Capital and operational budgets are increasingly constrained with clients wanting to optimise management of their assets and to reduce logistic needs and waste. Rapid response service provision contracts often have to offset design risk with excessive contingency.

Pressure to reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon footprints is rising all the time.

Clients are often operating in remote locations with limited access to cloud servers so need to design, construct and operate their infrastructure in austere environments.

Time for designing, contracting and delivering this infrastructure is often highly constrained by clients’ demanding operating context and often limited real estate.

Clients need to ‘design in’ an open, modular and scalable architecture from the outset so that maximum efficiency as well as the potential to expand and adapt the site are achieved.

Finally, unlike in the construction industry, the benefits of Building Information Modelling (BIM) approaches have yet to be leveraged in this market.

The UK Government’s 2011 Construction Strategy embraced the use of BIM and mandated its use to maturity Level 2 on all centrally procured projects by 2016. The strategy highlighted its use as core to challenging existing industry business models and practices and driving greater collaboration, efficiency, innovation and value across all elements of the industry.

Essentially BIM is seen as key to helping the industry:

» Boost delivery and operational efficiency; » Reduce cost and improve value; » Lower the carbon footprint; » Improve collaboration across the supply chain; and

» Improve quality of customer outcomes

The RAPID tool aims to tackle these challenges and exploit the benefits in the temporary, deployable infrastructure domain.

The ChallengeRAPIDRapid Assessment and Planning for Infrastructure Design

Clients across the civil and defence sectors need to design temporary infrastructure with deployable assets in order to support construction of fixed infrastructure as well as other logistic and operational activities ranging from military operations to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Founded in 1911, SNC-Lavalin is a global fully integrated professional services and project management company and a major player in the ownership of infrastructure. From offices around the world, SNC-Lavalin’s employees are proud to build what matters. Our teams provide comprehensive end-to-end project solutions – including capital investment, consulting, design, engineering, construction, sustaining capital and operations and maintenance – to clients in Defence, aerospace and security, transportation, oil and gas, mining and metallurgy, infrastructure and power.

On July 3, 2017, SNC-Lavalin acquired Atkins, one of the world’s most respected design, engineering and project management consultancies.

Atkins is developing the Rapid Assessment and Planning for Infrastructure Design (RAPID) tool to leverage its diverse skills to benefit civil and military clients who need to design and operate temporary and deployable infrastructure. Specifically, RAPID aims to exploit:

» Our Defence domain knowledge » Our decision support expertise, namely operational analysis, option analysis and business case development

» Our expertise in BIM, asset management, logistics and through life engineering support

» Our geomatic survey, Geographic Infor-mation Systems (GIS) and software development capabilities

» Our industrial control systems expertise (eg SCADA)

» Our breadth of expertise in utilities – water, waste, environment, carbon footprint assessment and clean power

Our design credentials

Case Studies:

SNC-Lavalin:

» Canadian Augmentation Programme (CANCAP) deployable infrastructure service contract for the Canadian Forces since 2002

» Design, construct and operate remote camps for civil clients

Atkins:

» Master-planning in Kosovo » Ground works and temporary infrastructure for London Olympics in 2012

» Expeditionary Campaign Infrastructure Study for Dstl

» MOD’s Generic Base Architecture Technical Working Group

What is it?

RAPID is an innovative collaborative web-based 2D-5D BIM design and decision support tool to help clients design faster, more integrated and better value deployable and temporary infrastructure. RAPID optimises use of GIS, real estate and resources, lowers construction and maintenance costs and reduces risk.

RAPID is envisaged as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering although licence options are available.

How does it work?

The tool enables clients to develop camp design options using four stages: requirements capture, concept and developed design, and user review in virtual reality. With a catalogue of currently over 300 records, clients have access to a wide variety of military and commercial off the shelf (COTS) assets, which can be configured to reflect their preferred suppliers and particular needs.

Once developed design options have been sufficiently matured, they can be compared using the scorecard dashboard, which aggregates Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) construction and maintenance costs, predicted construction times and utilities usage such as water and fuel. Insights gained from this assessment process can be used to refine the options and review in 3D VR mode. This material can also be shared or circulated with wider stakeholders or for peer review to ensure user needs are met and enable technical assurance. When fully matured, these option summaries can be extracted as inputs into business cases. Ultimately the chosen option could then be developed into a more detailed design in the next phase of the infrastructure lifecycle.

Clients can exploit open source GIS as well as configure RAPID with their own proprietary datasets according to the region and the level of detail required.

RAPID – what is it?Why is it important?

1. Faster collaborative design process, user validation, technical assurance and decision-making

2. Reduces logistic needs through design optimisation and reduced fossil fuels

3. Reduces construction and through-life costs

4. Immersive visualisation for designers, decision-makers and users

5. Enables 2D – 5D BIM compliance at Levels 2-3

6. Relevant to civilian and defence infrastructure needs

Illustrative views of the RAPID design processRAPID’s expandable menu allows the designer to use the three levels of the architecture to define the nature, size and location of the zones within the camp perimeter and then in the next stage of the design process to allocate assets to fulfil the tasks to be undertaken in the zones. These asset records are compliant with, and expand upon, the data types defined in the UK MOD DefStan 23-013 Issue 2. Assets include linear features such as fences and protective perimeter walls (eg Hesco bastions in multiple configurations), 2D layers such as

matting and 3D infrastructure (eg containers, tents, generators etc with appropriate additional footprint to allow access and peripherals).

In addition to comparing options across the metrics mentioned above, the scorecard enables the designer to review the overall assessment of the option including reviewing the work breakdown structures, cost breakdown structures, bill of materials and free-text allowing a qualitative assessment of options and outstanding tasks.

Assets can be selected from the asset catalogue and positioned in a zone.

RAPID compares camp options in terms of costs, time and utilities usage.

3D Virtual Reality ModeOnce an option has a developed design with assets allocated to zones to meet the requirement, the design can be viewed in 3D virtual reality on normal information and communications technology and via VR headsets such as HTC Vive or Oculus. Use of electronic touch tables are also an excellent way of reviewing camp options in a highly immersive and collaborative manner.

This allows designers to visualise and adjust the design. It also allows wider stakeholders to view and assure the design meets their needs. Potential camp users can also use the tool to undertake familiarisation and training prior to deployment. Safety and security assessments of the designs can also be undertaken. Inter-visibility assessments and communications path analysis from sites are also potential exploitation opportunities.

Designs can be viewed and explored in a 3D and a virtual reality environment.

RAPID Benefits

Faster and more collaborative design and decision-making processes

Exploitable both by civil and military clients

Improves initial design, reduces re-work and speeds up construction leading to

better value for money

Exploits a tailored BIM approach Improves effectiveness and efficiency by decreasing cost and time to deploy, operate

and recover assets

Enhanced exploitation of GIS

Exploits remote data capture so speeding up planning and reducing risk

Visualisation for decision-makers & users

BIM

Consistency with the UK MOD’s open, modular and scalable Generic Base

Architecture Defence Standard 23-013 Issue 2

Coherent and consistent planning for deployable infrastructure at all levels

(strategic to tactical)

Reduces risk to personnel by exploiting GIS data and reducing need for local

reconnaissance and ground surveying through use of remote systems

Assists environmental compliance and reduces logistic need by optimising

consumption of water, waste, fuel and power

Digitises client asset management so enabling better configuration management

and reduced throughlife costs

Assists early orientation and training of users prior to deployment

Reduced time to construct

CO2

!

RAPIDRapid Assessment and Planning for Infrastructure Design

RAPID Roadmap to a suite of RAPID modules

* Dynamic Objects is an Atkins rule-based, 3D engineering tool that significantly shortens the project lifecycle in the outline design phase, freeing up time to iterate a number of designs and allowing clients to optimise against their business outcomes.

Around this initial core of the RAPID tool, we see an opportunity to build a set of modules to meet client needs across the lifecycle, in particular deepening the BIM functionality, exploiting open source and client GIS, integrating remote survey, linking in a Force Protection Engineering module (potentially using an Atkins managed Dstl modelling tool)

and enabling Operational Analysis of client needs across a theatre of operations. This roadmap is an indicative view of how Atkins could exploit RAPID across many sectors. We would welcome conversations with potential clients on how we could meet their challenges using this suite of functionality.

NB. Dates shown for development of these modules are indicative and depend on internal and client investment.

2019

2019

2020 2019 2020

2019 2020+

2020

Drone Data Capture and Exploitation Module

Theatre Infrastructure Planning Module

MVP Baseline (Concept and

Developed Design)

Force Protection Engineering Module

‘Dynamic Objects’ Integration

Detailed Design and Contracting Module

Facilities and Asset Management Module

Input into MORPHEUS Engineering App

Engineering Infrastructure Assessment

Construction Module

*

Alistair.Roxburgh@atkinsglobal.com Colin.Henderson@atkinsglobal.com

www.atkinsglobal.com/rapid

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.