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.

Sweco, one of Europe’s leading architecture and engineering consultancies, was facing challenges in advancing their project delivery. With offices in over 14 countries and projects in over 70 countries, they were looking to transition to digital workflows to improve their infrastructure. They aimed to implement a connected, digitalized approach across their global projects, enforce consistent standards and workflows, and shift to data-driven management processes. However, traditional methods of project information management, collaboration, and decision-making were proving insufficient. These methods were time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error-prone, with unstructured data housed in multiple locations, leading to dispersed and duplicated information. Sweco needed a solution that would encourage collaboration and manage their information in a centralized, up-to-date data model, ensuring adherence to BIM standards and best-practice workflows.

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.

The Al Ain City Municipality in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, was facing a significant challenge with the theft of iron-covered gully covers used for draining rainwater. These covers, some of which were installed as far back as the 1960s, were being stolen and sold to recycling centers. The city needed to replace these covers as part of an AED 10 million project. The new covers needed to be made of a material that was not as easy to recycle to prevent further theft. They also needed to comply with BS EN 124 standards for load and deflection, and safely withstand a minimum loading bearing capacity of 25 tons. The covers also had to be less than 5 centimeters thick, weigh less than the previous ones, and withstand the harsh, extremely hot and dry climate of the region, along with near-constant direct sunlight and harsh UV light.

China Railway Engineering Consulting Group (CEC) was tasked with the design and construction consulting for the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway, a part of China's national railway construction initiative and a preparation for the 2022 Winter Olympics. The railway, which is the world's first high-speed train with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour, was to reduce travel time between the two city venues for the Olympic Games from three hours to 50 minutes. The project involved 23 main engineering disciplines and 56 design sections, presenting significant challenges due to its complexity and changing environmental conditions in a high-altitude area. The project also required complicated structural solutions due to surrounding cultural infrastructure. To optimize design, efficiently coordinate the project, and implement effective 3D collaborative design and construction processes, CEC needed integrated digital design applications.

The Taihong Yangtze River Bridge, a CNY 900 million construction project, is a crucial part of the 77-kilometer highway network linking the Nanchuan District and Lianjiang New Area in China’s Chongqing municipality. The bridge, designed as a suspension bridge, includes an 808-meter steel box beam with a complex structure required to sustain a high-load capacity amid complicated terrain. The scale and complexity of the project necessitated pushing the boundaries of engineering data to ensure construction quality and safety. The project owner, China Railway Changjiang Transport Design Group (CRCTDG), had to determine how they could use the engineering information to increase the performance, quality, safety, scheduling, and cost of each stage of the lifecycle. They also realized that they needed to digitalize engineering workflows and avoid irreversible and costly errors. Traditional manual and paper-based data exchange and construction methods would not be sufficient to achieve the accuracy and public safety that they targeted.

The Stone Arch Bridge, a historic pedestrian pathway in Minneapolis, required significant restoration to ensure its structural integrity and public safety. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) hired Collins Engineers to assess and restore the 140-year-old masonry bridge. The project required a detailed inspection of the entire bridge structure’s condition, including stone arches, embankments, piers, and underwater foundations. Given the age and size of the masonry structure, Collins faced challenges developing repair plans that traditional data collection and inspection methods could not accommodate. Conventional workflows would be time-consuming, significantly impact public use of the bridge, and might not produce the level of detail required to generate accurate repair plans. To overcome these challenges, Collins sought to digitalize inspection data and generate a 3D model of the bridge.

In 2014, the Malaysian government announced a plan to develop and upgrade the two-lane trunk road across Sarawak, Malaysia's largest state, to accelerate socioeconomic growth in East Malaysia. The new toll-free expressway, named the Pan Borneo Highway, stretches 1,060 kilometers through undulating, rainforest terrain and protected reserves. The development of phase one of the MYR 16.15 billion government-funded roadway initiative involved constructing a four-lane dual carriageway over a length of 786 kilometers. Lebuhraya Borneo Utara (LBU) was the project delivery partner on this project, facilitating lifecycle digitalization to meet strictly imposed government requirements. LBU initiated BIM workflows for the first time on a Malaysian road and highway project, using ProjectWise to create an open, connected data environment to support the implementation and integration of BIM, GIS, and reality modeling processes. The challenge was to develop a sustainable asset management solution that would meet the government's objectives and set a benchmark for government road projects.

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is responsible for managing over 8,000 miles of state and interstate highways within Oregon, along with programs related to highways, roads and bridges, railways, public transportation services, transportation safety programs, and motor carrier regulation. Previously, ODOT managed their transportation assets using legacy systems that ran on various technologies, performed functions they were not originally designed for, and duplicated data across multiple repositories. Meeting government reporting requirements involved months of custom coding, manual updating, and vigilant error-checking. ODOT needed a new, comprehensive, linear asset management solution – one that would enable more efficient data capture, analysis, and information mobility that would streamline processes and improve regulatory reporting.

Tierra Group, a provider of geotechnical, water resources, civil, environmental, and geological hazards engineering, was faced with a complex slope stability project involving highly variable soil conditions. The project required the analysis of the corner of an earth dam retaining structure. The challenge was twofold. Firstly, the structure of a corner or a turn in the earth dam needed to be incorporated into the analysis. Secondly, the varying geo-strata beneath the foundation of the engineered earth dam structure posed a significant challenge. The combination of these two aspects made applying 2D analysis extremely difficult and ineffective for the project.

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.

Zakum Development Company (ZADCO) faced a significant challenge when a 1,600-ton marine vessel collided with an operating wellhead platform in the Upper Zakum oil field, located offshore of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The impact threatened the structural integrity of the platform, causing a 6.6 percent loss in platform strength. The platform was capable of surviving seasonal storms post-impact, but could only support the landing of helicopters and docking of light vessels. With oil production halted until repairs could be carried out, ZADCO was tasked with quickly assessing and repairing the platform to minimize losses, ensure safe startup, and avoid environmental pollution. The company also needed to substantiate the accident and resulting damage for an insurance claim. The structural analysis of the platform was complicated by several factors, including the absence of a current SACS model for the required analyses, unreliable vessel speed data for modeling the impact, and the difficulty of modeling the nonlinear soil-pile interaction in combination with a nonlinear inelastic structure.

TYPSA Group, a Spanish engineering consultant firm, has been assisting global clients in delivering complex infrastructure projects for over 50 years. Despite leveraging BIM workflows since 2008, these were mostly applied to smaller projects. As an organization operating across five continents, TYPSA Group recognized the need to adhere to the highest technical, sustainability, and integrity standards across all their projects. The challenge was to expand and systematize their use of BIM methodologies to demonstrate their competency and secure more contracts. To prove their commitment to BIM workflows and digital transformation, TYPSA Group aimed to receive an ISO 19650 certification. However, they needed a reliable way to ensure that all their BIM workflows were managed at the level that this certification required, and to scale this management to accommodate their array of complex, global projects. Their existing file-share platforms were not fully meeting their needs, as they faced difficulties implementing BIM standards and adhering to best practice workflows.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) was tasked with the Phase IV expansion of its metro system to improve rail connectivity between Delhi and the further regions of the National Capital Region. The project involved constructing a new 104-kilometer metro railway line connecting the Majlis Park metro station to the RK Ashram Marg metro station. The DMRC faced several challenges in this project. Firstly, Delhi is a densely populated area with over 27.9 million people as of 2016, resulting in heavy congestion and minimal land availability. This necessitated the proposal of alternative design options in the construction of the railway to circumvent congested areas. Secondly, the railway line had to maintain safe offset distances from historical monuments to prevent their deterioration. Lastly, the project team had to review the detailed project report and propose changes in the alignment design for the railway track section based on current requirements.

Dockwise, a subsidiary of Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., was tasked with the installation of the nearly 22,000-metric ton jacket and 30,000-metric ton topsides with deck support frame for the SHWE platform in the Bay of Bengal, Myanmar. This was part of the USD 1.5 billion SHWE field development project. The installation involved one of the largest jackets and one of the heaviest topsides in the world, pushing the limits of the installation barge. The barge's unique bottle shape satisfied the stability and jacket footprint requirements but posed challenges for the mooring arrangement and transportation global strength needs. The short, fat, and heavy jacket also brought challenges to the launch operation. The project was distributed across three office centers in The Netherlands, United States, and China, which posed challenges in data access, accuracy, traceability, and workflow, especially for the final product design drawings.

Khabarovsk Municipal Unitary Enterprise “Vodocanal” (Khabarovsk Vodocanal), one of the largest water and sewer service providers in the Far East, was tasked with shifting from surface to underground water sources. This shift was part of a program to implement intraformational water treatment technology, a process that treats groundwater within the geologic formation, costing 2.5 times less than conventional methods. The company constructed the RUB 10 billion Tunguska Groundwater Intake Facilities to deliver 106,000 cubic meters per day of water to the city of Khabarovsk. Aqua+ was commissioned to design, construct, install, and commission the intake facility’s automated water quality monitoring and control system. The challenge was to create a complex industrial control system for automatic water quality monitoring and control, which would reduce facility staffing requirements tenfold. The design of this complex system included the purposeful selection, connection, and programming of precision instrumentation for reliable supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA).

Indonesia, like many countries, faced a surge in COVID-19 cases that exceeded the capacity of existing healthcare facilities. To address this, the Indonesian government initiated plans to construct 14 new hospitals. PT. Wijaya Karya (WIKA) was tasked with building one of these hospitals on a 22,700-square-meter former soccer field in South Jakarta. The USD 4 million hospital was to be a one-story building with a capacity of 300 beds, 35 intensive care unit rooms, and 10 emergency rooms. The hospital was to be equipped with a negative pressure isolation system to prevent the spread of the virus, a robotic nurse, and an integrated command center to connect it to 65 other hospitals. The government required WIKA to complete the design and construction of the hospital and have it fully operational in less than a month. The project also needed to be cost-effective and environmentally sustainable. WIKA faced the challenge of meeting these requirements on an incredibly tight timeline, compounded by social distancing requirements.

The Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) faced a significant challenge with the Interstate 10 (I-10) highway, particularly in Mobile, Alabama. The George C. Wallace Tunnel, constructed in 1973 to accommodate 36,000 vehicles per day, was experiencing heavy congestion due to increased traffic volumes, averaging 73,000 vehicles daily and peaking at 100,000 during the tourist season. The tunnel's design, which reduces four lanes to two and includes a hairpin turn that slows traffic to 25 miles per hour, was causing bottlenecks. Additionally, vehicles transporting hazardous materials (HAZMAT) were restricted from using the tunnel, resulting in an hour-long detour. To alleviate these issues, ALDOT proposed a bridge and bayway widening project. The proposed infrastructure design was a six-lane cable-stayed bridge, spanning approximately 2.75 miles with 215 feet of air draft clearance across the Mobile River. The USD 850 million project required approval and buy-in from the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), environmental agencies, local government and businesses, and the community.

WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff was tasked with the challenge of efficiently and sustainably delivering a 62-story, 278-meter glass-clad tower in the heart of London’s Financial District. The project, named 22 Bishopsgate, was to be built on the site of a previous unfinished building, the Pinnacle, where the foundation, basement, and partially constructed core of this structure, called “the stump,” remained. The new tower needed to incorporate the former Pinnacle’s foundation and three stories of basement structures. The challenge was to marry the superstructure, which did not correspond to where the foundations were. In addition to the site constraints amid several high-rise buildings, a tight timeline, and budget requirements, the project also aimed to achieve a BREEAM excellent rating and be the first in London to adopt the WELL Building Standard promoting the health and well-being of the building’s 12,000 occupants.

WSP was tasked with providing structural solutions for the complex geometry of One Blackfriars Tower, a 50-story mixed-use development in London. The project site had varying depths and remnants of a previously demolished building, which posed significant challenges. The design also had to accommodate 274 apartments within the skyscraper, each with unique layouts and no repetition throughout the building. The team also had to design temporary on-site client facilities and ensure the structural integrity of the asymmetrically shaped tower. The project required a high level of collaboration with architects, clients, and contractors to deliver an elegant super-structure with spectacular views of London.

WSP, a global management and consultancy services company, was tasked with designing and constructing the 50-story Principal Tower in London, a project valued at GBP 200 million. The challenge was to build this tower on a small footprint, adjacent to the city's financial district and the third-busiest train station in the country, Liverpool Street station. The design had to ensure that construction did not interfere with rail operations or damage the Victorian-era masonry tunnels. The tower's design also had to accommodate a six-track railway and a protected corridor for future development of two additional tracks. The project required a design that would not only fit into the limited space but also meet the owner's aesthetic and logistic specifications. Furthermore, the design had to account for frequent vibrations caused by the railway and minimize soil displacement.

PT MRT Jakarta was tasked with the construction, operations, and maintenance of Jakarta's first mass rapid transit system, aimed at reducing traffic congestion and carbon emissions in the densely populated city. The project, which was initiated by the provincial government, was set to add 5.7 kilometers of track and seven underground stations to the existing public transport infrastructure. However, the project faced significant technical difficulties due to its location in a congested urban environment, a national heritage site, and a canal. The challenges were further compounded by multiple contract packages, a large number of deliverables, and the need for coordination during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial phase of the project was postponed due to the pandemic, and PT MRT Jakarta was asked to accelerate the schedule, ensuring no delays caused by data inaccuracies, inconsistencies in design reviews, or miscommunication. Previous attempts at manually coordinating contractors and implementing various document management systems proved time-consuming and inefficient, resulting in information silos.

La Société Wallonne des Eaux (SWDE), a regional water corporation in Belgium, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its aging water towers. Some of the structures were very old, and the data on them was either inaccurate or unavailable. The SWDE tower in Juprelle, built in 1981, was deteriorating and in need of repair. The tower's concrete structure caused condensation on the interior walls, leading to significant degradation over time, including burst joints, cracks, and the separation of edifice bricks. Traditional manual surveying methods, such as ground-level photography or using elevators to lift workers onto the tank, were inefficient and incomplete. SWDE attempted to use drones to survey the damage, but the drone footage still required human interpretation, which came with a significant risk of error. Small cracks could easily be overlooked, which could lead to long-term deterioration and compromise the reliability and safety of the water network.

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.

PT. Wijaya Karya (WIKA), an Indonesia-based construction company, was tasked with designing the Design and Build Harbour Road 2 Project in North Jakarta, Indonesia. The project, budgeted at USD 530 million, involved the construction of an 8.95-kilometer toll road, including a 3.95-kilometer double-decker bridge along the Ancol River, the longest of its kind in the world. The project was crucial to improve transportation and the economy in North Jakarta, and was expected to accommodate 63,500 vehicles per day, cutting travel time between Ancol and Pluit in half. However, WIKA faced several challenges. Traditional 2D design methods were inadequate for such a large and complex project. The project also had to be completed before the start of the FIFA 2021 U-20 World Cup, held at the nearby Jakarta International Stadium. Furthermore, the Indonesian government mandated that the project should avoid placing piers in the water to protect the ecosystem and existing river traffic, and also avoid underground gas pipelines, water pipes, fiber optic cables, and buildings.

DPR Construction was tasked with upgrading a drug production plant in Durham, North Carolina, for a leading neuroscience research and development company. The $32 million project aimed to increase the manufacturing capacity of an innovative Alzheimer’s disease therapy drug. The upgrade required a three-month plant shutdown and involved complex construction work, including the installation of over 7,000 linear feet of stainless-steel piping, 11 miles of new power and data cabling, and over 40 tons of steel platform work. The project also required the removal of existing equipment to make space for larger vessels and new skids. DPR faced significant pressure to keep the project on schedule to meet the client’s commissioning timeline and resume operations as quickly as possible. The company also faced challenges in integrating new and existing assets within the confined space of the plant. The client had frequently modified their 20-year-old drug plant, making it difficult to locate assets. DPR needed a digital solution that could provide a quantitative, visual representation of asset tracking and construction monitoring.

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 company owned by the Secretary of State for Transport in the United Kingdom, is responsible for operating and maintaining the motorways and major “trunk” A-roads that make up England’s Strategic Road Network (SRN). The SRN spans 4,300 miles of roadways and includes various structures such as bridges, tunnels, drainage systems and technology assets. Despite representing only 2 percent of the total road length in England, it carries around one third of all motor vehicle traffic and two thirds of all road freight in England, amounting to over 4 million vehicles per day. Managing road closures across the SRN costs the government GBP 140.4 million every year. Highways England sought to reduce costs, maintain the key performance indicator of at least 97 percent lane availability at all times, and manage the closures more effectively and expediently. The organization aimed to reduce 3,600 lane closures each year, potentially saving around GBP 7 million per year.