DID YOU KNOW
The Digital Rehearsal Room
The introduction of new tools has brought its own challenges for the M4 ’ s grand project delivery team - including Balfour Beatty , VINCI , and Taylor Woodrow . Balfour Beatty ’ s Head of Digital Project Delivery , Harry Parnell , has run training sessions with Navisworks Manage and Navisworks Freedom to get everyone on the same page and educate staff in the use of models , reviewing them , marking up , and as a tool to enhance information sharing around the design in project meetings . This has improved the team ’ s ability to interact with the design on the M4 project .
“ We ’ ve created a digital rehearsal room ,” explains Harry Parnell . “ It ’ s driven by three projectors with a touch-screen environment to actually move around a model — a collaboration area where we can get the designers , contractors and the supply chain into the same room to review the project .”
Located at the M4 site office , the digital rehearsal room supports the continued flow of construction by providing a safe environment for the delivery team to analyse the project while avoiding unnecessary disruption on the motorway .
For Parnell ’ s team , Autodesk applications such as Civil 3D , Revit , and AutoCAD are key . “ We choose an application depending on the discipline ,” he says . “ We ’ re using Revit for bridge structures and gantries ; AutoCAD for all our comm ’ s , and Civil 3D for highways alignment , emergency refuges and central reserve areas . We federate all of that inside Navisworks to perform clash detection .”
Infraworks models allow the team to communicate with key stakeholders throughout the project . “ We can show them the job and what we ’ re actually going to be building at the end of it ,” confirms Parnell .
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