This is Concrete - Innovation

Four yellow trucks in a quarry via Trimble hololens

It has now been 8 years since the Government’s BIM Mandate and a lot has happened since then, but has it been truly innovative or disruptive?

For Duncan Reed, Digital Construction Process Manager at Trimble Solutions (UK) Ltd, there has been plenty of innovation happening in the industry that is relying on new digital technologies but not always thought of as being BIM.

In quarries the use of drones, laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3D modelling gives operators a far better understanding of their assets. Combining this with on-board telemetry of quarry vehicles provides opportunities to save time and money with these operations. Trials are already taking place of both autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles to further improve the sustainability of quarrying activities.

At the design and manufacture stage accurate, constructible models allow architects, engineers and fabricators to create vastly improved details, carry out constructability reviews, clash detect reinforcement with itself and inserts or embeds as well as allowing for new methods of creating complex formwork for casting items using 3D printing techniques.

Man wearing Trimble hololens headset to view a quarry

It is at this point that the information about the product comes into its own in the digital age. This data about a product is where the industry is driving to create the digital twin – whether at the product level or right up to Cambridge Centre for Digital Built Britain Gemini Principles for establishing a National Digital Twin and using data for the public good. This is where it isn’t necessarily the product itself that is more innovative but the data linked to the product is accessible to deliver considerable added value across the lifecycle of the asset. However data for the public good does not mean data for all – cyber security must remain a key priority for all built assets.

Further innovation is being brought to the sector by improvements to sensing technology. Cheaper sensing technology can now be fitted to new and existing structures to allow real-time analysis of their behaviour. For asset operators with large portfolios of complex concrete structures these changes allow the potential for huge amounts of data to be collated and then processed into useful real-time analysis. These outputs can allow for more efficient maintenance regimes based upon real documented requirements and help operators to determine trends in the performance of their concrete assets. Targeted predictive maintenance becomes business as usual for operators to deliver more with less.

Finally the digital record allows for accurate replacement of parts when they do reach end of life – ensuring less impact on users of the assets during these maintenance works. Very soon it will be that the digital record of concrete assets is as important, if not more so, than the asset itself.