Contact:
Barbara Garrett, Fiatech
(512) 971-3671 or garrett@fiatech.org

Crossrail and UK Construction Receive International Recognition
for Engineering and BIM Innovations

April 21, 2014 - Crossrail, Europe’s largest construction project, and leading UK companies,
Costain and Mott MacDonald, have been recognised at the 2014 Technology Conference &
Showcase in Huntington Beach, CA.

Fiatech, headquartered in Austin, Texas, hosted  the Celebration of Technology & Innovation
(CETI) awards to recognise organisations for successfully implementing new and emerging
technologies including Building Information Modelling (BIM) and individuals for making significant
strides in advancing innovation in research and development.

Fiatech, a membership-led international community of global leadership organisations fosters
innovation in the capital projects industry and established the CETI awards selection jury which
was chaired by Barbara Migl of The Dow Chemical Company. The 2013 CETIs were awarded
in nine categories. The recipients, by category, are:

Automated Design
Mott MacDonald for Casement Park Stadium, Belfast

Mott MacDonald was the lead consultant for the delivery of the new 38,000 seat Gaelic athletics
stadium in Belfast, with responsibility for project management, cost-consultancy, architecture and
all engineering services. Considering the technical challenges imposed by a physically restricted
site, the very low budget in comparison to an aspirational client brief, the onerous contractual
requirements with unlimited liability, combined with a very fast track delivery programme and a fee
30% lower than previous stadium projects, this job required a different approach to bring it safely
across the line.Through the use of a multi-disciplinary, highly developed BIM process from the
outset, combined with innovative design practices, Mott MacDonald managed to meet all the
programme, budgetary, performance and commercial criteria placed on the project team and in
doing so developed a new methodology for the delivery of stadia that will become the blueprint for
future projects within Mott MacDonald and assist others with open sharing of new processes and
protocols. Mott MacDonald approached this project by looking at the key business and practical
drivers and developed a strategy to deliver the project in the most efficient way to add value.
Rather than being seduced by the bells and whistles of modern design technology, Mott MacDonald
developed a project BIM Execution Plan to meet the client’s key goals for the project. The key
strength of Mott MacDonald’s approach was in the integration of the technical processes
including all disciplines through the Common Data.

Technology & Knowledge-Based Workforce
Bentley Systems Incorporated for Bentley Crossrail Academy

As with many methodologies, BIM is a combination of process, technology, and people. It
was recognised at Crossrail that both technology (through their partnership with Bentley)
and process (through years of experience) were strongly represented in their BIM strategy
but people were not. In August of 2012, Crossrail Chief Executive Andrew Wolstenholme and
Greg Bentley from Bentley Systems decided to act on this and resolved to create an academy
that would deliver this last piece of the BIM puzzle.The academy delivers a full curriculum that fully
explains Crossrail’s BIM vision and how each of the attendees can play their part. It describes the
processes that take information throughout the lifecycle of a project and puts them into real world
context. The curriculum in the academy ranges from technology training, process coaching, and
of course the all-important people workshops helping the industry participants understand why
and how they are changing the way that they have worked for decades. For the first time, an
academy has educated the complete supply chain from widget manufacturers, logistics teams,
tier 3, 2 & 1 contractors and up to the owner/operators themselves, so everyone understands
that the virtual asset is as important as the physical one. 

Intelligent Self-Maintaining & Repairing Operational Facility
Costain Group for Self-Healing Material Research

Costain has a strong focus on research to accelerate innovation to market. Engineering
Tomorrow is Costain’s strategy for identifying, developing and implementing innovation to
improve the performance of its customer business. Materials for Life is a research project lead
by Cardiff University, with Costain as the lead industrial sponsor. The collaboration involves
research work at Cardiff, Bath and Cambridge Universities and has attracted interest from
industrial and academic partners both nationally and internationally. The aim of the programme
is to develop smart materials with increased durability and lifespan. A current focus of the
programme is the development of self-healing concrete. The self-healing properties of the
material are expected to significantly reduce maintenance costs for concrete structures.
Costain’s role is to provide site trials for the material, expected to be ready for full-scale
use by June 2015.

Intelligent & Automated Job Site
Bechtel Corporation for Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site, Curtis Island

RFID technology has been available for many years, but it had yet to be proven valuable on
a large scale construction project. Bechtel piloted the technology twice previously. The first
pilot was a Construction Industry Institute (CII) project completed in 2008, as referenced in
the published white paper “Leveraging Technology to Improve Construction Productivity”,
the second pilot was a power project where a limited deployment (20,000 active tags) took
place in 2010. Knowing the technology was possible, the challenge was fully adapting and
integrating the technology to make it work within existing business processes.

This implementation took place where one of the world’s highest concentrations of
capital construction projects operates simultaneously and it required a massive amount
of commitment and effort from all stakeholders to make it a success. Implementing RFID
was deemed a significant approach the project team could potentially use to meet the
schedule while keeping labor costs as planned. The projects referenced in this submittal
prove that if Bechtel can successfully implement RFID for their Curtis Island LNG projects
in Australia, then any construction company anywhere in the world could do the same for
their projects. Bechtel plans to continuously improve this implementation on the Curtis
Island projects as well as future capital projects. The benefit from using this technology
has been found to be necessary to meet the ever more competitive demands of delivering
construction projects on schedule and within budget. It has not only been adapted to material
management software applications, but it has also helped improve work processes. Bechtel
is currently moving work processes further upstream. Fabricators are beginning to tag and/or
barcode items  before they are shipped and they are beginning to provide necessary
metadata in advance in order  to better facilitate the downstream work processes as well.
There are also plans to utilize the tagging and mobile computing further downstream on
the construction side to ensure continuity  of material tracking that will assist in recording
progress and record quality inspections through plant startup.

Life Cycle Data Management & Information Integration
AREVA NP for AIRE Program – Industrial Application of 15926

AREVA’s AIRE program is an industrial, commercially deployable solution to support

interoperability. The AIRE Platform has been developed to support multiple interoperability
standards beyond ISO15926, but with a focus on commercial, practical application and
support. AIRE is capable of managing diverse and multi-level interoperability scenarios,
enabling partners with many levels of “interoperability maturity” to collaborate seamlessly.
Currently, AIRE has been used for numerous proof-of-concepts to simulate real-project based
data-handover, including full P&ID to P&ID migration, EPC to Owner/Operator data exchange,
and configuration management of data exchange between customers. Based on the positive
results of these proof-of-concept projects, the platform has been applied to real-life projects
within AREVA to support tool obsolence and tool migration programs with positive ROI and
quality improvements.  The platform and engineering program, presented world-wide at
conferences and at request by companies, is the first commercially supportable product
developed that can support any “maturity level” of data exchange, support collaborative
mapping processes for developing common RDLs, and leverage the power of data quality
checks in order to verify and validate the quality and completeness of data exchanges
before and during data exchange. AIRE’s capabilities are a major step forward in the
“industrial” deployment of ISO15926.

New Materials, Methods, Projects, & Equipment
Mott MacDonald for Sustainable Treatment for ALWC, LATreat™

LATreat™ a new method to reduce the time and cost of marine structure repair and
greatly extend facility performance through a sustainable approach.It is a highly innovative
‘magic bullet’ treatment with a new application approach that uses the components of
seawater to sterilise and then deposit a protective coating to marine steel structures
affected by accelerated low water corrosion (ALWC). Corrosion due to ALWC is typically
0.3mm to 2mm per year – far greater than the 0.08mm to 0.17mm caused by other forms
of corrosion. ALWC can cause premature perforation of unprotected steel resulting in
expensive remedial works. If untreated, thinning of steel can occur to such an extent that
it leads to premature failure of a structure. One of the drivers for the development of
LATreat™ was very stringent legislation regarding contamination of seawater and
estuarine waters. Concerns exist over the leaching of zinc and aluminum into water where
cathodic protection systems have been installed and the possible adverse effect that
chemical coatings could have on the natural environment. LATreat™ is an environmentally
friendly process where all the active agents are derived purely from seawater. The process
also greatly reduces the requirements for new material resources to repair ALWC damage,
thereby minimising waste and enhancing the sustainability of existing structures. LATreat™
is now commercially available after a decade of extensive development, investment and
highly effective trialing. The process has recently been used at Shoreham Port in the UK
to protect against accelerated corrosion and enhance the long-term performance, durability
and safety of berths in a considerably more targeted, effective and environmentally friendly
way than existing corrosion treatment methods.
 
Outstanding Student Research Project
Li Wang of the University of Texas at Austin

Li Wang, a PhD Candidate at the University of Texas at Austin (UT‐Austin), is developing an
innovative approach for capturing, representing and formalizing experiential knowledge in design
coordination to inform better design decisions, improve collaboration efficiency, and train novice
designers and engineers. In addition to research, Li has been responsible for teaching lab
sessions for a graduate‐level Building Information Modeling (BIM) class for Construction
Management at UT‐Austin.  Under the guidance of her academic advisor, Dr. Fernanda Leite,
Li authored “An Overview of Existing BIM Guidelines and Standards” for the Fiatech
AutoCodes Project.

Outstanding Early Career Researcher
Dr. Mani Golparvar-Fard

Building on advanced computer vision and machine learning techniques,

Dr. Golparvar-Fard’s, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and of Computer Science
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, formalizes simple and effective monitoring

and control techniques for construction teams. Particularly, he investigates how to

streamline the utilization of images/videos with Building Information Models. Connecting

these emerging sources of information, his research creates the theoretical foundation

for a project control system that monitors actual performance of a project and

highlights deviations from expected performance in time to take corrective action. This

system also enables learning from project to project so that the basis for design and/

or planning can be improved. Dr. Golparvar-Fard’s research builds upon a number of key

disciplines outside the traditional Construction Management domain, namely computer

vision/graphics, and machine learning. Particularly he focuses on geometric and

appearance-based computer vision to monitor construction progress and productivity,
identify unsafe locations or practices, and assess the carbon footprint of a project.
Dr. Golpavar-Fard’s is an active participant in Fiatech’s Mobile IT initiatives.

Outstanding Researcher with Career of 10+ Years
Dr. Theodore (Ted) Blackmon

A visionary and entrepreneur, Dr. Blackmon helped to pioneer the market for virtual
construction simulation and automation tools for Advanced Work Packaging and
4D/5D/6D BIM. In the 1990’s Dr. Blackmon was a team member of the highly
successful Mars Pathfinder mission, where he developed and operated the MarMap
software program in mission control to plan the daily activities for the Sojourner rover
(the first robotic vehicle to reach the surface of another planet). With the support of
NASA he commercialized the technology to launch Common Point in 1999. As their
President and CTO, he invented the ConstructSim and OpSim platforms in the early
2000 timeframe, helping to pioneer the market for virtual construction simulation and
4D/5D/6D BIM. Following the acquisition of Common Point by Bentley Systems in 2008,
Dr. Blackmon served as their VP of Construction Solutions for many of years. After
leaving Bentley, Dr Blackmon served as President and CEO of Intelliwave, a Canadian
leader in use of RFID / GPS solutions for tracking materials, equipment and personnel
on large complex construction projects. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering
from Penn State University and graduated at the top of his class in 1992. He received
his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998,
where his research focused on human neurological control of movement and vision.
He was honored as a Penn State Alumni Achievement Award recipient in 2005.
Dr. Blackmon’s thought leadership and domain expertise in construction automation
make him a sought after speaker. He has provided keynotes in a number of leading
construction related events around the globe. Dr. Blackmon is currently CEO of
Construct-X and Director at the CIA (Construction Industry Academy) and serves as
the Technical Lead and Facilitator for the Fiatech Advanced Work Packaging Information
Mapping (AIM) Project. The AIM project goal is to fulfill a critical need to provide
data specs and contract recommendations to truly enable the productivity, cost and
safety benefits detailed in the CII RT 272 Advanced Work Packaging model
and best practices.