The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD) faced a significant challenge when Hurricane Katrina severely damaged the I-10 Twin Span Bridge, a crucial connection between Slidell, La., and New Orleans. The bridge, which spans approximately 5.5 miles and serves as a primary evacuation route for New Orleans, was rendered unusable in both directions. Temporary repairs were initiated just 14 days after the hurricane, but it was clear that a complete replacement was necessary. The LADOTD faced numerous challenges in this endeavor, including securing federal funding for the project, competition for resources, and the need to maintain ongoing traffic flows during construction. The project also required the design and management of over 1,700 plan sheets, and the collaboration of multiple teams distributed over various locations.

VYOM Consultants were tasked with designing an innovative office building, K10 Grand, in Vadodara, Gujarat, India. The building was to meet the high expectations of Vadodara’s business elite and set new standards for commercial spaces in the area. The INR 1.2 billion project was to consist of a basement and 12 floors, totaling an area of 200,000 square feet. The design was to be unique, with three towers and a core structure in the middle, bulging outward for the bottom six floors and tapering upward for the top six floors. The design also required a column-free space in the entrance foyer. The unique shape of the building presented structural design challenges, including difficulties in arranging columns and shear walls, housing all utilities in the center core, and creating an earthquake-resistant design. The foundation of the building was a combined and raft foundation, necessitating careful evaluation of the structure before construction.

Bangladesh, with the world's largest inland waterway transport (IWT) system, was struggling to keep pace with the growing transport demand due to outdated infrastructure. The IWT network was losing passengers to rail and road transport, despite the latter's higher costs and longer routes. To address this, the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority proposed the development of new major IWT terminals in four locations. Voyants Solutions was hired to develop these terminals, which required conducting 20-year traffic assessments, feasibility studies, and providing design and construction management. The project aimed to modernize the infrastructure to reduce congestion, meet international standards, and design a structure that reflected the country's cultural heritage. The project also had to consider the safety and comfort of passengers, efficient passenger and vehicular flow, intermodal connectivity, and accessibility for elderly and specially-abled riders.

The High Speed 2 (HS2) railway project, the largest construction contract in Europe, was a complex and challenging initiative for the United Kingdom. The project aimed to triple the country's transport network capacity by carrying more than 30,000 passengers per day. Skanska Costain STRABAG JV (SCS) was contracted to perform civil works for the first phase of HS2, which involved a line running 230 kilometers between London and Birmingham. The contract required early contractor involvement with the designers to formulate and approve a conceptual design scheme for 26 kilometers of high-speed railway within 14 months. The project, estimated at GBP 1.5 million, presented engineering and coordination challenges to optimize efficiency and meet the client’s digital BIM demands. SCS needed interoperable technology to implement a comprehensive, collaborative BIM strategy to accommodate the existing British railway systems and approximately 6,000 utility assets, and to coordinate a geographically-dispersed, multidiscipline team.

Anddes Asociados S.A.C., a rapidly growing Peruvian consulting company, was tasked with conducting a 3D slope stability analysis of a local mining company’s waste dump. The waste dump had a complex layout with many different soil layers at the foundation, which significantly affected its stability. The project required an extensive geotechnical investigation program for waste rock and soil foundation characterization. The challenge was to find a reliable 3D slope stability program that could handle the variability of strong and weak layers in the waste dump toe foundation, actual dike geometry, and actual 3D geometry. The program needed to accurately represent the 3D waste dump stacking and provide a comprehensive analysis of the stability of the waste dump.

National Grid, a utility company, initiated a project to replace the nearly 100-year-old South Street Substation in Providence, Rhode Island. The project involved rebuilding the 115/11.5/23-kilovolt indoor substation and relocating it to a congested area of Providence. The engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract was awarded to TRC, an engineering, environmental consulting, and construction management firm. The contract required the removal and conversion of three 115-kilovolt overhead supply lines to underground cable circuits, rerouting of 27 existing 23-kilovolt and 11-kilovolt feeders from the old facility to the new substation, and rewiring of 47 sets of cables and 60 pieces of switchgear. The project presented numerous design and coordination challenges, including an aggressive timeline, tight budget, and the need to integrate existing conditions with the new construction while keeping the original substation operational.

The East 138th Street Bridge, built in 1938, is a critical part of New York City's traffic grid, accommodating over 150,000 vehicles daily. However, the bridge's limited vertical clearance has led to numerous accidents, and its aging infrastructure was unable to handle the heavy vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) initiated a USD 48 million project to replace the bridge with a new 100-foot, single-span bridge. The project's complexity was compounded by the need to keep the bridge functional throughout the replacement process, the bridge's location in a busy urban area, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project also faced challenges related to utility management, including the design of an abutment to span a 58-foot-wide opening for a future sewer line expansion. Traditional plan sheets were deemed inefficient for stakeholder and community understanding of the project, necessitating a more innovative approach.

Hatch, a global professional services company, was tasked with delivering a $245 million sulfuric acid plant in the remote region of Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The plant was critical to sustain one of the largest copper mining operations in the DRC, as the copper mines required sulfuric acid to leach copper oxide minerals. The project presented several challenges, including the remote location, logistical and environmental difficulties, and a fast-tracked schedule. The plant was to feature a 1,400 ton-per-day manufacturing facility and an electrical waste heat power generation system with a steam turbine unit, which was critical due to the limited power grid supply in the area and complex integration with the existing electrical network. Hatch needed to overcome these complexities and accommodate the accelerated timeline with a team of engineers distributed globally across five offices. The company sought a sustainable technology solution, digitalizing all workflows and deliverables.

The Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant Outfall (ABTPO) project in Toronto, one of Canada’s largest and oldest wastewater treatment plants, was in dire need of an upgrade. The existing outfall, constructed in 1947, had insufficient capacity for discharging treated effluent into Lake Ontario and was nearing the end of its service life. Hatch, a team based in Canada, was tasked with the design and construction of a new tunneled outfall to send treated wastewater from the plant into the lake. The CAD$ 300 million project involved sinking a shaft adjacent to the shoreline and mining a tunnel through rock directly beneath the lakebed. The project's location, complexity, and scale presented significant challenges. Additionally, the treatment plant services about 1.6 million residents, so the final result needed to ensure an enhanced quality of life for the community, as well as any future residents as the city grows and expands.

Global leaders in the manufacturing of pressure vessels and heat exchangers are faced with the challenge of meeting large production requirements. They need to accelerate the modeling and drawing process, as well as the calculation and cost estimation time for their plant vessels, while adhering to international design standards and codes. Additionally, they are required to reduce the time taken to bid for proposals generated for their clients. The challenge is to find a solution that increases design efficiency, saves engineering hours, and ensures confidence in vessel design while improving competitiveness through improved design quality.

The Sultanate of Oman aimed to create a detailed digital twin of approximately 250 square kilometers of the country, focusing on the area in and around Muscat. The objective was to enhance national security and improve preparedness for climate-related disasters. Khatib & Alami was contracted to capture 330,000 images using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and construct a 3D reality model of the area, which included 43,000 fully textured buildings. The project required a resolution of 10 ground sampling distance (GSD) and relative accuracy of less than 20 centimeters. The project was to be completed within a strict deadline of 125 days. However, due to airspace constraints, including classified areas and commercial flights, only 14 days were available for flying and image capture. The harsh weather conditions and limitations in the UAV hardware, which prevented geo-tagging of captured images, added to the challenges.

London's 150-year-old sewer system was unable to meet the demands of the city's growing population, leading to millions of tons of raw, untreated sewage spilling into the River Thames each year. To accommodate the current 8.8 million Londoners and expected continued growth, Tideway initiated a GBP 4 billion super-sewer initiative known as the Thames Tideway Tunnel. The project, expected to be completed in 2024, consists of a 25-kilometer-long interception and transfer tunnel that travels through the heart of London at depths varying between 30 and 70 meters. The work is divided into three packages for the west, central, and east sections of the tunnel, each one having a main drive site. Costain, VINCI Construction Grands Projets and Bachy Soletanche (CVB) JV is responsible for the GBP 850 million east-section contract. The project involves 12 design disciplines and numerous supply chains and stakeholders, presenting coordination and communication challenges.

Cable Onda, the fastest-growing telecom company in Panama, was facing challenges in managing its hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network and fiber optic network. The company's data management system was clunky and unsystematic, with network designs and documentation managed with MicroStation and information regarding splices and nodes stored in Excel spreadsheets. With over 3,000 total splice enclosures in the Cable Onda network in Panama, it took the company's network operations center numerous hours to find the right splicing sheets in Excel and the appropriate plans in MicroStation when there was damage to equipment within the networks. The company had to correlate the maps and splice diagrams and estimate where the outage fault was located. This decentralization of information made the management of the large-scale fiber optic and HFC networks inefficient and unorganized.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) was tasked with converting a three-mile stretch of Highway 169 (TH 169) into a freeway system to enhance infrastructure, improve vehicle and pedestrian movement, and reduce traffic accidents. The project, known as the TH 169 Redefine Elk River Project, included transforming four traffic intersections into interchanges, replacing the northbound bridge on TH 169, upgrading all underground infrastructure and utilities, and adding pedestrian walkways to the connecting local roadways. Engineering firm WSB was contracted to deliver the final designs of the TH 169 roadway expansion. The project was funded through Minnesota’s Corridors of Commerce program and had a strict construction budget of USD 130 million. WSB faced challenges in delivering the project under the construction manager/general contractor (CMGC) delivery method, which required a constructability review throughout the design phase to eliminate inaccuracies that could cause delays or unexpected costs. WSB also aimed to advance its processes for creating and employing 3D models of road, bridge, drainage, and utility elements on the TH 169 expansion, which required complicated earthworks calculations. They also wanted to supply MnDOT with their first paperless project delivery to enhance sustainability and cut costs.

Johnson Pilton Walker (JPW) was tasked with designing an iconic, sustainable tower structure as part of the urban revitalization and redevelopment of Western Sydney. The project, known as Parramatta Square, was a part of Western Sydney’s urban renewal initiative and aimed to revitalize Australia’s second-oldest city center. The project was challenging due to its location adjacent to a major railway station with limited road access and in a flood zone close to the Parramatta River. The project required careful infrastructure planning and design to ensure that the building and public domain were seamlessly integrated. Local authorities imposed strict guidelines to address heritage context, solar access, energy efficiency, sustainability, flexible workspace, and pedestrian permeability. The large-scale building form, combined with an expedited timeline, presented a range of design and delivery challenges.

Highways England, a UK government company, is responsible for the operation, maintenance, and improvement of England’s motorways and major A roads. The UK government has committed to enhancing the UK road network, including Smart Motorways, Complex Infrastructure, and Regional Infrastructure Programmes, to mitigate the impact of congestion on roads and motorways, which is currently costing the UK economy £9bn annually. To manage and expedite the delivery of these complex programmes, Highways England identified the need for a single platform to control project information. They sought a solution through the UK government’s Digital Marketplace and G Cloud, which would allow them to demonstrate compliance with their internal IAN184-2016 standards and industry standards including PAS1192-2 as required by the 2016 government BIM mandate.

Sofia Municipality, a large province in Bulgaria, was facing challenges with its street lighting infrastructure. The Transport Infrastructure Department, responsible for the construction, repairs, and maintenance of roadways, infrastructure facilities, and street lighting within the metropolis, found the existing inventory of public lighting facilities to be incomplete and insufficient. The department needed a comprehensive inventory to better manage the region’s street lighting infrastructure, inform when improvements and upgrades were needed, and reduce public fund spending on maintenance. The government also aimed to improve the overall infrastructure and reduce the duration of repairs. To achieve these objectives, Sofia Municipality engaged DAVID Holding Company, an IT company providing software solutions, to develop, implement, and maintain software to manage and organize the infrastructure.

Danfoss, a company specializing in refrigeration monitoring equipment, compressors, and controllers for grocery stores, faced a challenge in helping its customers manage their operations efficiently. Refrigeration consumes a significant portion of a large grocery store’s electricity, with the remainder consumed by HVAC equipment, lighting, and other utilities. The risk of asset failure could result in food loss, unplanned asset downtime, and maintenance call outs – unexpected costs that can quickly escalate. Retailers now operate in a market where the demand for frozen foods is increasing, causing them to invest in large-scale refrigeration equipment. This has led to tight margins in an increasingly competitive market where assets are expected to perform constantly. Historically, supermarkets have accepted that the cost for high customer volume, regulatory compliance, and increasing energy costs were part of the business model.

Water scarcity and severe flood risks in China have intensified over time, prompting the government to fund water conservation projects, such as reservoirs and dams. The Dongtaizi Reservoir, located in Linxi County within Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, is one of 172 major water conservancy developments outlined in China’s “National 13th Five-Year Plan” and one of 12 key livelihood projects in Inner Mongolia. This large-scale infrastructure is a vital water conservancy undertaking for the prefecture-level city of Chifeng due to the area’s immediate need for severe flood risk mitigation. The expansive location of the Dongtaizi Reservoir necessitated a precise geological survey, as the site’s terrain was complex. Therefore, the design team required a comprehensive understanding of both the rock mass that would support the prospective dam and the ground’s structural plane. In addition to the project’s surveying demands, the infrastructure design was also multifaceted.

RISE Structural Design, Inc., a Tokyo-based company specializing in structural design and analysis, was tasked with a pipe stress analysis project at a methanol plant in Japan. The project required the company to perform pipe stress analysis on pipes near the plant’s furnace, which operated at temperatures ranging from 300 to 900 degrees Celsius. The company was responsible for delivering accurate assessments and reducing costs for steel materials. One of the challenges was installing spring supports to ensure the piping system’s flexibility to react to the furnace’s extreme temperatures. The project also required effective coordination across various design teams, such as structural and piping, to avoid delays. Traditional workflows, where each discipline conducts their analyses independently and uses different conditions, were not suitable for this project. This traditional approach made it nearly impossible to create 3D data and increased analysis time.

Clark Construction Group was tasked with the construction of a new International Arrivals Facility (IAF) at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a project initiated by the Port of Seattle with a budget of USD 968 million. The project involved the construction of a three-story grand hall building, a new connecting international corridor, and an 85-foot-high pedestrian aerial walkway. The most complex part of the project was the construction and installation of the world’s longest pedestrian bridge over an active airport taxi lane. The bridge’s center span, a 3-million-pound, 320-foot-long structure, had to be constructed at an airport cargo area three miles from the installation site, transported to the installation spot amid a busy airport, and then hoisted 85 feet high to connect to the piers. The project required meticulous planning and sequencing with no room for error, and the airport had to remain fully operational throughout the construction process.

The Golden State Warriors decided to move from their home since 1971, the Oracle Arena, to a new space across the bay in San Francisco. The new project, the USD 1.2 billion Chase Center, was not just an 18,000-seat arena but also included two 11-story office buildings, a broadcast studio, over 20 unique retail locations, 3.2-acres of publicly accessible plazas and open space, and a 925-space, below-grade parking structure. Mortenson | Clark, a joint venture team with decades of experience in constructing sports facilities, faced numerous challenges. The project was set in the Mission Bay neighborhood along the San Francisco Bay, surrounded by other construction projects and an active helipad. The ground was saturated and soft from the nearby water, making it difficult to work on. The Warriors also gave a firm deadline for completion – the start of the 2019-2020 basketball season, which meant the team had to work quickly.

EPCOR Utilities, a company that owns and operates electric, water, and natural gas utilities across Canada and the southern United States, was facing a significant challenge with its aging infrastructure. The company's electric distribution system, which provides power to over 400,000 Edmonton customers, was experiencing frequent outages due to the degradation of its assets, including circuits, poles, and transformers. A demographic analysis predicted a 74% increase in the number of assets that would reach end of life over the next 10 years, compared to the previous 10 years. This meant that EPCOR would need to replace 10,000 more assets over the next decade. Furthermore, EPCOR’s capital spending was effectively capped due to a new performance-based rate structure to be implemented in 2018. To maintain system reliability with current resources, despite the forecasted asset failure, EPCOR recognized the need for a new asset management strategy and sought a digital solution to quantify asset health and prioritize assets for proactive intervention and lifecycle replacement.

Precision Valley Communications (PVC), a leading provider of communications network mapping and engineering to the broadband industry, was tasked with a major project to survey and redesign a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network for a major cable company in Washington, D.C. The project involved a field survey of the company’s network, including 586 miles of conduit, 2,400 manholes, and over 200,000 multiple-dwelling units. The goal was to complete a major network redesign to move all equipment from manholes to breakout pedestals to reduce rented duct space and increase accessibility for field crews. However, five months into the project, only 21 percent of the 586 miles of survey was completed, putting the USD 145 million project way behind schedule. The delays were not due to a lack of skill or effort, but rather the inefficient software tool that was initially mandated for use in the project. The software resulted in significant workflow impediments and time-consuming database transactions, severely hampering productivity.

Balfour Beatty, a UK-based multinational infrastructure group, was facing challenges in expanding knowledge sharing across its more than 60 companies and improving collaboration on its projects. The group’s Major Projects division was at the forefront of this effort, which included the early implementation of tendering, procurement, and project collaboration systems. The business also sought to standardize many of its information management business processes, including the development of consistent workflows across the group, and human resource strategies to support effective information management. However, the outdated Access databases were proving to be a hindrance in achieving these objectives.

Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO) operates a network of integrated iron ore mine and port facilities across the Pilbara region of Western Australia. To optimize workforce safety, RTIO engaged CADDS Group to conduct site guarding audits for all 17 iron ore plants, complete site verification for high risk assets, and replace or update those assets. The AUD 80 million project required CADDS to obtain data and documentation of existing infrastructure at all sites and complete the guarding work within the plants’ scheduled 12-week shutdown cycles. Prior to this project, CADDS would send a team of drafters to the site to create 2D drawings of the existing facilities. From these 2D drawings, designers would create 3D as-built models. The team used these often-inaccurate models to design and fabricate the new guarding, which was expensive because unique components were required for every install. Furthermore, once on site for the install, CADDS usually found that the new guarding did not fit, resulting in time-consuming, costly rework.

The rollout of 5G has led to a shift in the telecommunications industry towards cost sharing, optimizing contracts between major carriers and tower owners. This has resulted in an increase in requests for load cases and loading scenarios during an analysis cycle, requiring the evaluation of four to five loading combinations to provide cost feedback to clients and carriers. The industry is also seeing an increase in multiple carriers co-locating on the same structure, leading to a surge in loading changes. Additionally, many owners and carriers are proactively analyzing towers to the most current code revision, regardless of the jurisdictionally adopted version of the IBC standards. This can be time-consuming and cumbersome, especially when there are multiple scenarios to evaluate. The data is also less reliable and prone to errors if multiple files need to be updated and modeled individually to capture all the possible loading combinations.

Fujian Yongfu Power Engineering was tasked with building a large wind farm in a geographically complex area prone to typhoons, earthquakes, and shifting soil. The location for the wind farm, the China Changle Offshore Wind Farm Area C, is one of the world's deepest locations for a wind farm with an average water depth of between 31 and 45 meters. The company planned to install 62 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 8 megawatts, for a total capacity of 496 megawatts. However, the site's frequent typhoons, unstable soil, and high earthquake risk necessitated the development of particularly strong and stable foundations for each turbine. Traditional methods of offshore wind design proved inadequate, producing expensive designs and failing to accurately simulate the interaction between the soil and a pile with such a large diameter. The company also faced budget constraints, necessitating a cost-effective solution.

PT. Waskita Karya (Persero) Tbk was appointed by Indonesia’s Ministry of Transportation to transform the Manggarai Station in South Jakarta into the city’s terminus for long-distance trains. The project involved constructing a new bridge and assembling track panels to connect the existing first-floor mainline track to a new second-floor rail line of the main building. The project was crucial for improving passenger flow and ensuring reliable transport, but it presented significant construction constraints. These included conducting a design review within the 720-day contract period, maintaining train operations throughout construction, and controlling costs on prestressed concrete bridge segments, which accounted for up to 30% of the total project budget. Waskita was also required to take on the design review of the existing contract drawings due to discrepancies with current standards and existing conditions. The team realized that their traditional, paper-based 2D processes were insufficient for these challenges and that they needed a more advanced solution.

The West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) faced a significant challenge in managing the increasing volume of oversize/overweight load permits due to the boom in shale oil and gas production. The number of these permits issued annually doubled since 2003, reaching 123,000 in 2011. The existing manual process for managing these permits was not sustainable in the long run. The process involved consulting county maps marked with weight restrictions and general guidelines to process permits. Bridge load rating was handled by technicians, but there was no way to incorporate bridge information and run a real-time permitting process. As the trucks got heavier and larger, and the frequency of loads grew higher, the WVDOT realized the need for a more efficient and reliable system.