Why use geospatial engineering?
Mark Lawton FCInstCES, Head of Engineering Survey, Skanska
Adopting a geospatially transparent environment enables everyone to make informed measured decisions, even if they do not think they are a geospatial user. In fact, geospatial activities are part of life without most people even realising that it is happening, enabling us to make sense of the environment and the relationship between neighbouring objects and assets.
Geospatial techniques including digital maps and engineering principles enable us to manipulate an environment to facilitate and improve design, engineering, and ongoing operational needs. Digital methods work best when they are connected to form a network of digital tools producing standardised outputs and analytical processes. Integrating these with design, construction, commercial and operational activities, improves safety, quality, efficiency, and productivity in offices and on project sites.
Geospatial techniques including digital maps and engineering principles enable us to manipulate an environment to facilitate and improve design, engineering, and ongoing operational needs.
Skanska’s established engineering survey team undertake the relevant geospatial tasks as part of a variety of civil engineering project requirements, such as survey control establishment, topographic surveys and setting out.
Although the equipment and software we use today has moved on from the methods used by Euclid, Hipparchus, Anaximande and Gerard Mercator, the underlying principles and relationships between geometry, trigonometry, and cartography remain unchanged.
Fast forward through the incremental developments through history and we have the atomic clock, part of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), standardisation of units via Systeme International (SI), the microchip that contains billions of discrete
transistors to enable building information modelling (BIM), geospatial information systems
(GIS) software on computers and the survey equipment used by the geospatial profession.
We are now able to converge and cost effectively inform everyone of precise, current geospatial information.
Although the equipment and software we use today has moved on from the methods used by Euclid, Hipparchus, Anaximande and Gerard Mercator, the underlying principles and relationships between geometry, trigonometry, and cartography remain unchanged.Using data in the geospatial environment
At Skanska, our geospatial outlook is through collaboration of our existing teams, working in harmony through common digital threads, in an approach we call the Geospatial Triangle.
We use location information to combine GIS location, BIM, and reality capture to create layers of enhanced data sets – single model data sets combined from multiple data sources from multiple disciplines.
This enables design and operational teams to immediately visualise the location of assets through digital maps rather than drilling down through a file system. Information created for one process can be used for another process, without remaking the data.
Data that is already part of a clients’ data library can be refreshed to be useful for another process and improve accessibility.
The common data environment (CDE) is the core of our design and construction data. External and internal verified information enters our systems by application programming interface (API). Infinite possibilities are yet to be realised, however, our GIS solutions are unlocking the power of location for multiple disciplines in the field and in the office.
Improved information for design and operations
These images show the Geospatial Triangle approach in action. The screen on the right on the top image shows drone information being adopted into GeoBIM. The bottom image is showing mobile mapping being adopted into GeoBIM.
A topographic survey is naturally geospatial data. However, a topographical survey has in the past been aimed at a specific customer, the design team. This type of data would be displayed using specialist software to view the content. Using our Geospatial Triangle approach everyone with access to the internet can see the data and make informed decisions without specialist software.
A convergence of data can be viewed, with links to specific details. Topographic data, point clouds, orthomosaics, photographs, drone footage, pre-condition reports, ecology, archaeology, environmental, planned work tasks and the design model.
Using our Geospatial Triangle approach everyone with access to the internet can see the data and make informed decisions without specialist software.The design teams and project teams can see the updated aerial imagery, point clouds and the model together without having to ask a variety of team members to share information.
Mobile mapping data can be merged with model data with measurements taken directly
without the need for traffic management. Point clouds draped with imagery give visualisation of the real world while the ability to measure items from the safety of an internet connected device, Leica TruView provides this solution for us. Clients have seen the value of this and written it into their specifications.
In addition, the designers’ initial thoughts can be quickly unlocked when they have access to geospatially accurate information from approved sources and design teams and project teams are able to view increasing amounts of data in one place with GIS and location integration. This enables project teams to extend their digital workflows, uniting information from various sources and adding value and knowledge at the specific location of interest.
People and machines are providing and requesting geospatial information, from plant inspections to access permits.
How we better inform stakeholders and the public?
All stakeholders have long struggled with their unintentional silos due to the lack of connected locations. Explaining the complexity of information to those not from a professional discipline can be challenging.
GIS removes silos by displaying facts in an easy-to-understand format. Utility information, archaeology, land ownerships, protected species, and habitat can be seen as a symbiotic relationship between what we need to build and the existing built and natural environment. The stakeholder, public, and customers have the benefit of increased knowledge through their emersion into GIS and GeoBIM.
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Above image shows how augmented reality is being used to brief the team in the future construction of a bridge. The device shows building the bridge on the right, then demolishing the bridge on the left.
The benefit to us and project teams is that customers ask the targeted questions due to increased knowledge. Informing stakeholders in the field beyond GIS, can be achieved via augmented reality (AR) solutions and digital rehearsal animations.
The introduction of AR from Trimble SiteVision has enabled stakeholders to visualise design models in the field in real time accurately enabling project teams to brief stakeholders of how the project will look. Structures, utilities, ponds, landscaping road signs, lamp posts etc., are easily understood using AR in the field. The same tools that our construction teams use to brief the workforce are used to inform the stakeholders.
Bringing it all together with GEOBIM
GeoBIM integrates GIS and BIM to provide a combined visual representation of construction and location information – what are we building and where are we building? It provides unrestricted access to project information in 3D that is enhanced by the engineering detail of the 3D models to enable teams to collaborate from a single up-to-date data source.
Utility information, archaeology, land ownerships, protected species, and habitat can be seen as a symbiotic relationship between what we need to build and the existing built and natural environment.Topographic survey, point clouds, drone imagery, utility data and permits to dig, inspection workflows, movement monitoring sensors, quality inspection, hazard identification and positive interventions are some of the many inputs and outputs that help us plan at project execution.
This open, collaborative digital environment demonstrates our commitment to improving data and information sharing with stakeholders, adding to our social value commitment by providing an accessible interactive tool to illustrate the construction process to local communities.
The GeoBIM process is currently applied across our highways and rail sectors, on the National Highways’ Regional Delivery Partnership (RDP) and HS2 Main Works Civils Contract.
GeoBIM does not avoid the potential for individuals to draw different conclusions but rather enables all conclusions to be drawn from the same data set. This is because the data in the system, drawn from multiple sources, is the only project data available. Since everyone has the same view of the data, when you sit down to have a meeting you will be more capable of understanding the position of others before you start collaborating.
To give commercial confidence all the data that is gathered and organised within the system is user configurable and open to scrutiny – set up to be open to those with appropriate privileges – so that data can be checked in the normal way.
New equipment and training – investing in new pathways via CICES
The technologies we use change daily and as the equipment we deploy merges other software and technologies we must train our teams appropriately. Skanska use CICES for its engineering surveyors, GIS and is assisting in a future digital engineer route. There are many technologies and methods that are no longer new and innovative on their own, however, when innovators converge these technologies, the potential to increase knowledge transfer and operational efficiency is realised.
3D machine control (3DMC), is not new having been used since circa 1996, however, the cost and availability has changed the adoption in recent times. Now AR is converged with 3DMC, this enables machine operators and stakeholders to understand project requirements – two silos now in a near symbiotic relationship.
Drones were costly and required large desktop computers to process the data in the past. Reality capture software for drones now provides flight planning, ground control verification and cloud photo processing without the need for a large desktop computer.
There are many technologies and methods that are no longer new and innovative on their own, however, when innovators converge these technologies the potential to increase knowledge transfer and operational efficiency is realised.The outputs from drones can be published directly into 3D GIS environments with minimal interaction. Cloud computing is doing the heavy lifting, while the drone pilot can concentrate on the quality check procedures. The cost of drones has dropped as has the cost of delivering data from drone solutions without affecting accuracy, in the right hands of course.
Laser scanning and the deliverables from this method of capture have unlocked new methods for surveying, ‘as built’ and quality compliance that would have not been possible from traditional total stations in the past. The time savings on data capture for certain tasks provide an obvious improvement. Off-site manufacturing inspection using laser scanners, point cloud comparison to the models and a digital rehearsal are business as usual for engineering survey teams. However, the same data can be used in GeoBIM to better inform the project teams of the compliance to the design.
The manufacturers of the equipment and software offer off-the-shelf training for the products. Skanska has worked with the manufacturers to enable specific technical training plans for our teams. All engineering teams require training to ensure they are skilled in their
role and understand the responsibilities required. This is backed by BSI training (80-90% infrastructure BIM team certified to BSI standards), to maintain a high level of competency.
Future developments and conclusion
The Geospatial Commission wrote about the value of geospatial data, £11bn per year of geospatial opportunity was reported, and this is growing. National Highways estimate that its geospatial asset information data value was currently worth circa £80bn-plus as an infrastructure provider.
The National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) will deliver a fundamental change in the way we interact with our buried utilities, and NUAR will be geospatially rich from installation to decommissioning. The days of paper drawings as the primary deliverable will soon be long gone.
Off-site manufacturing is being adopted more and more and as the accuracy and precise requirements increase in the assembly world we will require the right combination of skills and technologies to be available. 3DMC, drones, laser scanning, augmented reality and detailed construction models are business as usual and fit well with both conventional construction and modern methods of construction.
The convergence of these modern methods into GeoBIM enables everyone to have access to accurate geospatial data and thereby make informed decisions. The densification of the mobile internet will reduce the latency of field to office workflows and ensure that our digital way of working is near real-time. Geospatial data is the real treasure map for the future, and we are building that treasure map day-by-day.
Mark Lawton FCInstCES Head of Engineering Survey, Skanska
Mark Lawton is chair of the CICES Geospatial Engineering Practices Committee.