Transforming Infrastructure O&M with Laser Scan, Modeling, Autodesk Platform Services, and IoT

GUILHERME BORGES: Hello, everyone. I'm here today to talk a little bit about how Concremat are transforming our infrastructure and operation maintenance sector using technologies like laser scan and some applications, Autodesk applications, as hedge APS and also IoT sensors. So I'm here today with my three colleagues.

My name is Guillaume. I'm a civil engineer, and I'm here with Leonardo and Lucas. They are architects, and we are part of Concremat BIM team. And we are focusing on s the entire life cycle of infrastructure assets-- so, starting with the project, construction, and operation maintenance.

And our agenda today will be structured in three topics. We start with a quick explain about concrete Concremat and CCCC. And after that, we will talk about the challenges in managing infrastructure assets.

And after that, we will explain how we made our digital transformation in our workflow process.

So basically, about Concremat CCCC-- Concremat, it's a Brazilian company, and we are here more than 70 years doing consulting and managing construction projects in Brazil and Latin America. So basically, we start on the early phase of the project, and we will go together with our clients until the operation passing by construction phase and until operation maintenance stage. And in 2017, we started to be part of a CCC group. CCC group, it's a Chinese conglomerate that has presence in the entire world.

We have offices in the five continents. And nowadays, it's [INAUDIBLE] as third engineer company of the world. So we are very proud to start to be part of this group. And specifically talking about Concremat, we have presence in Latin America as well, and in Brazil, we have bases in more than almost 200 cities.

And around Latin America, we are in countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and we are opening bases in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Panama, and other countries. So basically, we are talking about [INAUDIBLE] on this year to expand our operations to six new countries in Latin America. And we have here a strong path directly to innovation. Proof of that, that's on the last years, we received many awards related to this.

So for example, we are-- on the last five years, we are on the top five engineer and construction companies most innovative in the country. We received on the last three years prizes related to innovation on infrastructure projects. And in the big picture, we are, since 2016, on the top three designers and managers companies in Brazil. So, just-- it's just a quick introduction about Concremat on the end of presentation.

We have a QR codes that could guide you guys to our website when you guys could find more further information. So, just enter in the main topic, we are starting here talking about challenges that we not only here in Brazil but in the entire world, operation maintenance managers have to deal every day. So when you talk about failures in assets, when you look for research and databases, you can see almost 90%, it's related not for the result of time. It's the asset's failures not because it's too old. But it's because the maintenance or the operation, you don't take the right conduction of these assets.

Beside that, we have a great market and big amount of investment related to these segments. For example, this same report showed [INAUDIBLE] this that until 2030, 2030, they have the provision to apply more than $40 trillion in only maintaining and maintaining the existing and the new structures. So on one side, we have the need of improving the operation maintenance. And on the other hand, you have a market intent to put money on that.

And here, we started to figure out some questions about this scenario, for example, when you see a picture like this one, it's clear that it's a very risky job, and we started to think about how can we promote better working conditions for these professionals that are day by day outside carry on these assets. And other hand, we have the view of the manager. You have to manage a big portfolio of assets. So we started to think, how can we help operational managers to master this portfolio, to be able to, in a quick access and security and reliable information, to watch how the portfolio is doing outside of the field?

So think about that. We started to put a transform observation on our work process. And this is our traditional workflow. So, a few years ago, it was our way to do that.

So we started to geometry survey to go to the field. Many times, we don't have the blueprints, the information to even know how these assets is on the field. And after that, we started to register the anomalies there, what's the problems, what we have to fix.

And moving on, we have to the drawings, to put these on the paper. And sometimes, we have to-- depends of the occasion, we have to do the structural modeling to put that to our engineering team to analysis what is necessary to put these assets back on track and in a good condition. So, our engineer team define what treatment is necessary to fix that.

And after that, we have to monitor the structure to look how is the performance. So basically, on the left, we focus in four steps of this process. On geometry survey, anomaly register, we change the 2D drawings to be modeling and looking on the end of the process, that it's a big step to structure monitoring to understand how these assets will perform after the corrections. So now, basically, this is our main points that we worked on the last few years to change the process.

And we did that on four phases, four steps. So we started with the first point to-- start to use BIM to model asset, to reduce the anomalies in the field, and to automate the data to consume that on web. After that, we put that on a cloud-hosted system and made some integrations, especially with using APS and integrate with Autodesk Construction Cloud.

Moving on, we started to expand the mass collection of information using, for example, laser scan and starting to provide a portfolio vision to our managers. And on the step four that we are right now on this year, we are developing the IoT sensors to provide real data, real time data sharing, and create some alert levels to indicate if there is a problem or not on this access. So basically, it's our big picture. We are moving on to explain how we are doing each one of these points. And I'm going to pass the microphone to my colleague Leonardo.

LEONARDO FACTORI: Hello. I'm going to show you in detail how we carry out the process of utilizing the main points of the project. Maintaining the geometric survey-- so in the regular process, the field team measured the asset manually, drew a sketch, based it on on measurements taken, and sent them to the office of the team which reproduced the drawing on a CAD platform.

In the first image shows the field team entering the assets in the field and in the second image, the geometry drawing in 2D sketch. In the digitalized process, we used laser scans to make the geometric survey, generate point cloud fields that are to the BIM time, and modulate it in Autodesk [INAUDIBLE]. In the first image, the field team makes a laser scan process, and the second image, the point cloud, the element in the [INAUDIBLE] to the [INAUDIBLE] modeling the BIM assets.

In the analogy process of the recording anomalies in the field, the inspection team would be down to check for structural anomalies in bridges and viaducts. The visual inspections are mapped into a manual drawing, and the anomaly, the data, recorded manually in a log table. These documents are sent to the ops team who generates the final documents.

The first match shows the team carrying out the abseil inspection. And the second image shows the pathologist being documented. So here, another image of the abseil being carried out and how the inspection was documented in the field.

Here, we show the manual documentation that was generated by the field team. In the first photo, the sketch with the mapping of the anomalies-- in the second photo, the registration table. In the digitalization process, we used a drone to reduce the need for abseiling, which wasn't possible to eliminate the stage. But drones helped with the inspection of sites with low operation safety.

The inspection is recorded directly in the BIM model and in the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform via mobile device. Using the Autodesk platform services, we integrate this field data with the platform developed in-house where the engineering team consumes the field data in real time and automatically extracts the reports required for the final delivered data book. The first image shows the drone use, and we have a video of the inspection being carried out in the field using ACC.

In this video, we have an asset with all the inspections mapping. Generate relevant graphs for asset management monitoring. And these generating a photographic register.

LUCAS BORBA: So, I will talk a little bit about the designing process. This slide is how we use it to take the data from the field and pass it to AutoCAD. But there was a risk that [INAUDIBLE] misunderstandings. Also it's just a drawing, manual drawing.

So here, the new process-- that we get the information from the cloud, use the [INAUDIBLE] to convert the RCP file. Then, we divide into three teams-- the structure analysis, the asset designers, and the topographic designers. The topographic team use Civil 3D to model the surface. The assets engineers use the Revit model, and the structure analysis use their software to analyze the structure, how it works.

So here are some examples. Here is the structural analysis. We do the structural analysis based on Revit models. Here are some assets, models. In the first image, we have the photo, the second one the cloud model, the cloud point model, and the third, we have the Revit model.

Here's another example just to [INAUDIBLE] that we do-- that we did Revit and cloud models and cloud. In some assets drawings, we have to deliver to the client the drawings PDF and AutoCAD. And we convert it to AutoCAD, and we have to deliver. And here are some topographic models that we do on Civil 3D. We do the models based on cloud and convert it to surfaces to use on models.

LEONARDO FACTORI: As a part of the improvement process, we are developing other functionalities, including remote monitoring of the stability of structures. In the irregular process for lack of connectivity of the system using, the inspections making periodically by installing sensors and using acquisition systems physically on the assets to analyze the structural behavior. In this photo, we can see the analog sensors installed on the structure.

And the second photo shows the data acquisition system connected to a Notebook displaying the data acquisition. And for the digitalization process, we are in the final stages of developing to sensors for remote monitoring of assets' stability. We have installed IoT sensors connected to a processing model powered by a solar panel which processes the data emitted and sent it to a Microsoft [INAUDIBLE] via mobile data. We develop the querying [INAUDIBLE] and publish the data in the BIM model in real time.

In this video, you can see how the IoT sensors work, providing data such as frequency, acceleration, et cetera. As a result, it's possible to measure. We can reduce the inspection time, increase the information accuracy, increase the data speed arrival in the office, prevent do-overs on scanning field information, reports are reintegrated into model, expenses reduction expected around 10% or 25%, and apt to aptitude Brazilian BIM application strategies in operations and maintenance Thank you for the time.