Network Rail wins in the Advancing Virtualization through Digital Twins Category at Year in Infrastructure.
When it comes to railway upgrades at one of the UK’s busiest train stations, it’s not like you can just stop the transit system without disrupting the flow of millions of passengers who pass through each year. Well, that was true until COVID-19 showed up and brought things to a halt.
On March 17, 2020, Network Rail Wales and Western Region (NR WW) staff were informed that they had to work from home. That’s pretty much the same time that the rest of the world shut down, for the U.S. at least.
Though the UK government designated rail professionals as key workers, there were still restrictions on the movement of personnel due to the national lockdown in the first half of 2020, so Network Rail had to act fast to keep things moving, at least to some extent.
Meeting the challenges posed by the pandemic required a new way of thinking and working. Network Rail came up with an impressive plan of attack and sought tools from Bentley Systems to help. Network Rail does have much to be proud of here as running and maintaining a railway is no small task, especially during a pandemic.
At Bentley Systems’ The Year in Infrastructure (YII) 2020 Conference, held virtually in October, Network Rail submitted this project and took home a special recognition award in the “Advancing Virtualization through Digital Twins” category.
The name of the project was “Overcoming Challenges Under COVID-19 Lockdown,” and we are going to look at how Network Rail did just that, as told by John Nolan, program manager BIM, Network Rail.
“The challenge was the need for innovative thinking, agile digital transformation, and strong teamwork to overcome the day-to-day challenges that were part of the new normal,” said Nolan.
For starters, let’s take a look at the scope of Network Rail and what it is dealing with. The company consists of 5,000+ employees, who are responsible for 2,700 miles of track, 4,500 signals and more than 5,000 bridges, so they need a reliable source to stay on track when it comes to upgrades.
NR WW is in charge of the railway network in Wales, the Thames Valley, West of England, and the South West Peninsula of the United Kingdom—including transport to Europe’s busiest airport, London Heathrow—which serves 100+ million passengers yearly.
Network Rail needed a solution to update London’s Paddington and Exeter stations and turned to Bentley software solutions to help it maintain the railways during the pandemic. It utilized digital twins (digital replicas of railway assets) to meet its goals by using Bentley MicroStation, Descartes, OpenRail Designer, and ProjectWise—and picked up the aforementioned award along the way.
Furthermore, Network Rail utilized Bentley tools to adapt and change modeling pipelines to streamline design integration, construction approvals and site reporting.
Project Overview
There were two projects where movement restrictions impacted the team’s traditional way of working at Exeter and London’s Paddington stations. At Exeter, without the ability to engage in face-to-face meetings with the development team and having zero familiarity with the location and limited information from which to produce a viable result, the Network Rail team was required to model the station in 3D for the purposes of signal sighting. At Paddington Station, they had to work on a wayfinding renewals project aimed at improving signage visibility and commuter navigation.
Nolan oversaw the implementation of the regional building information modeling (BIM) strategy development of the digital twin.
According to Nolan, one of the challenges was that he and his team had limited access to perform construction tasks as they were all working from home. Another obstacle was maintaining a live railway during the upgrade.
Where face-to-face meetings in an office were previously crucial for the team, they now had to move to an online conference environment using Microsoft Teams. “One of the key challenges was how to conduct and deliver a live review,” said Nolan.
The plan was to roll out of BIM tools—specifically ProjectWise 365—to enable more efficient design, reporting, construction, handover and handback.
Network Rail’s Award-Winning Approach
For starters, Network Rail came up with a common data environment campaign plan where the BIM team began developing and testing online tools and processes to enable lean project delivery with the option to view a live design in a version-controlled environment. The team also utilized field applications that helped with reporting, site checks and maintenance.
“Some of this functionality already existed and proved paramount for Network Rail during these challenging times,” recalled Nolan.
Workflows were set up for projects working through ProjectWise. The share facility option was implemented to enable team members who don’t normally use digital information in ProjectWise Explorer and for those who needed to mark up PDFs.
Network Rail also had to set up an extensive library of training materials and conduct one-on-one training with its project teams and BIM teams using Microsoft Teams.
A benefit of this setup Nolan said was that no software was required because they used web-based tools and mobile applications.
Live Review Process Using Issues Resolution
They termed what they called the live review process “issue resolution,” because it gave them a live review.
Here Network Rail implemented the use of PDF markups in a live interdisciplinary design review, which enabled the following:
- Multiple users could view and comment on PDF drawings.
- Responsibility was assigned to specific users for each issue.
- Resolution was recorded and auctioned for future reference and project learning.
- Email notification for every action or a group email could be configured.
- Project issues, hazards and other tasks were recorded.
- ProjectWise links and other external data could be uploaded to the web viewer interface.
“I’ll mention it again, it [the web viewer interface] is very key,” Nolan said. “The fact that we can access these Bentley user accounts and log in to the web viewer makes this a seamless task.”
For field engineering, they used site reporting tools and the forms functionality in ProjectWise 365. “This was championed by the Whales and Western track lead discipline engineer, Gilles Moullec, who at the time was integrating our work with the construction management teams,” explained Nolan.
This setup enabled them to manage, view and approve field data from a mobile device at any location. Increased data collection, speed and quality inspection reports, punch lists and other field data were then viewable moments after completion. This also made the data more actionable because it could be enriched with links to relevant design data, content, photo attachments, geospatial location and videos.
A big part of the live review process was communication among their teams. “Our head of engineering championed the live review,” Nolan said.
Network Rail Goes Viral
Network Rail provided a video demonstration on the live functionality and what it was trying to achieve, which it also shared externally on LinkedIn, which Nolan said has been viewed by more than 8,000 people and counting.
“The rationale was to demonstrate both internally and externally what Network Rail was doing during COVID and to lead by example,” explained Nolan.
The Paddington Station Wayfinding Renewal Project
Paddington Station is one of the top 10 busiest train stations in the UK, with more than 40 million passengers passing through, according to a 2019/20 financial year report. So imagine having to make upgrades to such a station, especially during a pandemic.
During this time, Network Rail had to conduct the wayfinding renewals project, which Nolan said required cataloging over 100 elements of existing signage and providing an accurate layout of the station to develop and produce new signage.
However, they had to work with an incomplete and inaccurate base model of Paddington Station, which had no signage or assets modeled. “It was a general basic 3D model of the structure, but it wasn’t accurate,” he said.
So, they conducted an extensive laser scan survey of Paddington Station to capture all its assets and signage. They then analyzed the survey data to develop and advance their station model by using Bentley Descartes and its reality modeling tools.
As a result of producing a digital twin of Paddington Station, Network Rail was able to ensure future resource hours that were needed to perform other tasks, such as surveys and site visits, and reduce design work.
The use of digital workflows within Descartes reduced the amount of time needed to manipulate point cloud data by around half, resulting in delivery of the model about a month ahead of schedule, and also ensuring future work and further investment in the modeling team.
They’ve also been able to use the digital twin models for “optioneering,” the process of considering a wide range of possible solutions, for other enhancements to the station.
Signal Sighting Is Imperative
Signal sighting assessments are used by the rail industry to confirm that train operators can reliably read, interpret and respond to the signals on the track.
Nolan explained the importance of signal sighting, stating, “Signal Sighting reviews are the cornerstone of how Network Rail communicate and collaborate upgrades to signaling with train operating companies. Maintaining these reviews via traditional means during lockdown conditions would have been impossible.”
Therefore, Network Rail needed an innovative approach to collaborate in a digital build environment.
The Greater West Electrification project required that key elements of the signaling network at Paddington be modified in order for the projects to be accepted into service by the maintainer.
Emergency signal reviews were performed in May 2020 online using Bentley’s signal sighting tool. Using the software enabled Network Rail to provide an accurate and realistic representation of multiple signaling options along with multiple train locations, helping the committee arrive at an efficient solution without the need to leave the safety of their homes.
“As a regional BIM team, we have a strategy and vision for the future of BIM and the continued implementation of digital twin on our projects,” concluded Nolan.
If you’d like to learn more about Network Rail’s use of BIM and digital twins, check out another impressive project, “Bristol Area Signaling Renewal Enhancements,” by Network Rail, which it also submitted to YII last year. While this other submission did not win in the “Rail and Transit” category, Network Rail is still a winner in our eyes.
Also, if you’d like to nominate or submit a project for this year’s YII Conference, nominations are now open! Go here: https://yii.bentley.com/en/awards for more details and submit your project by May 21, 2021.
