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The Cadventure Digital Intelligence Conference
David Chadwick reports back from the inaugural Cadventure Digital Intelligence Conference, which
explored how Digital Intelligence can enable us to build better and improve collaboration
It's quite refreshing discussing Digital
rather than Artificial Intelligence. The
latter now appears to be attached to
any process that requires complex tasks
to be performed more efficiently, and
which are often probably better described
as advanced machine learning. At the
Cadventure Digital Intelligence
Conference, though, the emphasis was on
collaboration and exploring the best tools
and resources available to leverage digital
information within the built environment.
The conference was held in London,
appropriately at 8 Bishopsgate, the new
home of Cadventure's conference partner,
Bentley Systems. Presentations from
thought leaders covered productivity,
connectivity and sustainability, exploring
new ideas and discussing how Bentley
technology is transforming the design
and construction process, with a couple
of thought-provoking presentations from
outside the industry.
To set the scene, the opening Keynote
presentation was delivered by Fabrice
Bourrelly, an Interactive Senior Consultant
at Cityscape Digital, who works within the
real estate industry. and whose current
focus is on the development of real-time,
immersive technology, creating interactive
models of buildings and landscapes. With
some compelling examples, he
demonstrated how video games have
opened the industry up to a completely
new way of designing.
The slickest renders have their
limitations, he explained, A single image
shows only one viewpoint. What real-time
technology allows us to do is to
communicate design intent far better by
enabling stakeholders to interact in realtime
with designs in the same way that
games ineract with 3D environments in
video games.
Paul Shillcock, MD of Operam Academy,
gave the closing Keynote. Paul is an
expert in helping teams maximise their
potential, based on his experiences in
playing competitive sport and his time in
the British Army. The adoption of a digital
strategy can be challenging for senior
managers, he reasoned, many of whom
who have spent decades working in a
traditional professional environment.
Building effective teams for a digital future
requires requires them to adapt, perform
and collaborate to achieve more.
With Fabrice covering the direction that
virtual and augmented reality is taking us,
and its use of the wealth of digital
information we have available, and Paul
outlining the role of teamwork in managing
that information, the core content of the
conference was neatly encapsulated.
Focusing more directly on the theme of
the conference, the 'meat in the sandwich'
was provided by Simon McGowan, Digital
Project Delivery Coordinator at Balfour
Beatty Vinci, who spoke about Digital
Project Delivery, and the mammoth task of
developing an asset information model
(AIM) for the part of HS2 that his company
is currently working on.
The scale of the project was probably
familiar to many of the attendees, with
over 10,000 models and documents and
over 100,000 individual components,
each of which had to be assigned unique
asset identifiers (UAIDs). Creating the
AIMs added further complexity, as each
asset that they added had to be
integrated within Bentley's ProjectWise
workflow configuration, and required
"integration, lots of testing, further
integration development and the inclusion
of error handling processes, followed by a
lot more testing."
A crucial part of this, Simon explained,
was the push/pull process that integrated
the asset within the AIMs. ProjectWise's
DM3 model files are used to create records
for each component, which are then
tagged. They've currently built around 355
graphic models, each with an average of
25,000 components and a total of 256,000
components to manage. He closed with
three messages for the audience: "Define
the model early, don't be afraid to change
things, and don't put it off."
Simon was followed by James
Colclough and Chris Andrew of AECOM,
who spoke about National Highways
Information Management for a current
A303 project. They talked about the
management of graphic data and data
exchange for asset information models
with over 2,000 data layers. Similarly, the
scale of digital information management
is "challenging." Their key message was
to "ensure the data is fit for purpose, with
effective reporting in place, supported by
dashboards and other deliverables."
Further presentations came from Tom
Price, MD of Informed Engineering
Limited, who spoke about delivering
better projects through improved
collaboration, and Elin Kågas Ramström,
Business Developer Digitisation Road &
Rail at Tyrens, who discussed the use of
digitalisation and innovation within AEC,
and how the Bentley User Group
contributes. Greg Demchak from the
Digital Innovation Lab at Bentley Systems
also gave us all a glimpse into the
Metaverse used for the design and
operation of infrastructure projects.
Personal highlights of the conference
included Alison Watson MBE, Founder &
Chief Executive, Class Of Your Own,
speaking on inspiring the next generation
of construction industry leaders, and Joan
Mulvihill, Digitalisation and Sustainability
Lead at Siemens who talked about
creative thinking and read aloud from
John Ruskin to a captive and enthralled
audience. I'm hopeful that the conference
will become an annual event.
www.cadventure.co.uk
14
March/April 2024