WET News

4 WET NEWS MARCH 2019 | wwtonline.co.uk NEWS+ Speakers at WWT's Wastewater 2019 conference called for greater e• orts to improve digital data on existing assets Robin Hackett reports from Birmingham T he water industry needs to take signi cant steps for- ward in digitising asset management information if it is to reap the real bene ts of BIM, delegates at WWT's Wastewater 2019 conference heard. Mott MacDonald digital deliv- ery principal Simon Kerr, who chairs the BIM4Water group, said the water industry has become highly e„ ective in deliv- ering new assets through digital engineering and adopting approaches such as alliances, early contract involvement and Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA). However, BIM4Water has estimated that just 20 per cent of BIM's benefits come in the design and construction phase, with the remaining 80 per cent available once the asset has been handed over and is in use. "BIM is about looking not only at the lifecycle-of-project information but the whole-life- cycle-of-asset information," Kerr told delegates. "Within the water sector, we've got roughly £350 billion worth of assets that are in use, and we're adding to it at the tune of around £2 billion a year. In short, we're not going to be able to build our way out of trouble this time – we've got to manage those existing assets in a smarter way." He said asset information is "typically in a pretty poor state" and that, while there are many streams of data coming in, they can fail to deliver many of the insights that are required. "We may typically know when the asset is turning on and o„ , what part of the net- work it's in, how much it costs to run, what our customers are thinking about it and that sort of thing, but in my experience we don't know with any con - dence what that thing actually is, what it was designed to do, exactly where it is or where our spares are for it," he said. "What we need then is a con- sistent, structured approach to procuring the digital asset along with the physical asset to max- imise the value. This is where we need BIM – this is what BIM was designed to do." BIM4Water has been making e„ orts to de ne standard prod- uct data templates that can be shared throughout the industry and provide the non-graphical information that sits behind the BIM model. Kerr also called on the sector to unite behind the various existing standards such as BS 1192, which introduces the con- cept of Common Data Environ- ment and a standard le-nam- ing convention, and PAS 1192-3, which is the speci cation for information management for the operational phase of assets using BIM. He said that while BIM is now evolving towards the interna- tional ISO 19650 standard, it is built on the same principles. "With BIM, we've been blessed with a set of world-class standards and the UK has been at the forefront of determining what BIM means," he said. "It's a great set of standards. Let's just use them." The hope is that, as the indus- try enters AMP7, it will progress towards a standardised approach that can be shared and understood by everyone in the process. information from the other dimensions. "Without the 4D stu„ or the 7D stu„ or 8D stu„ , there's something missing," Ross said. "Once you have an intelligent model, you get a lot more out of it." He added that the level 2+ approach is opening the door to the use of parametric models, whereby projects can be "Smart infrastructure is about bringing together the physical world and the virtual equivalent but, unless you're building it on solid foundations of asset infor- mation that you know to be cor- rect, it all falls apart," Kerr said. Meanwhile, nmcn head of digital transformation Gary Ross spoke about his company's e„ orts to bridge the gap between BIM levels 2 and 3. While there is no formal de - nition for level 2, it involves accurate federated model infor- mation being shared within a Common Data Environment. Level 3, meanwhile, has yet to be rmly de ned at all, although it is understood to refer to infor- mation relating to assets that are already in the ground. "BIM level 2 is the level the water industry aims to be at, and nmcn achieved the accredi- tation in July last year," Ross said. "For BIM level 3, it just doesn't give you any clues for what that looks like and what we need to achieve. "Everybody thinks they know what level 3 will look like – it'll be smart cities and smart infra- structure and those sorts of things – but nobody knows how we get there." As a result, nmcn has devel- oped 'BIM level 2+', which involves 10 dimensions: 1D: Process and governance 2D: Drawings from 3D models 3D: Models 4D: Integrated time planning 5D: Integrated cost planning 6D: Integrated environment 7D: Integrated asset management 8D: Integrated health and safety 9D: Integrated lean construction 10D: Overall bene t Ross said it is vital that the industry moves towards intelligent models that still have all the advantages of the current 3D models but incorporate CONFERENCE SOUNDBITES "There is a lot of innovation going on in sludge at the moment and the amount of collaboration is unlike anything that's gone on before. It's now about bringing those with innovative ideas together with those who can implement them and those that can provide the money" Piers Clark, Isle Utilities chairman "We're seeing a lot more innovation and technology further down the supply chain. That's good not just from an innovation perspective but also a capital perspective" Keith Haslett, United Utilities director of wastewater "SuDS are really quite hard to maintain. We've had a lot of learning. If it's a• ecting our combined network, we will own them and maintain them" Imogen Brown, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water head of wastewater "We absolutely remain committed to alliancing and the advantages it brings, but we're going to stretch this further and with our new alliance we're looking to stretch it to the enterprise model that's set out in the Project 13 blueprint" Karen Thompson, Anglian Water head of direct procurement tweaked and repeated as required. "Next time we get a project that's similar, we want to be able to say, 'Take that one, stretch that a bit, make that a bit bigger, put a bit more ¨ ow rate into it, change one of those dimensions a little bit', so we end up with di„ erent types of the same thing," he said. "When projects start to come to us now, we can start to say: 'It's like that one. Pick these things o„ the shelf, put them in a trolley and push them out the door.' That's what we want to do as a business – be more e© cient on o„ site build and also project management." WWT's Wastewater 2019 con- ference took place in Birming- ham on 29 January and was sponsored by Greenbank, Grundfos and nmcn Bringing asset management into the future with BIM Simon Kerr urged greater focus on digital asset management Gary Ross discussed nmcn's work on BIM level 2+ SPONSORED BY

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