Earlier this month, along with 60 other people, I attended a fascinating and insightful presentation by Ross Dentten, Asset Information & Configuration Manager for Crossrail in London. Ross’ presentation on ‘Enabling BIM and the Crossrail Smart Railway’ gave an overview of the Crossrail programme, current progress and also covered Asset Management.

 

The original specification has now been extended to cover Twyford and Reading and altogether encompasses 40 stations in this £14.8bn project. Rail transport capacity will be increased by 10% in London and will carry around 200m passengers when complete.  Within the overall project there are 10 new stations being built, along with 30km of tunnelling and 14,000 people, including over 300 apprentices have been involved in the construction. Crossrail are currently 54% of their way through the project being both on time and budget and are planning final delivery in 2018.

 

The presentation also covered the Asset Management landscape, along with what it means to Crossrail in terms of Asset Tags and equipment; there are over 24,000 Asset Tags on the tunnels alone.  Ross explained the background to BIM in that it originated in America and has been around for over 25 years. Crossrail have designed their own  Asset Information Management System (AIMS) to ensure the railway can be operated and maintained efficiently and effectively over its life. Crossrail’s AIMS will record more than 2 million assets ranging from concrete structures to ventilation systems.



Because of the importance of BIM in the Crossrail project, the CEOs of Crossrail and Bentley Systems have set up an Information Academy to promote an understanding of BIM. 

 

Ross went on to outline Crossrail’s green commitment to the project in relation to Wallasea Island, where they are currently transforming 620 hectares of arable farmland into coastal marshland, using 4.5m tonnes of material from excavations to form a new bird sanctuary.

 

There was a good Q&A session following the lecture and feedback from the event indicated that attendees had found it enjoyable and informative, with good content which was clearly delivered by an engaging speaker.

 

Both the presentation and an interview with Ross can be viewed on our IET.tv channel. 

Enabling BIM and the Crossrail Smart Railway Ross Dentten   From: The IET Railway TPN, 10 September 2014, London 2014-09-10 00:00:00.0 Transport Channel >> go to webcast>> recommend to friend

An Interview with Ross Dentten of Crossrail Ross Dentten   From: The IET Railway TPN, 10 September 2014, London 2014-09-10 00:00:00.0 Transport Channel >> go to webcast>> recommend to friend

We also tweeted from the event go to: twitter #IETEnablingBIM eg ‘to see our live tweets of the event’.



If you missed it you can also still catch the BBC2 series entitled ‘The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway’ on BBC iplayer.