Civil engineering is a fundamentally conservative industry—at least, it used to be. Increasingly, engineering firms are using technology in innovative ways to reinvent their internal processes and change the way they approach large-scale infrastructure projects.
Take a look at a few projects that are redefining what infrastructure can be and how it can be made better, smarter, with less impact on the communities and the world we live in.
Creating a 3D Model of the Eiffel Tower Grand Site
Every year 7 million people climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but the view from the top doesn’t quite live up to the grandeur of the iconic monument itself, at least not yet. As the City of Paris prepares to restore and improve the 2.4 square kilometers around the Eiffel Tower, they’re working with Autodesk to use advanced technologies like Building Information Modeling (BIM) for the redesign and construction of the site. The first step? A massive reality capture project using LIDAR and aerial photography.
Incorporating 10.3 billion points of point-cloud data, the 3D model of the Eiffel Tower grand site is one of the largest and most detailed ever created for an urban area. It includes 8,200 trees, 1,000 buildings, 3 bridges, 25 statues, and hundreds of lighting fixtures, park fixtures, and benches. The model will help the 4 teams selected to compete for the grand site restoration visualize and analyze their proposed designs. It will also enable the jury panel to better evaluate the proposals during final judging. Construction of the winning project is set to begin in 2021 and will be completed in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Learn more.
Norway’s Ulriken Tunnel—VR for Design Review and Validation
The train line between Oslo and Bergen, Norway’s 2 biggest cities, passes through the massive Mount Ulriken. It’s a vital economic artery for Norway, but also a major bottleneck. To improve travel and the flow of goods, the national rail authority is working with Norconsult to build a second tunnel parallel to the first.
Getting regulatory approval can present a significant obstacle in projects like this. To streamline the process, Norconsult created an interactive virtual reality (VR) experience of the railway and its signaling system.
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Because the project already uses BIM, the elements needed to build a VR experience were already on hand. These BIM models, created using Autodesk AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and Revit, were animated with 3ds Max. The interactive VR experience allowed operators to virtually drive through a simulation and test signals, preventing costly errors. It also helped stakeholders better visualize the project plans and cut years off the normal approval cycle for rail projects of this size and scope. Learn more.
BIM from the Beginning—India's Kempegowda International Airport
With air travel in India growing 15% annually, the aviation market there is expected to become the world’s third largest by 2025. To help meet this increasing demand, the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), operator of the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, is building a better airport, and using BIM 360 software to manage the entire project lifecycle, from design, fabrication, and construction to operations and maintenance. It’s the first such project using BIM from start to finish in India.
Keeping data at the center of the process will enable informed decision-making throughout the project lifecycle and connect people, data, and workflows. Eventually, the airport will serve 70 million passengers every year. According to Sunil MK, head of AEC at Autodesk, India & SAARC, “BIM in infrastructure projects [leads] to better construction efficiency, lower cost, and less negative impact on the environment. It is the right time for India to adopt this industry best practice to realize the country’s vision in infrastructure development.” Learn more.
Change is never easy, especially within a conservative industry. But as these projects show, new digital tools for design and construction can act as change agents, helping companies evolve their internal processes and find news ways to do more, better, with less.