BIM

Background

Planning and building is one of Germany's core competencies. Thousands of projects are successfully implemented every year and our construction and real estate industry enjoys a high reputation both nationally and internationally. Nevertheless, time and cost overruns occur, especially when carrying out complex large-scale projects. To counteract this, the digital working method "Building Information Modeling" (BIM) has been used in structural engineering for several years to support planners and construction workers.

BIM enables the digitization of all building information relevant to planning and implementation. The core is the creation of a three-dimensional and object-oriented building model that can be enriched with additional semantic information. This can be extended to a four- or even five-dimensional model if the time and cost factors are included. Planning changes, their causes and the effects on the overall model with BIM can be consistently tracked and evaluated. Part of BIM is the "Common Data Environment" (CDE) collaboration platform, which bundles the project data and makes it transparently available to all teams and team members. Every change is visible and understandable for everyone at the same time, which improves communication and interaction between the project participants and thus also the quality requirements and goals of the entire project. For later renovations or extensions, the data of the existing models can be accessed at any time. Basically, the high level of detail ensures that errors and collisions can be detected and averted in advance.

The use of BIM is currently rather uncommon in the construction of infrastructure systems (including road, railway and hydraulic engineering). The port operator Niedersachsen Ports (NPorts) was the first company in German port construction to use BIM in a pilot project. 

Establishing BIM in port construction means a lot of (additional) effort, especially in the beginning. Old conventional habits must gradually be replaced by digital solutions. High initial investments have to be made. However, the efforts are worthwhile. Overall, the BIM pilot project Helgolandkai can be considered a success. According to the planners, special problems, such as structural collisions, could be identified early in the 3D model and thus avoided, and the quantity calculation was more accurate and error-free.

In order to be able to establish and use the BIM methodology across the board at NPorts in the future, it is essential to set up a BIM department in the medium term in order to be able to ensure the necessary technical know-how, especially on the part of the client. In the future, mainly complex large-scale projects in the investment and maintenance area are to be planned and implemented using the collaborative BIM working method. 

BIM is currently also being used in the renovation of Wangeroogkai.

For additional picture material regarding this project, please contact our Press Office: presse@nports.de.