Transforming Victoria’s Big Build through digital engineering

Victoria is undergoing a massive transport infrastructure boom, with the government investing $90bn in 180 major road and rail projects across the state.

The ‘Big Build’ – led by the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority (VIDA) and Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) – is an initiative to upgrade infrastructure and expand the transport network to accommodate rapid growth in the state. Key projects include removing 110 level crossings, constructing the North East Link (Victoria’s largest road tunnel) and upgrading the Metro Tunnel, the state’s biggest public transport initiative.

These projects generate vast amounts of fragmented digital information about complex infrastructure and physical assets – including PDFs, 2D drawings, intelligent 3D models, and rich spatial and asset data – across the design, construction, delivery and management phases.

Clearing the roadblocks: overcoming legacy systems

Traditionally, project data was fragmented across thousands of documents in various formats. Disconnected tools and systems made storage, sharing and transfer difficult for project teams, asset managers, transport operators and the DTP.

This added complexity to asset management, particularly in terms of how the assets interact with the existing network and with new projects being developed. Accessing accurate information was not only clunky and time-consuming, but also introduced risk around data standardisation, validation and security.

With the DTP transitioning towards model-based delivery for all projects, it needed to easily access and store accurate data across Big Build projects, from design and delivery to ongoing maintenance. But fragmented data and disconnected digital systems posed a significant challenge for Victoria’s Big Build, making it difficult for stakeholders to access, share and manage critical transport infrastructure information.

This led to the development of the Victorian Transport Digital Engineering (VTDE) transformation programme, an industry leading, connected ecosystem of digital engineering and asset information designed to revolutionise transport asset management in Victoria.

All roads lead to VTDE: revolutionising transport data management

VTDE is an Australian-first, multi-year digital transformation programme that reaches across the entire Victorian transport supply chain. It’s designed to help transport project stakeholders collaborate and communicate more effectively while overcoming legacy handover processes and incompatible systems and frameworks.

VIDA and DTP acquired several data platforms, such as GIS and image capture software, to securely manage project information. These tools provide complete ownership, control and streamlined access to data, but the challenge lay in getting these platforms to communicate with each other and with the various systems used by project partners. That’s where Mott MacDonald came in.

VIDA and DTP engaged Mott MacDonald’s digital engineering team to:

• Update data standards and requirements for digital engineering, including parameters for how data should be created, stored, secured and transferred
• Develop new digital engineering processes and tools for use in transport projects
• Establish an information architecture for data flow, governance and access
• Drive end-to-end project collaboration and stakeholder communication and engagement

“Having consistent and repeatable digital engineering processes across all projects and assets makes it easier to monitor project progress. It also helps to identify design and quality issues early, allowing them to be addressed before they become too difficult and costly to resolve down the track,” says Kimberley Wilkinson, technical director of project management at Mott MacDonald, who oversaw project collaboration and stakeholder engagement for the VTDE digital transformation project.

Bridging the gap: uniting fragmented data across projects

Mott MacDonald was also heavily involved in creating a new asset information requirement (AIR) document for the roads, light rail, heavy rail and bus portfolios. The VTDE Digital Engineering Process Guide was pivotal in standardising project workflows, ensuring that all stakeholders followed a unified approach to managing digital assets.

The guide offers a systematic approach for all Big Build project officers to follow when handling model-based deliverables throughout a project’s lifecycle. It sets out clear methods for data creation and sharing, including how delivery partners should transfer information into a common data environment, how the DTP undertakes quality assurance on data received from partners, how it federates and distributes data to make it available to the relevant people, and how it uses and transfers data into its data hub for storage and access.

The guide includes:

• Exchange information requirements, which set the contractual obligations that project and delivery partners must follow when transferring digital engineering data to the DTP
• Digital engineering data specifications, which provide guidance around how data contained within digital engineering models should be captured, structured and delivered by consultants and contractors
• Project Information Model (PIM) guide, which defines the container types for geometric and non-geometric data on a given project
• Model object geometry guide, which enables a consistent approach to 3D modelling across the project lifecycle

Mott MacDonald also helped provide inputs to create the Model Validator Tool, which runs a series of automated, model-based assessments and validation checks of 3D model files to assess the quality and compliance of model-based information, verify the completeness of model object data and ensure compliance with the digital engineering data specifications.

The VTDE Digital Engineering Process Guide, as well as supporting documents, digital tools, and training, was published on the Big Build website.

Benefits of a unified digital engineering approach

“With a structured method for transferring files and a new framework for asset allocation, DTP can ensure that all digital engineering data that’s captured and generated during a project lifecycle is compatible, no matter which organisation has gathered the information,” says Kimberley.

Benefits of this approach include:

• Consistency across systems and processes for handling model-based deliverables and implementing digital engineering practices
• Improved data quality and reuse through consistent standards and automated quality assurance and validation
• Alignment with the VIC Digital Asset Strategy and Digital Asset Policy
• Increased accessibility, compatibility and security of project and asset data, ensuring asset owners, operators and maintainers can access fit-for-purpose information relevant to their project or role
• Support for progressive design review throughout the project lifecycle, from planning to design, delivery, operations and maintenance

“Before, if an asset manager was quoting on how many lightbulbs needed to be replaced across an asset, for example, they would have to physically count the number of light poles that appear in numerous PDF documents and drawings. Now, they can log into the system, apply filters, and have an accurate answer in seconds, which saves so much time and money,” says Kimberley.

Achievements and future impact

The VTDE digital transformation initiative has radically changed the way the Victorian government manages its transport data and is already seeing impressive benefits in terms of the speed, effectiveness and accuracy of planning and budgeting for new projects and forward maintenance on assets.

What’s more, communities in Victoria benefit from safer, well-maintained transport infrastructure that will be delivered faster, cheaper and with fewer disruptions, delivering on the department’s promise to keep Victorians moving in the decades to come.

Bringing stakeholders along for the journey

The VTDE digital transformation project was a huge undertaking in change management and stakeholder engagement.

Led by Kimberley, the Mott MacDonald digital engineering team engaged with over 200 personnel working across 15 different organisations, government departments and rail transport operators to understand and document their needs, communicate the benefits of digital engineering and explain the decisions being made.

Kimberley has this advice to companies and government departments considering a similar digital transformation journey: “Take the time to engage with and listen to your stakeholders early and often. Don’t assume to know what people want – ask them. Talk about their challenges, understand what they need to do their jobs and where the bottlenecks are. Run workshops, take different perspectives into account and write a scope of work. And when a decision has been made, explain why. It allows you to manage expectations and disappointments much better.”