Esb international

‘ Barry McAuley, Ph.D. Post-Doctoral Researcher 086 014 4853 bmcauley@cita.ie www.bicp.ie

BICP Case Study: ESB International packages of AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit were both purchased and installed on a number of machines.

Background ESB International, is wholly owned by Electricity Supply Board and is a leading engineering consultancy firm to the global utility sector.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, they employ over 750 staff across operations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia. They work in partnership with asset owners to deliver large-scale, capital intensive projects, using a proprietary project delivery methodology to minimise project risk and maximise investor returns.

Their portfolio ranges from gas, coal, hydro, wind and other renewable projects. Their capabilities span a wide range of disciplines and technology areas, including project management, specification development, contract negotiation and site construction and commissioning. They also provide a full range of civil, structural, environmental, planning and geotechnical services necessary for the planning, design and construction and maintenance of electrical infrastructure. To achieve this scope of services there are four inter linked departments consisting of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Generation Engineering, Network Engineering and Asset Management.

BIM in practice To date the primary benefits from BIM have been realised within substation and windfarm design and construction. Significant benefits with regards to substations have been realised through the use of Revit for the advanced co-ordination of switchgear and associated cables. In an electric power system, switchgear is the combination of electrical disconnect switches, fuses or circuit breakers used to control, protect and isolate electrical equipment. The associated cables can have up to a 5-meter bending radius and can be challenging to install in a tight basement arrangement. This design process is now modelled before installation on site, so as to select the optimal arrangement and to avoid any clashes. In general, BIM has enabled the application of advanced clash detection capabilities which has ultimately reduced the Requests for Information (RFI) by approximately 80%.

Figure 1 provides an image taken from a live model of a substation layout.

ESB International is focused on the electrical infrastructure sector, where BIM is viewed as having the great potential across the full cycle of development from concept through to operation and maintenance. To this effect it was decided that a number of existing staff should enroll on the DIT accredited MSc in Applied BIM & Management course. The skills learnt from this course were used as the starting point to implement BIM processes within the ESB International Civil Department.

It was decided that the best way forward was to immediately use these learnings and adopt a learn from doing approach. The Autodesk software

Figure 1: Substation layout

The Civil & Environmental Department have found that one of the greatest advantages to date through the

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use of BIM technologies is its application for Health and Safety (H&S). The models have been used to provide walk throughs on site, so as to highlight the areas where there are live electric cables. The model can be used to identify exclusion zones which represent the areas of safety were the workers can operate. At present ESB International are investigating the use of a GPS tagging system which will sound an alarm once a worker exits this exclusion zone.

Figure 2 provides an illustration from the model of the visual capabilities available to demonstrate H&S safety concerns.

swept path analysis to assist with establishing the best transportation routes for the blades. The turbine hardstand design can also be assisted through access to a number of advanced modelling tools.

The Civil and Environmental Department team are responsible for the surveying of large areas. In order to advance productivity in this area it was decided to apply drone technology. An initial investment of â‚Ź5000 was used to purchase the drone along with the correct training. It has been found that the same areas can now be surveyed much faster and previous areas that were once inaccessible can now be recorded.

This data is used to generate 3D models through 4D Pix. This is a photogrammetry software which uses images to generate point clouds, digital surfaces, terrain models, orthomosaics and textured models.

This software can also be used to analyse, share and integrate as built data with BIM. Despite some of the significant benefits realised through BIM there is still a requirement in some areas to probe the peat by hand.

Next Steps

Figure 2: Section of the model.

For windfarm design the software package AutoCAD Civil 3D software, which supports BIM for enhanced civil engineering design has been primarily adopted.

This software enables one to understand the cut and fill requirements specifically with regards to peat analysis. A sub surface stratum (peat, competent material, rock etc) from survey data is created and modeled in Civil 3D. From this one can understand the quantities of peat to be excavated and best position logistically to pile the excavated peat. The access roads can be designed using the conditional subassemblies to automate decisions for the road embankment slopes. Once the roads have been modeled then one can perform a

ESB International believe that significant advantage can be gained from extending BIM to provide the digital database information for the commissioning, maintenance and operational stage. They are now in the process of reviewing their BIM strategy to provide guidance on how they can integrate their asset management software requirements into their existing BIM workflow. This strategy will also focus on manufacturer information requirements and data storage capacity. This BIM strategy will be strongly reflective of their organizational strategy, so as to ensure its successes moving forward.

Acknowledgements Eoin O Brien, John Byrne, Colin Donnelly and Liam McManus (All ESB International) Case Study prepared by Dr. Barry McAuley (CitA/DIT), Dr. Alan Hore (CitA/DIT) and Prof Roger West (TCD).

Published: September 2017

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