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Chengdu Leverages Digital Twins on Complex CNY 1.38 Billion Infrastructure Project Incorporating BIMMethods into Every Part of Road and Pipeline Design Saved Time and Expense
Finding Space for New Roads in a Tight Environment To address traffic congestion in the city of Chengdu, China, Chengdu Urban Construction Investment Management Group Co., Ltd. (CUCIMG) was tasked with designing a CNY 1.38 billion infrastructure redevelopment package. The centerpiece of the package is a 4.3-kilometer roadway system that will integrate 64 existing roads, with the main new road designed for speeds of 60 kilometers per hour and new auxiliary roads designed for 40 kilometers per hour. It would also include new and reworked intersections to optimize traffic flow and accommodate the varying road speeds. The organization would need to construct new bridges, tunnels, green spaces, and pedestrian paths, as well as redevelop existing pipeline networks and add a new tunnel for power distribution. However, CUCIMG faced numerous challenges. Since the project was slated for a heavily developed commercial area, planning the best routes to optimize traffic became difficult. Overpasses could affect existing buildings, while under- passes had to be built around the Jin River, a subway system with two stations in the area, and the power tunnel. Ul- timately, a 35-meter underpass would have to be constructed less than two meters from the subway, which required redeveloping the affected subway section. To accommodate new roads and belowground construction, various types of pipelines and cables—including those moving sewage, rainwater, electricity, gas, and data—would have to be either temporarily moved or permanently moved, or protected during construction. The design team also needed to design a safe pedestrian passage system near the highly trafficked roads. Preliminary planning around the Jin River, dense buildings, pipelines, a subway line, and two subway stations became increasingly complex. Therefore, the project team determined that traditional 2D CAD drawings were not efficient enough to finish the design within the three-month deadline. Additionally, during previous CUCIMG projects, 2D de- sign hindered coordination among contributors with varying specialties and producedmany hidden clashes between design elements. Though CUCIMG created 3D models at the end of the design process, the organization discovered that the late-stage models produced limited value for planning, reporting, construction, and management. Overcoming Challenges through Visualization To overcome the project’s challenges and optimize designs within the tight timeframe, CUCIMG leveraged Bentley applications to incorporate BIMmethodology into every step of the design process. The design team used unmanned aerial vehicles to capture images of the construction area, then created a reality mesh of the terrain, buildings, and underground elements using ContextCapture, as well as an existing digital model of the city of Chengdu. With the project surroundings visualized, the design team modeled potential designs with OpenBuildings, OpenRoads, and OpenBridge. By viewing plans in 3D, the design team could measure the effectiveness of each design and determine how to improve them. CUCIMG used OpenRoads for multiple aspects of the project. In addition to laying out routes, determining intersec- tions, and optimizing traffic flows for 64 different roads, the design team used OpenRoads to build subway tunnel sec- tions, underpass tunnels, and underground utilitymodels. The design teams automatedmany design details to greatly improve work efficiency and speed the evaluation of each iteration. Additionally, the design team used OpenRoads to label pipes as retained, removed, or newly built, which helped eliminate clashes in pipe placement and under-
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october 2020
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