Project
Hubei Electric Power Survey and Design Institute (HEPSDI) was retained to design and construct wind generating sets, pylons and bases, a booster station, and associated equipment for the CNY 435 million Macheng Caijiazhai Wind Farm. The project’s goal is to improve power supply to Macheng City in China’s Hubei province. Faced with sloping, mountainous terrain and large amounts of project data to be managed among multiple disciplines, the team needed integrated modeling and project collaboration to design the access road and power structures for construction management.
Solution
The team used UAV oblique photography to conduct a topographic site survey and ContextCapture to generate a landform reality mesh to resolve equipment locations and access routes. The team modeled the roadway traversing the mountainous site using OpenRoads and designed a 3D model of the booster substation with Bentley Substation, AECOsim Building Designer, and Bentley Raceway and Cable Management. ProjectWise served as the common platform to manage and share all project data among the multiple design disciplines. Bentley’s collaborative, interoperable technology facilitated hybrid modeling, enabling the team to combine the 3D digital design models with the reality mesh to optimize construction.
Outcome
ContextCapture, Bentley’s reality modeling application, reduced site survey and design time by providing an intuitive modeling environment to build a landform reality mesh of the entire site. Using OpenRoads to automate accurate cut-and-fill calculations optimized earthworks quantities, saving CNY 100,000 during the construction stage. AECOsim Building Designer, Bentley Substation, and Bentley Raceway and Cable Management enabled the team to generate a refined 3D digital model of the booster station to support accurate material takeoffs, procurement, and construction of the facility for an additional savings in construction costs. Working in a collaborative environment using ProjectWise streamlined workflows and improved engineering efficiencies reducing the construction period by 20 days.
Software
Using ContextCapture, HEPSDI generated a reality mesh of the mountainous project site that served as the basis for selecting appropriate equipment locations and layout of the transport and access route. Integrating 3D digital models of the roadway and booster station from OpenRoads, AECOsim Building Designer, and Bentley Substation with the reality mesh improved design rationality and construction. The team published all data to iModels and, with Bentley mobile applications, made the models accessible to on-site construction personnel. LumenRT enabled the production of highly efficient renderings of the models in just 10 minutes, providing the client with a comprehensive presentation of the project.
This project was a finalist in the Utilities Transmission and Distribution category of the 2017 Be Inspired Awards, now known as the Going Digital Awards in Infrastructure. Read the case study and watch the presentation:
