The winners of the 12d International Innovation Awards 2016 have been announced. Aimed at recognising leadership and innovation in the design and execution of construction, engineering and surveying projects, the eight winners were announced at the recent 12d International Conference
The two overall winners were SMEC and a joint venture between Lend Lease and Bouygues.
SMEC was recognised for a combination of entries, all of which showed innovative thinking and problem-solving. Brisbane-based Arvind Chovatia, developed a unique way to check point-to-point sight distances quickly and easily. Initially created for the Gateway Upgrade North, the technique is intuitive enough to be used across any highway project. Meanwhile, Melbourne-based colleagues Joshua Allison and Michael Bozikis developed a Central Hub for all the tools designers require for drainage and sewer design.
Lend Lease and Bouyouges’ David Mares was awarded for developing workflow solutions for the NorthConnex project – the deepest tunnel in Australia which will use 19 road headers working around the clock.
The amount of data involved with a project of this scale meant that traditional methods of data management were insufficient.
Mares designed workflows based around 12d Synergy’s Data Sync tool that standardised survey output, provided a route for quality assurance checking of survey work, and ensured that surveyors are using the most up-to-date datasets, pushed out from a central data store.
The winners of the various other categories at the event included:
‘Banishing the Drafting Demon’ – Duncan Whiteley (Pulver Cooper & Blackley)
This bonus category created by judges due to the quality of Duncan Whiteley’s entry with Pulver Cooper & Blackley (PCB), a surveying and design firm involved in land development. Having researched bottlenecks in the process of drawing creation from 12d Model designs, Whiteley taught himself the 12d Model macro language and produced a macro to assist with the process. His project demonstrated quality assurance and time saving advantages in keeping the drafting inside 12d Model, and has quantified this in monetary terms.
Drainage – Mal Peaker (Engineering Solutions Queensland)
Peaker created a complex horizontal and vertical design of water mains (pressure) including joint deflection, bends, and stacked bends. He took the tools inside 12d Model and wrapped them into a macro for water main designs. Extensive consultation with the designers on his team led to a design tool that fit their needs perfectly.
Customisation – David Greaves (Department of Transport Main Roads Queensland)
Under Greaves’ leadership, TMR developed a set of configuration files, process specific macros, and workflows for use internally and by consultants working for TMR. These included macros for surveyors and designers, and innovative tools to work with Point Cloud data, and to interface with other software tools.
Customisation – Niall Brady (Arup Cardno JV)
Working on Portion C of the Woolgoolga-Ballina highway, the project required the implementation of digital engineering processes during detail design to provide a BIM of the project. The project team developed workflows, design snippets, bespoke macros to deliver the highway design (including pavement), and stormwater drainage design as well as a fully-tagged BIM model of the design.
Design – Aidan Bickhoff (Sunshine Coast Council)
Bickhoff developed a tool to provide smooth data exchange between 12d Model and SIDRA. Layouts of roundabouts or intersections developed in 12d Model have been easily passed to SIDRA for analysis. Any tweaks made in SIDRA are brought back to 12d Model. The “SIDRA-2-12d Bridge” cut development time from up to a week down to a few hours.
12d Synergy – David Healy and Phillip Stoddart (J. Wyndham Prince)
Healy and Stoddart pushed the customisation of 12d Synergy to a new level. Using PHP, Java and CSS, they were able to tap into financial data and present this to 12d Synergy users in a coherent and useful fashion. Users are able to see project milestones and financial performances on the 12d Synergy dashboard.
12d are the Australian software company behind the 12d suite of infrastructure software products including 12d Model, 12d Synergy and 12d Field. 12d Model has become one of—if not the—most commonly used terrain modelling and civil works software for infrastructure projects in Australia and New Zealand, with international uptake spreading into over 65 countries.
Data management system 12d Synergy has been making waves since its first use in the Christchurch rebuild. As was exposed during the recent 12d International Conference, 12d Synergy is now being used in many of Australasia’s major infrastructure projects, not only to handle survey and modelling data but also email correspondence, collaboration and quality assurance.