Application of digital engineering in the water sector

Sven Harlos (Watercare Services Ltd), Matt Stanford (Fletcher Construction Company Ltd) and Farzam Farzadi (Beca Ltd) 

Auckland is expanding rapidly. Essential infrastructure needs to keep pace with this growth, including the water supply network. That’s why Watercare utilised the Enterprise Model (EM) with its culture of collaboration and agile delivery to meet the challenge. The Waikato River to Redoubt (R2R) programme delivered an additional 50 million litres of treated water per day from Waikato River to Auckland. The R2R programme included 5 workfronts spread across Waikato A Phase 1 located in Tuakau and Booster Pump Station located in Papakura. The fast track nature of this programme, presented several challenges to design, consenting and construction teams. The programme needed to be procured, designed, consented, constructed and commissioned in parallel and within 12 months’ time frame to meet Watercare’s target operational date in line with predicted lake storage forecasts. Watercare, and its EM partners Beca, Fletcher Construction Company Ltd (FCC) and Fulton Hogan (FH) recognised the criticality of implementing effective digital engineering (DE) processes to achieve the outcomes of the programme.

DE enables the development of digital data that can be adopted during the life cycle of an asset. This paper is a case study of Waikato R2R and will study positive impacts of implementing DE approaches in this Programme. It describes how digital data created via a variety of authoring tools through collaboration on daily basis made ‘the boat goes faster’. It also outlines development of digital data that commenced from design and progressed during construction and commissioning phases.

To implement a successful DE method, an automated process was developed to coordinate more than 80 design models and special files daily. A geospatial system created for the project, enabling flawless programmed daily collaboration across Beca and MTL who provided design support and between different models developed via a diverse range of tools, such as Revit, Plant3D, Civil3D, 12d, E3D, Navisworks and Recap Pro. DE helped the design and construction teams to coordinate continuously. This collaboration in the digital space enabled the construction team to provide rapid and efficient feedback on the practicality and constructability of the design information.

Verifying required design models was another initiative implemented for the Waikato R2R programme which significantly reduced the total number of required drawings. Coordinated and verified models provided digital data for FCC and FH, enabling digital construction rehearsal and construction. Construction teams empowered with information that was verified, digitally georeferenced and could be imported to machine controls. Machine controlled excavation enabled FCC and FH to accelerate the earthworks, construct efficiently, and reduce overall fuel consumption and environmental impacts of machinery.

To enable digital delivery of asset and as-built information, the DE team worked with Watercare to develop an asset data schema and as-built model specification. These guidelines assisted to upgrade design models to as built with respect to the construction programme and asset maintenance data. It also supported creation of digital asset information that is required for the operation phase.