BIM Track for Underground Infrastructure: Metro line expansion
The project
Stockholm’s Tunnelbana metro system is both modern and extensive. A new expansion project, starting in late 2018, will build a new four-kilometer metro line from Odenplan to Arenastaden, with 3 new substations.
The job
Amberg Engineering, as one of the underground engineering consulting companies of the Tunnelbana Odenplan to Arenastaden project, was tasked with finding engineering solutions for challenging areas in the metro tunnels & modeling and coordinating the tunnels through the use of BIM.
The challenge
Amberg faced several physical challenges in the “Yellow Line” expansion. They had to figure out how to cross a current metro city line and connect the new tunnels to the existing network—all while factoring in hard granite and gneiss formations with numerous weakness zones, as well as low rock cover situations with only approximately 4 meters of rock. What’s more, the project had very tight deadlines. A new way for a large, multidisciplinary infrastructure team to collaborate than the conventional coordination and review processes was needed. On previous projects, information about model issues was exchanged in presentations and via lists and pictures sent by email. This team needed to work together simultaneously on complex 3D geometries and modelling that require advanced methods, such as 3D parametric modelling along horizontal and vertical alignments with varying tunnel cross sections, divisions and cross passages, to cope with major changing boundary conditions such as changing alignments for the new metro stations and lines.
BIM Track helps us keeping the model coordination tidy and comprehensive. The web application does not require the installation of additional software and therefore every project member can easily be kept updated - even without additional coordination software which is indeed very usefull.
We can organise tasks, issues, comments and the related design progress and the history function for the various issues helps us documenting the design and review progress, without additional time effort.
"We have learnt that conventional coordination and review processes are no longer working with this new level of speed. BIM allows the different engineers to work simultaneously at the same project, that means communication has to be quicker and clearer. The BIM Track platform allowed us to detected errors or clashes very quickly and automatically send a message to the responsible person. This made us feel confident about the high quality of our work. On the whole, the new processes and possibilities coming with BIM Track created a much more relaxed atmosphere in the planning team."
Magdalena Stelzer, tunnel engineer at Amberg Engineering.
You can read the whole article Bimtrack.co did about the Tunnelbana metro system project here and visit our BIM page by clicking here for more information and how BIM can help you.
