Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/644820
10 WET NEWS MARCH 2016 Welsh Water gets immersed • Being able to visualise a concept design in the digital world is helping Welsh Water transform its capital delivery. Maureen Gaines has been finding out why. ONSITE DiGitAl enGineeRinG the igloo has enabled greater transparency and collaboration between suppliers Welsh Water's £9M investment in innovation projects over the past 12 months, and has not only transformed the way in which Welsh Water approaches design and delivery but has also enabled even greater collaboration within the company's capital delivery alliance and supply chain, and operations team. Rural The alliance, which includes Skanska and Arcardis, is responsible for delivering Welsh Water's £1.7bn capital delivery programme across AMP6. There is also the challenge of making 20% efficiency savings, and this is where the Pod360 has come into its own. Parkin explains: "Having looked at the capital programme some of the issues have been the amount of time and cost associated with repeat site visits to distant locations. Wales is quite rural and spread out, so moving between different assets can take a great deal of time. It was an opportunity to save costs, and to reduce exposure to health and safety risk for staff travelling to and from sites by projEcT SpEcS • Cut down time and costs associated with repeat site visits to distant locations • Reduces time spent on design and rework during construction and handover • Design, plan and manage construction projects more efficiently bringing Welsh Water's assets to us. "The method of doing that was to use the pod and bring the assets back to our new central delivery office just outside Newport." The Pod360 was one of the ideas put forward by the delivery partners when they were looking at BIM (Building Information Technology). Having gone through "the usual due diligence" of looking at Pod360 Welsh Water felt it offered many advantages. Parkin says: "It offered a different way in which we looked at designing and delivering our capital programme. If you think of a normal CAD [computer-aided design] system looking at 3D drawings on a screen, the Pod360 allows us to import all of that into this 360° immersed environment. "It allows designers to see things in a 1:1 scale for line of sight. They can walk around the assets and see if things have been designed correctly or if things will operate efficiently. Because it links in with BIM and 3D CAD modelling we're able to build up those models and then import them into the Igloo and the 360° immersed environment so you can see them. It feels like you are actually walking round the asset." Digital world The Pod360 will reduce time spent on design and rework during construction handover because it has been rehearsed first in the digital world. "There's input from our ops colleagues, and designed-out problems before we've even broken ground." He continues: "BIM is the future of construction projects. It's like any new technology, if you don't utilise it then you end up falling behind with your construction techniques and efficiency challenges. This is a far better way of designing a project. We also now have all the asset data electronically as we go through the project. "We're able to not only benefit from the efficiencies that it brings to delivering projects, the lean construction methodology if you like, but we also then have all that information and all that asset data there. If in a few years' • Continues page 13 D wr Cymru Welsh Water has gone Igloo crazy. Not for the construction made of ice but rather a visualisation digital engineering tool. "It's like having a new toy," says Nick Parkin, who heads Welsh Water's capital delivery alliance. "Engineers being engineers, they like to see what things are going to look like and how they operate. It's the latest bit of technology, and they're certainly keen for that. Everyone wants to use it – so much so we've now got a booking system!" 'It' is the Igloo Pod360, an immersive visualisation centre that is enabling Welsh Water to "bring construction concepts to life". Developed by 360° projection company Igloo Vision, the Pod360 is a 2.55m high, 6m diameter projection cylinder that enables 3D modelling to be projected in a 360° immersed environment. Its features include a Surround Sound system; fully immersive 360° projection screen; and aluminium truss frame; media server and Wi-Fi router; and a curved, lockable door. The technology is part of ˆ