The 2014 Infrastructure Conference: Inspiration for Hispanics
Last week the Infrastructure Conference for 2014 was held, again in London, which also celebrates the award known as Be Inspired.
The event was much more organized than other occasions, the mobile application that they designed for iOS and Android was the best; with updates, schedule, photos and recommendations for an almost non-existent leisure time. They always delivered papers the old-fashioned way, but the best thing was in the availability of digital versions of what everyone wants to bring, and that doesn't fit anymore
the suitcases back, while activating an app to listen to “Vivir para Contarla” in audio instead of watching empty movies or stressing over the trajectory map on those transatlantic trips.
More than we already knew ...
Among the new acquisitions, only SITEOPS captures my attention, a surprising application that automates territorial design in aspects such as parking lots or housing estates, readjusting on the fly when a limit, an axis, an entrance or the parking size parameters are displaced and with automatic cut / fill calculations. I saw it in Charlotte 6 years ago and I was fascinated, and while it worked on AutoDesk Civil3D, it seems that Bentley liked it so much that in a couple of years we will see it as a Geopak feature.
We liked the presentation of effective strategies that have been applied this year 2014, although I suppose they come from before. To keep the magic, I prefer to write them in their original language:
- Comprehensive BIM (Playbooks)
- Intrinsic Geo-context
- Virtualization of Talent
- Delivering Visibility (via digital twins)
Each carried an explanation of 5 sheets, for which it has been worth the 13 hours of flight which represents approaching the races in Tegucigalpa and falling headlong into London with barely an hour to take away with water the fear of Ebola in the sneezing of the Neighbour.
At the level of presentations, our respect for the size of exhibitors, in which there is no time to make notes so as not to lose the moment of inspiration. As I mentioned one day, these places are not going to be learned, but to know where the trends are going.
From the words of Ed Merrow, in his presentation on the Perspective of Capital Projects:
A project of great dimension does not occupy engineers, but a businessman ...
Project management is the art of being prepared for unforeseen events ...
An engineering project is a test exercise to our ability to manage information ...
This part reminded me of one of my few teachers, of whom regret took so little time for classes. Then I remembered a beautiful teacher who served me the subject "marketing social projects" and the combination with the current mentor who has dropped us from our UML schemes and in a lice shake has told us:
Stop talking about sustainability. Where is the profit from this system?
BIM: the road to where they all go.
The word that sounds the most today is BIM. 3 years ago it was i-model (digital twin), which is the same, but in a standard and word that everyone already accepts.
We are not going to impose BIM on anyone. But it is the only alternative.
In this, large companies are determined that countries approve legislation so that BIM is adopted as a standard for infrastructure management. Here almost everything fits, as we are talking about buildings, roads, industrial plants, transmission systems, traffic systems and everything involved in their cycle: Topography, architecture, construction, modeling, operation, maintenance and replacement.
It is interesting the priority that the mining cycle is taking, in which solutions such as MineCycle Designer, MineCycle Survey and MineCycle Material Handling are being promoted, where the capabilities of Bentley Map, AECOsim, OpenPlant and OpenRoads that until now had been more focused on more conventional disciplines. Of course, we already saw it coming after the Infrastructure 500 Top Owner companies appeared in markets whose strength is in the exploitation of natural resources, including mining.
The strategy of going not to the greats but to the gigantic has worked for Bentley, when they say that 20 of the 25 (80%), 40 of the 50 (80%), 69 of the 100 (69%) and 233 of 500 (46%) use at least ProjectWise or AssetWise to control infrastructure operation. Enough to be calm, although an approach in which they hope to reach medium or individual users via new channels from 2015 to 2018 has been interesting.
In the case of the Highways Agency that has started AssetWise Academy, it is valuable to promote the training of professionals in disciplines such as Highways, Railways, Transport and Mega Projects, implementing the management through the BIM standard.
What about Trimble?
In this it is very clear that the CEOs of Bentley, Trimble and Siemens have a very well orchestrated plan for 2018. The Trimble Dimensions event was developed in parallel, in the same week in Las Vegas, so it would not surprise me that in some two or three years announce that both events will be one. We know very well that the fusion of disciplines (not necessarily companies) will follow what we already saw in HEXAGON, where Leica, Erdas, Integraph and everything that had accumulated became an impressive model that Trimble + will have to reach. Siemes + Bentley.
On the part of Trimble there was a stand, where examples of integration between Bentley ProjectWise, read from GPS devices, a robotic total station collecting data and modeling towards ProjectWise using i-Model (digital twin) were shown. So I suppose it has been an intense year of work, in which the benefit is for both scenarios: Bentley reaches the field, with all the capabilities of these teams: point clouds, COGO, object modeling; Trimble has a platform that integrates the workflow from survey to design, with very agile re-stakeout options.
On the part of Siemens it was shown what they are doing, in a subject in which it seems to me that they were somewhat obsolete. With the integration of all the potential of the i-model (digital twin), Bentley applications for industrial plant management, electrical transmission systems, energy generation... Siemens is definitely the most benefited. Here, although the work must be hard, it seems to me that the chemistry is not the same; even in the exhibition at lunch on Wednesday it was necessary to ask the attendees for silence because they were more interested in the bite they gave to the chicken leg than in a somewhat conceptual powerpoint, with little demonstrative evidence. Of course, we were many civil engineers, architects, and few industrial or electrical engineers who are the ones who will be impacted by this.
What about the Be Inspired Premise
This time we have been assigned the tables, so we have not been able to make our betting table with colleagues from the other magazines. A shame because this time I was almost certain of my predictions, and maybe I would have gained the 10 pounds per head that these yellow-hair represent.
At the table that I had, we have shared with two Mexicans, a Dutchman, a South African and a pretty Portuguese girl. We agree that the level of projects this year has been monstrous.
It has been good to know that Latin America has brought three well-deserved prizes:
- The mining project of Peru.
- The Tunnel under the sea of Brazil.
- And the Uruguay Ports Project.
After several years of watching this event, I must admit that the premise that being there is inspiring is true. On this occasion I was able to speak with the speaker of the Uruguayan ports project, before and after, to digest the adrenaline of feeling like a winner, and wait a little longer. When you represent your country among 56 world-class projects, and your name is mentioned for the award, you definitely feel the patriotism that we hardly enjoy in World Cup qualifying matches. Nobody after a moment like this, will be the same the next day. And this my friends, is the Be Inspired!
In my predictions next year the event will be in London again, because these are in a smoke to die for. And then perhaps they will play it with China, to close in 2017 in Las Vegas with Trimble and Siemens in a single event that Bentley calls 1B18.
