Construction is being transformed.  I’ve blogged about the startling (at least to traditional construction contractors) vision of the future of highway construction of the Chief of Surveys at the Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) in which full lifecycle data management,  BIM for Infrastructure and geospatial play a central role. 

At a GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen of BAM gave real world examples of how construction is being transformed including full lifecycle data management and GIS and BIM integration. BAM’s motivation for investing in this new approach to highway construction is the growing demand for Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) projects.  In a DBFM contract, the contractor is not only responsible for designing and building the project, but also for all maintenance.  Being able at the completion of construction, to migrate the data collected during design and construction to an integrated GIS + asset management system system to support highway maintenance activities can dramatically reduce costs during the operate and maintain phase of a highway project.

At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London the Danish Road Directorate is one of the finalists for the annual Be Inspired Innovation in Roads Awards.  The Danish Road Directorate submission involves a US$ 580 million design-build contract for the 39-kilometer Herning – Holstebro project that included eight interchanges, four railway crossings, and five bridges.

The unique aspect of this project that makes it so interesting is the requirement for a digital workflow for sharing data across disciplines, among both internal project team members and external partners, with meaningful data sharing requirements across the project’s entire lifecycle.  CAD and engineering standards were enforced for all submitted drawings and engineering files which were inspected for divergences from the standards.  As a result of defining data requirements for each stage of the lifecycle, the Danish Road Directorate and its external partners have been able to achieve significant efficiency gains.