Caspar Herzberg |
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2018 issue of The Record.
With more than 1.7 million people residing in just 94 square miles, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia has one of the highest population densities globally. As a result, it is estimated that residents living in the Greater Klang Valley region collectively spend 280 million hours per year stuck in traffic. The second line of Mass Rapid Transit Corporation’s (MRTC) Klang Valley Mass Rapid Transit railway project, the SSP line, is intended to create better mobility for residents and make it possible to ease traffic by an estimated 160,000 cars daily.
The SSP line is Malaysia’s largest infrastructure project, which includes 11 interchange stations to make it easier for commuters to transfer to existing and future rail lines, and 16 stations with park and ride facilities. In addition to creating an estimated 130,000 new employment opportunities, the new line has the potential to generate RM20 billion (US$4.8 billion) in cost savings per year as a result of reduced traffic congestion.
The MRTC project team uses Bentley OpenRail’s Connected Data Environment (CDE) comprising the shared services of ProjectWise and AssetWise, powered by Microsoft Azure to ensure seamless information exchange, real-time collaboration, and management of asset information across the lifecycle, among project team members.
With the increased use of building information modelling (BIM) methodology in civil construction projects, a cloud-based, intelligent 3D model-based process is made possible through Bentley’s solution, which provides many advantages for mega-scale infrastructure projects – including improved collaboration, better visualisation into projects, efficient resource planning, and improved productivity. However, even as BIM methodology continues to progress from the use of 2D CAD and electronic print-based processes to 3D CAD and electronic data sharing based on industry standards, the added complexity that comes with multiple teams involved in the project required MRTC to address and ensure collaboration across teams.
Bentley Systems’ Microsoft Azure-powered solution enables MRTC to improve precision of construction and to improve project safety by enabling easy exchange of the correct information between the project teams. The use of the CDE has enabled more than 1,500 users to collaborate on and share more than 45,000 documents, corresponding to 750GB of design files. The ability to manage and utilise this data provides the basis for confident decisions and actions in both design and construction. The solution has also enabled widely dispersed teams, including numerous external vendors, to work with a federated design model on the complex project.
Poh Seng Tiok, director of planning and design for MRTC noted that on a project of this scale and complexity, it is essential to effectively manage and share the huge amount of data across the entire project – from design and construction, through to operation and asset management.
“We need to make sure that all the different [project] phases are well covered and information that we build up during design, and during construction are taken forward during the operation and maintenance stage for better understanding,” Tiok said. “By turning to the Bentley/Microsoft cloud-based solution, we are able to streamline collaboration across all teams and identify and mitigate potential issues, before they impact cost, schedule, and safety. We expect to increase productivity by about 35%, through reducing design rework by providing real-time, accurate information.”
Kaushik Chakraborty, Bentley Systems’ vice president and regional executive for Asia South, said: “The KVMRT project demonstrates how the world’s infrastructure projects are ‘going digital’ through the power of cloud services to improve project delivery and asset performance. Together with Microsoft, we are pleased to see organisations tapping the power of the cloud to realise the potential of real-time business insights and collaboration to deliver greater efficiency in a highly complex industry.”