Over the years, AtkinsRéalis developed a System Information Modelling digital engineering solution currently in use in several major projects.
The solution comprises three complementary constituents:
- Building Information Modelling seen as the main repository for the design spatial information
- Systems Information Modelling as the repository for the design of real and virtual connected systems and relevant metadata
- Background Analytics as a Sync & Query Application Server dynamically interfacing BIM and SIM to keep both databases updated in quasi-real-time fashion.
The combination of these elements constitutes the main repository–the “single source of truth”– for the design engineering team: a centralized dynamic asset design database.
The use of this approach in three major projects with three incremental levels of application of the digital solution produced three key results:
- Improvement on delivery management => a 30% reduction of project management by using digital workflows and virtual gate reviews
- Improvement on quality of deliverables and artifacts => Virtually zero error on connected systems due to the extensive check queries running in the background during the design phase
- Substantial reduction of the required engineering hours => reduction up to 80% of engineering and design production hours when operating in a digital integrated environment.
The migration to this approach was necessary to overcome some common limitations of the traditional Engineering Design and Project Delivery for a major project:
- CAD and electronic spreadsheets present intrinsic limitations in the representation of the information
- Information is typically spread over many disjointed deliverables that are to be kept in sync on the common parts when executing any change on such parts.
Advantages of transition from BIM to SIM mentality:
- Ability to represent complex connected systems
- Ability to model virtual systems / components including relevant metadata
- Ability to generate dynamically by a centralized database different design deliverables
- Changes and information are propagated automatically and at across all systems designers through the centralized database
Although Systems Information Modelling is demonstrated to be an advantageous solution for Digital Design Engineering and Delivery Management for major projects in the transit indutry, the approach still presents some challenges:
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- Buy-in from clients
- Open mindset.
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