, trained and motivated engineers,
the company managed to solve the limitations of individual
modelling software, succeeding in defining and correlating the
position of construction parts to the railway layout and terrain
morphology through advanced parametric modelling techniques.
By modifying these parameters, different design solutions can be easily generated. All
this therefore means decreased design time, optimizing repetitive and very difficult
operations.
• Coordination of information models through interference checking.
Compared with a traditional design, this type of control makes it possible to
drastically decrease variations, allowing for solving problems of constructability of
works upstream of the actual construction phase. In the BIM logic of building
twice, first the virtual model, then the actual construction, all this means placing
a new focus on the planning and scheduling of design activities;
• Procedures for conducting and monitoring initial data exchange tests.
For a BIM-oriented process to be viable, it is necessary to refer to an open and
neutral data exchange format: the IFC. The use of a wide range of software
prompted the group of engineers involved in the project, to conduct initial data exchange
tests to assess how much information was lost in terms of both attributes and geometric
correspondence, during the passage of graphical models, avoiding unwanted critical issues
during the design phase;
• Management of design processes occurred within the Data Sharing Environment (ACDat).
This collaborative environment, in addition to facilitating the management of processes and
workflows, was to all intents and purposes the final collection database for project information.
Within the objects constituting the models, a series of attributes were included that define not
only the technical characteristics of the parts of the work, but also a unique identification
structure developed following the subdivision of the project according to WBS.
These data were finalized to the project objectives put in place:
– achievement of a LOD D/E (final/executive design) level of information development;
– attributes were recalled within the graphics generated automatically by the models;
– the data inputs made the estimated metric calculation easy, quick and organized;
– the objects in the models were grouped according to specific attributes: the result was a
structuring of information about the work, which was functional for the Client’s validation of the model.
The experience produced some truly significant results, and it is safe to say that BIM has now become an
irreversible requirement for those designing complex systems.
