We're live, actually.
Yes, sir.
All right, thanks
Good afternoon, or good morning.
Welcome again to Federal Highway Administration's Digital Delivery Stakeholder Group, or the DDSG
This is our summer meeting, which we've broken up into
3 bite-sized nuggets of presentations today, tomorrow, and Wednesday
And we're glad that you're all able to join us. We hope you'll be able to participate at each one
to provide some feedback and information as we work through the agenda.
Of course, we
Wouldn
The Federal Highway, if we didn't have our disclaimer
Roger, if you could move to the next slide. So this is just essentially that
You know, there's a lot of different perspectives and viewpoints being presented, and that they don't necessarily reflect the opinions of Federal Highway or the U.S. Department of Transportation
And any information with regards to logos or trademarks, or names
of companies
Do not provide any
preference or endorsement
With that, next slide, Roger.
Just as a reminder, I am Matthew Corrigan. I'm Federal Highway Administration. I am the co-chair of the Digital Delivery Stakeholder Group
I am still actively looking for our DOT agency co-chair continue to do that. Hopefully we'll be able to plug that gap here in the near future
With us, we do have a lot of support under a service contract that we have with the National Institute of Building Science
Roger Grant Vayner, Rackley, and Mona are all supporting and providing some valuable resources and setting up meetings and a lot of the logistics, and I'm very thankful and happy that
They're supporting the group, and Roger also has done a great job helping to develop the agenda and also will be helping us to
Work through the agenda as we move through the three sessions over the next three days
And this is
Yeah, Roger, did you say something?
I said, thank you.
Oh, sorry. You're welcome. Just a quick reminder, we do have some core members
That make up a variety of state agencies, as well as representations from some of our industry partners represented through AGC, ACEC, Building Smart
As well as AASHTO and ARPA
But it represents a diverse
number of perspectives and membership in their digital delivery journey from very much just early on to those that have been doing it for some time now
And of course, because we're dialoguing across the country to try and coordinate conversations and what's going on, these different perspectives are very important, including those of you that are joining us. We do encourage active participation in responding to
any of our pools or other
resources and links that we provide in order to gain feedback and perspective as well. So please don't be shy in asking questions or adding your contributions or comments to the Mural Boards and any of the polls as well, moving forward
And just a quick recap of our purpose. You know, again, it's really to coordinate all these various efforts around the United States, recognizing that there are a lot of needs, and that digital delivery is a lot
landscape, so we want to make sure that we're basically collaborating and having dialogue and conversations so that we can leverage what's being done, not only at the national level with a lot of efforts
whether it's transportation pool funds, or NCHRP projects, ADCMS grant projects and initiatives, etc, all the way down to at the state
or local and regional level efforts that are being done to advance digital project delivery
And, anything that even state DOTs
with their respective academic programs or universities, and others that they are funding efforts through, or research or ADCMS grant collaborations that are being done with other states
That they've partnered up with, as they move forward through those projects as well. It is an open group, an open dialogue. All of these meetings are, open to the public and as you probably noticed when you came in, they will be
recorded and posted online at the DDSG Hub. Speaking of that, here are the details on the DDSG Hub. You can get to those links
The easiest way to find them in the absence of the links is just to do a search in your browser for DDSG Hub. Generally, that'll bring it to the top of the search findings and easily accessible. We do post, again.
past recordings from our previous meetings there. We do have the draft charter that frames the rationale for development of the group and our purposes, as well as the aforementioned core membership as well
And this is a quick snapshot of our agenda today for this afternoon's session. You can also access the full agenda at the DDSG Hub if you go down
to the Meeting tab for these three July sessions, and you can download the PDF
I think I have that available, let me see… yes, it is pulled up. I can put it in the chat as well
So that you can take a look at that and if you haven't had a chance to digest also what the other sessions are, then
You can go in and look at those, and just a reminder that each session does have its own individual
Registration. So at the DDSG hub, if for some reason you happen to only register for today and only have one registration
This would be your reminder and prompt to please go in and register for tomorrow's and Wednesday sessions separately if those are of interest to you, and you're available to participate.
Okay, thanks.
Yeah, no worries
Yeah, go ahead, Roger. I'll let you cover some of these mechanisms that you've put in place.
Sure. Yeah, so Matt mentioned, you know, we try to encourage engagement and discussion. That also runs into a full agenda, which we have today. This virtual summer meeting is more focused on
Our purpose of getting updates and sharing what's going on with the community, so we're going to be doing a lot of that today, but we still encourage you to engage with us, and a couple ways you can do that are through our mural that we set up and use
To track the meeting, and the link, Rackley, I will put it in the chat for everybody to get to the mural. I'm just gonna open it up and show you what it looks like
And how… and what to do in there
thought it was open, but here we go. So this is our mural for today's meeting. Once you find the link and get in there, you can operate as a guest. Everything under this column to the left is for today's meeting
And there's places where you can drop in general notes about the meeting if you want to. We also have blocks for each of our sessions here, and you can come into a session and
Just double click and it'll open up a note for you, and you can start typing in that note.
And it will
record your typing, and you can say, you know, put your initials there or something, or your name if you want it to be known who you are. There's controls in here, you can change the color, you can do different things. If you don't like what you typed, you can delete it. You can't hurt anything
So we encourage you to use the mural to communicate with us on any comments or questions you have
Also, the meeting chat is available for everyone to post questions to, and we'll do everything we can to respond to those questions in the chat. So please log into the mural, use the mural
And it will help you
communicate with us today. Also, we have a mentimeter set up for today, and you can
Click on this QR code here on your phone, and that will take you to the Menti poll that's running. There's also a link to the Menti that we can put in the chat if you want to get it on your computer
We'll have this poll running all day. Today, we just have two questions, some demographic questions, and then when we're done, if you could fill out the
end of session questions for us. We'll remind you about that later. But these are our primary ways to engage today. We do have a little time built in towards the end for live discussion, and we'll try to get some of that, but
We have a lot to cover, so we want to switch right over to our presentations today. We're going to be hearing from
AGC, we're going to hear perspective from a pilot contractor pilot project contractor on one of the ADCMS projects, and then we're going to get an update from the Building Smart USA chapter on a lot of things going on there
So I'm going to turn this over to Matt Reifer with ACEC, the American Consulting Engineering Council, and Matt's going to give an update on what's going on over there
Dan Reinecke is our DDSG member, but he is somewhere over Chicago or something. Matt, I'll let you share with that and introduce yourself, but it's great we have Matt here to share what's going on today.
So, Matt, can you take over presenting? There we go. I see your screen.
Excellent. Thanks, Roger, and thanks, Matt. Really appreciate the opportunity. Yes, Roger indicated, Dan Reinke from GFT, one of our member firms.
It was going to join me on this presentation today. Unfortunately, he had weather delays that disrupted his travel, so he is in an airplane on his way to Chicago. But I've got his contact information on his last slide here, and I'll do my best to cover his pieces, and you can always follow up with either one of us
Afterwards, I was just going to give you a very brief legislative update, what we've been working on at ACEC from an advocacy perspective that has implications for DDSG and the members who are interested here in digital delivery
I do want to make you aware of a new ACEC strategic plan that specifically references digital transformation and digital delivery initiatives that will again be of interest.
Talk about a member firm survey and updates to our position paper that we're working on. And then at the end, again, share some thoughts about one firm's perspective, Dan's firm, GFT, and their internal
transformation on this progress toward digital delivery, as well as the work that they've done on some ADCMS grants, and share some observations. Real briefly, from an advocacy perspective, I think most of you probably knew that this is a big year for surface transportation
The current programs for highway and transit and rail are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year on September 30. And so ACEC and a lot of our partners in the transportation construction environment have been working to support a long-term reauthorization
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee did their job. They reported out a big, robust bill on a broad bipartisan basis, a 62-2 vote. And there were a number of initiatives that we supported and had advocated for
that were included in that package, including a provision that authorizes USDOT to provide technical assistance, guidance, best practices, training to state DOTs on lump sum contracting for architecture engineering services.
This has been a multi-year effort and has relevance for digital delivery just because of traditional hourly base, cost-based contracting models, in our view are not as workable in this environment as we go forward and we need to assist our state DOT partners in that transition to do more
lump sum or value-based billing. And then specifically on digital delivery, we are very pleased that the House TNI bill did reauthorize the ADCMS grants
And included a number of other technology provisions defining and then making eligible for federal funding a wide range of digital infrastructure and digital construction technology activities and programs, as well as reauthorizing smart grants. So
Across the board, we were really pleased with that product working to get it through the house. Still waiting on the Senate committees to produce their bills. So we may be looking at an extension sometime in September. But from a first standpoint, very pleased in terms of the progress that the House is making on digital delivery and digital transformation.
I mentioned before ACEC as an organization, our board of directors back in May voted unanimously on a new three-year strategic plan for the organization
And this builds on a number of our ongoing priorities and going initiatives. You know, we're an advocacy and education organization focused on the business of engineering and all of those things will continue
Our strategic planning task force and our board chose 4 rising priority areas, because these represent both foundational challenges and opportunities for the industry
These are not prioritized. They are all interrelated. But I want to highlight specifically the digital transformation piece where we are pledging to equip firms
to embrace innovation through shared knowledge technology forward resources and scalable solutions
We're also focused heavily as an organization on protecting licensure and defending state-based structures so that we can continue to communicate the value of the engineering profession
And the need for humans with engineering judgment and training and education to be involved in the infrastructure development so we can continue to safeguard the public safety and public trust.
And then I'll also just flag one of the other initiatives is workforce development. And I bet every organization that's involved in the DDSG is facing workforce challenges and constraints. This is an existential issue for the industry
Has implications, obviously, both on the licensure side, membership growth for us as an organization, but also digital transformation so that we can recruit, attract, retain, and then develop professionals with the skills needed to do the work that our firms are called to do.
Specifically within the digital transformation priority areas, we've identified four
key objectives and tactical pathways. And again, I want to highlight that first one for you specifically, where ACC is pledging to advocate for policy and contracting practices that support digital integration
This includes promoting value-based and lump sum contracting, which I referenced before, collaborating with our member organizations at the state level to expand state level adoption and partner with client organizations, many of whom are represented here on this call today
both public and private to make digital delivery the national standard.
And I want to call your attention to that last piece so you understand from an ACEC perspective, we represent over 5,500 member companies across the country. And this is not just a niche issue for a handful of firms or for the very large firms, but we as an association
As an industry, are pledging to commit to advanced digital delivery and digital transformation to be the national standard. And through that, we're going to be mobilizing our coalitions and committees to do education and outreach
Help them prepare for the disruption that's coming and then giving them the tools to do self-assessments to gauge where their capabilities may be lacking, where their investments ought to be prioritized
And they can track their own maturity on this progress and this transformation. And that we as an association then know where we need to be investing our time and resources. So again, this is a pillar of our three-year strategic plan and has implications for the work of this group
As part of that, we are in the midst of doing a member firm survey on digital delivery. We launched a similar survey two years ago to collect member firm input on a wide range of topics and questions in this digital delivery space
And we thought, now that we're two years in and now that we have this updated strategic plan, let's go about updating our understanding of where our member firms are and making sure we're on the right track. And if there's anything that we need to add or modify in the position paper that we developed back in 2024
So we're still in the midst of collecting responses. I don't have final survey results to share with you. We're about halfway through that process in terms of the timing and the targeted number of responses that we were aiming for. But I'll say, so far, the responses that we're getting from our member firms are tracking very, very closely
to what we saw back in 2024. And to me, that sort of indicates that
We have not seen this accelerated drastic increase in adoption among our firms or our member clients. It continues at a kind of steady pace
But like in two years ago, about half of the responds indicated that their clients are already using or planning to use the digital model as a contractual legal deliverable. We asked which states are doing this, and so far the responses listed about 15 of them, which again, consistent with what we were seeing
Two years ago, but only about one in five of our firms, at least the responses to the survey so far, have indicated that they actually have real world experience with the model as the contractual legal deliverable
We asked specifically about a range of risks
and concerns that our members had, and again, the responses that we were receiving are very consistent with what we heard last time and far and away the most significant issue is ensuring a clear definition of model accuracies
And tolerances and identifying in contractual terms, what is the standard of care? What is the firm delivering? What can it be used for? What can it not be used for? And what is their liability exposure? 72% of firms identified that as their foremost concern
And then close second was the need for quality control processes for 3D models, including the use and review by third parties that came in at 67%. But then a growing additional risk is in the data security, data management, and long-term data accessibility world
Our firms, because of the rollover and update and new entrants in all of this space, there is somewhat of a concern that the tools that will be used today. Will that data be accessible and usable three, four, five years into the future and beyond. So that is a risk that our firms have identified in this space
So my initial kind of key takeaway is based on the survey results so far. I mean, the most frequently cited impact
from our firms is the need for extensive staff training and upskilling, and that is far and away the most prominent reaction that we get. Firms anticipate the need to educate engineers, designers
project managers and even clients on new digital delivery standards, workflows, and software while building that internal expertise in model-based design.
As I mentioned before, the survey respondents
expect the this new model delivery to require significant changes in quality control procedures and risk management. Again, really clearly defining level of development, level of accuracy and workflows
And addressing liability concerns in the contract language.
From a cost perspective, we continue to hear concern or at least a recognition that there's going to be significant upfront costs
both in software and in hardware, data storage, computing infrastructure, as well as I mentioned before, the the training and education and staff investment needed. And the concern here is that we want to make sure, again, those contract terms and conditions
And the fee negotiations are reflective of the investments that are necessary to bring these tools online.
And then
There's a change management component to this as well.
that
staff roles, oversight
internal processes and procedures, all of this needs to get updated. This isn't just simply buying software and putting it to use, but it is an organizational change. But all of an all, these short term challenges will lead to significant long term benefits. That's the fundamental takeaway
That we're hearing so far from our members.
And let me just share briefly some of Dan's notes about what GFT is one of our member firms is going through, what he's observed as their digital delivery lead. These notes are specific to GFT, but I will say, I think this is probably very representative of what a number of our member companies
Are going through in this digital transformation space.
And Dan said they would describe their current position as meaningful progress, but not anywhere near a completed transformation. They've proven several elements of the approach, and they're focused on making them consistent and scalable.
He said they moved beyond an isolated technical efforts and they established a coordinated digital delivery program across their business lines and units to make digital delivery part of how all of their projects
Are pursued, planned, and delivered from a standard process.
They began what he calls lighthouse projects to test model-based workflows and automation and coordination in real time delivery conditions, and that shift now is from taking the successes of those proven values and those lighthouse projects
And making them repeatable and scalable across the whole platform of the firm's work.
And they're building the operational foundation behind the technology. Again, like I mentioned before, this is change management. Startup processes, BIM execution planning, standards, model-based quality assurance, quality control, support roles. This isn't just
Adopting a software platform. It is all of enterprise wholesale change.
As there's organizational transformation.
And they said, you know, I think, again, this is representative of what we're seeing across all DDSG members that clients are all across the board in their level of digital maturity.
And so firms like GFT have to be really cognizant of that, have to be available to kind of scale their approaches because a one size fits all kind of approach with requirements isn't going to necessarily meet the client's needs
Where they are in this journey and what they're capable of supporting from their own side. But the value is there. The value proposition is better delivery, increased capacity, stronger competitiveness, and building a foundation toward increased utilization of
automation and AI. And for Dan, the key takeaway is that digital delivery scales only when technology standards, people, leadership, and client expectations are all moving forward together. So I think we would applaud
This group and the coordination that we're seeing and the information sharing, again, so that we're all kind of moving on that journey together.
And then lastly, Dan wanted to share some thoughts on his perspective. They're a sub consultant on two different ADCMS funded efforts
And so these are his observations working on those again on the ground projects.
And first of all, he says funding is accelerating action. ADCMS helps agencies move from discussion to implementation. It creates resources
urgency and organizational attention needed to develop the standards, workflows, and roadmaps. DOTs, they make the case in the grant application, and then they go, they get the funding, and then they have to go out and execute. But that end state is still evolving. Most agencies know the direction they want to go
But they're still defining for themselves what digital delivery looks like in practice for them. Who owns it? How does it become contractual? What standards are required?
And the business is changing with software and technology being one part of the solution. But again, it requires people, processes, policies, training, and governance.
And that makes this implementation process iterative. Agencies are adapting as their own readiness and legacy workflows and needs become clear. And so those partnerships across the delivery spectrum, owners, consultants, vendors, and industry
All kind of shaping the path together in this journey.
And then building out internal capacity through these ADCMS grants helps boost practitioners, both internal and external
And digital delivery, he says, is the foundation. It's not the destination. It creates the structured data models and workflows needed for automation.
These are the foundation for the future. And his closing thought, I'll leave you this ADCMS program is generating real progress, but it's also revealing
the true complexity of this transformation. The central challenge is not only if the technology works, but can the tech deliver value? And so again, a lot of work to be done. We're making good progress
And we really appreciate the opportunity to be involved with you all. You've got my contact information, and here's Dan's at GFT. And with that, I will stop sharing and turn it back to you, Roger.
Hey, thanks a lot, Matt. That was great. And you're right on schedule for us. Maybe we can squeeze in Devin, I know you had one question. If you want to bring it up now while we're switching over to Jonathan, we could
Throw that in just to break things up, and then we'll come back at the end, maybe for a little more, but lots of thought-provoking stuff there, Matt, so thanks.
Yeah, Roger, thank you. And Matt, it is kind of specific. The one slide early on in your presentation, you don't have to pull it back up, but you were identifying those key things of now that the IIJA or whatever the new term is, is being extended. And you had one part that was the ADCMS, the grant program, but you had another bullet on there that was
Yes.
Digital delivery within projects and federal funding for that. And I don't know that I fully understand what like what does that mean for projects if we identify a pilot that is going to be using digital delivery, we can get additional federal funding to help offset
Implementation cost, is that the because that that was my understanding what the grant funds were supposed to be for.
Yeah, I will double check that. I want to be careful about not getting ahead of myself, but I think that is a possibility. I think
what I was describing was, you know, there's the bill includes
legislative language defining what digital technologies are
And then there are places within a number of specific federal funding streams and programs, whether it's formula dollars to states, as well as a number of discretionary competitive grants where
expenditures on those digital technologies and utilization isn't eligible expense. So it's not a one-off, but it's part of the broader, you know, project eligibility within these funding flows that you could utilize on
The software and other
components of that. But I'll double check the answer to the first part of your question.
And so in that, if I'm understanding you correctly, if we're programming a project, there's the ability to program in
some… how some federal funding can help
with the implementation of certain tools to implement… to deliver a project in particular, which is not
Yes.
That's just a one-off project, as opposed to these grants, which are more of like process development
Acquisition
systemic, that is correct. Yep. Yep, exactly.
And then that's good to know because that can change the way we can identify projects in the future that could help with ultimately what is kind of showing up that there's a little bit of an investment that has to happen in order for you to see the overall benefit
Also, last question then, and I'll just leave it with asking the question. You said the lump sum to cover what exactly does that mean in covering? Because maybe I'm thinking of it from Caltrans where we still do primarily most of our work in-house
And is that from an ACEC perspective?
Yeah, so this is a payment mechanism. So once the decision has been made to contract out those engineering and design services with the private sector firm
transitioning away from the traditional cost plus fixed fee or time and materials type contract to a lump sum or firm fixed price, so that you do the typical negotiation process where you do the scoping and deliverables
And the sort of level of effort and what's expected, you get a cost estimate, but then under a lump sum agreement, you would lock that dollar amount in and then not have to worry about sort of auditing and accounting for all the sort of hourly expenses. It's more of a value-based, here's
Here's the thing and then it's hitting project milestones along the way along under that fixed fee price. And we think that type of arrangement facilitates
better and broader utilization of new and emerging technologies.
Okay, but that is it is
Next Devin and Matt, I'm going to break in.
Good dialogue, but maybe we'll pick it back up at the end just
To keep things moving so we get through everything today
Sounds great. Thanks, Roger.
And also, we got a little switch up in our plans here.
Thomas, could you and Brian go next? Jonathan hasn't made it yet, so we'll give him a little more time if you guys… if we can switch places in the order. Is that okay?
I am ready, is Brian
Yep, I'm ready.
Great. So do you want to take over the screen share, whichever one of you is going to do it and we'll jump into your presentation on a contractor's perspective, which
be really interesting, I'm sure, from a contractor from a pilot project
Yeah, I believe Thomas is going to share the screen on this.
Okay.
Sorry, I had a glitch in the network.
Confirming you can see what we're… what I'm sharing. Can you hear me?
I see your screen and hear you loud and clear.
All right, awesome.
So my name is Thomas Yamske. I'm with the Iowa Department of Transportation. I'm presenting with Brian Needs. I wanted to introduce himself real quick.
Yeah, I'm Brian Needs, project engineer for Gobberson Smith Construction Company out in Ida Grove, Iowa.
Don't know if Brian or Jason, so hopefully I'm not getting a lag on my end.
No, I heard him, Thomas
Okay.
All right. Well, I'll continue here
So one stock today previously, we did our another BIM project here in Iowa in 2018, and the project that we're going to talk about today is a follow up to that project for bridge related. We've done a couple of things non-bridge related, but I'm going to stick to just bridge here on
our history here
The first pilot project we had
Our contractor did have a somewhat negative experience, and he's talked about it, and we learned a lot of stuff about that project. One of the major issues in that pilot project was proprietary format that we used that basically locked the project in a single software platform
So
the idiosyncrasies of that platform really kind of made the contractor not real happy with it. He had to spend a lot of money on certain software early on, and ate up most of his budget. However, there was some lessons to be learned about that project
And also in 2018, so eight years ago, there was a lot of things that were different. Software wasn't as good. It's improved a lot since then. The field hardware has got a lot better since then as well.
So, like I said
We went with this project, we updated to an open data standard. So a lot of the work that's been done by the pooled funds, been for infrastructure, been for bridges and structures, both together. Being this a bridge project, the bridges and Structures Pools Fund has developed a lot of standards that have been done
So, we went with an open data standard on this project and really left the options to be open for how to look at this model
We kind of left it up to the choice of the contractor in the end to kind of say, hey, how do you want to look at this? How do you want to interact with the model we're delivering? Because the file could be used by any and all software that is capable of using IFC.
Throughout the project or leading up to the project being open, we met with the contractors throughout 2025 several times, and we
had a lot of interactions with them, with our local agency, and we gave them opportunity to kind of talk about that. The contractor that was involved in that first 2018 project, he was instrumental in kind of giving information about, hey, don't do this on future projects
And listening to the contracted community, we really, we, we listen to them. They weren't quite ready to do a model legal document on this project, but we came to an agreement of how to pay the contractor to be able to engage with us without forcing it to be a contract document. So
It was a win-win for both of us, the DOT, as well as the contractor as well. So they didn't get to stuck with undue costs as well as the possibility of losing money because of forcing technology that may or may not be ready for them because there's still a lot of unknowns when it comes to this
And when you're talking about risk, we didn't want to put a bunch of undue risk on the contract to try to figure out how to price that into the contract.
So
We selected a project that was pretty simple.
It was 199 feet by 44. It's a 3-span pre-stressed beam, multicolor, multi-column piers. Integral abutments, no skew, no aesthetics, and no phase construction. So
completely as bread and butter as we can get in our projects. And we did that on purpose to try to make sure that there was no complications. We made it so the contractor could engage with it as much as he could and really
give us feedback and not have to spend time figuring out complicated things of a complicated design so that we could focus more so on the model itself. I want to hand it off to Brian to kind of talk about their perspective, or contractor's perspective.
Yeah, thanks, Thomas. Can you hear me now, Thomas?
Go ahead, Brian.
I don't know if you can hear me, I guess.
So, basically
I hear you, bro. Yeah, I hear you loud and clear.
Okay. So as a contractor, like Thomas was saying, it was a pretty simple bridge that we did on this or whatever. So didn't have too many issues. Our only problem was it was basically
A very
straightforward bridge, but we also had
it was
What am I trying to say here? It was
A good learning curve and good experience, the 3D model
Trying to think in the… here, just a second, I gotta
I need my slides, basically. I don't know if Thomas can
Looks like Thomas isn't sharing anymore. Thomas, are you still there? Did we get disconnected?
I'm getting really bad leg as well.
Huh. Yeah, we hear you okay, Brian, but it looks like we lost Thomas
Do you have your slides or Reckley, I think we have them. Can you put them up?
There we go. Thomas is back. Okay.
I apologize. VPNs are fun. I'm off now, so I apologize for that. Go ahead, Brian.
Oh, just second here. I got my Zoom all messed up now trying to… Okay, so
Let's see here. Yeah. So it was an accelerated construction schedule and
It kind of did impact our 3D model. Use it some just because of the accelerated schedule, and we had two bridge crews on hand during this construction process or whatever. So it was a little faster than what we were usually
You know, what we usually do out in the field. And it was what we did was a hybrid approach, used 2D plan sets where the main plan sets, but then we also used the 3D model to help supplement, you know, the
What we needed for help wise during the construction process
So the 3D model usage
Pretty easy learning curve. These two guys picture, these are our two superintendents on site
It was easy to navigate, the designers, HDR, I know Grant's on this as well. He was very helpful, probably couldn't have done this without him, honestly, so I'd like to thank Grant for doing all what he has done for us during this progress
During the construction. And
He was hands-on throughout the whole project, helped us basically get any views that we needed for the construction, kind of broke down everything as we were going week by week
And really, this 3D model helped us break down anything we needed where we could see it in one view and not just a big, you know, multiple plan sheets, kind of like how we have in our 2D sets
So the benefits of the 3D model is we can cut any save view and we can share it with our staff. So what we did was if our superintendent needed to save view, say of like an abutment or a pier
Piling, or rebar, anything. We could take these save or cut the
3D model into a save view, and then we could share it with them, and they could look at it, get any type of details they want out of it, that maybe is a little more difficult in the 2D plan set
And then as we were going through this.
You know, we got better at
kind of developing what views we wanted, what details in the views we wanted, and how we wanted to view them, throughout the construction. And then, by the time we get… we are all said and done with this, it was,
You know, we had it where we wanted to dumb it down as much as possible, where anybody could look at this and really do it, is kind of how we were visualizing it.
So some examples of how we broke these down. Here's the one of the piers, I believe it's pier one. What we did, we broke down this pier and as you can see, you can see the rebar layout. You can see the pile details
And we tried to break it down into, like, construction joints, the color coordination. As you can see, like, the pile's brown, the rebar, we try to make the rebar, a little bit more towards, like, the epoxy color
As we are going, this one doesn't show it as best as all the rebar is the same color, but some of it is black rebar, and then the other stuff is epoxy. So this is one of our safe views on how we broke this down and kind of what we wanted our dimensions and
stuff like that, you know, something that was more useful that we didn't need, like, a whole
you know, mumble jumble of information and plans. We kind of just wanted to break this down as much as possible and just make it really simplified of what we were looking at as we were building.
Here's a few other saved views. Top left is just the abutment footing. Basically, we took a save you, cut it out where all you could see is the rebar layout
You can kind of see the highlight of the concrete surrounding getting that little gray line around it, but mostly this showed us where all the rebar laid out is. The next one top right, the… these are the pier footing details that we had. Then the green
The pile and so the green color as we were going through the process was that is everything that we had done or was complete throughout the building. So at this time, our pile was in the ground and we were working on forming up our footings and this is kind of the layout of
all the steel and then in the bottom left, this is you know the abutment up above basically once the it was all said and done and kind of how we broke it down into it was a south abutment, what side are our beam seats on so we weren't getting confused as we
Kind of rotating the model and everything, looking at that. Then, we broke it down into, like, our beam sea elevations, and kind of just basically how we wanted to see our dimensions for once we poured this footing
And then the bottom right would be we poured the
Pour the footings, pour the concrete columns for the piers, and now we are working on the cap and the rebar layout for that as well. And then
These views do show us, you know, kind of how the rectangular footing, and then you got your cylindrical
columns or whatever, then, you could see the construction joints fairly easily in this, and how we are pouring this throughout the process, and like I said earlier, the green is when we are done, and what we are pouring next is basically what we have in the in the blue
Also, this another view of kind of the wing details broken down. So the rebar in this is a lot of stainless is up above that projects out of the concrete there. And this is a new style of barrier rail that they're working on
And this is where the end post goes. So we're not used to seeing. I mean, we've done it before, but some of our superintendents and on site have not seen this new style of rail. So this was a good one to show and kind of how we
Where we wanted this layout of all the rebar and basically make sure that we were putting it in the right place because a two day plan sets, I think we had to flip through three, maybe four sheets just to be able to see all the details of all the rebar layout. So this was very helpful that
HDR and Grant really broke this down well for us and showed us what we wanted to see on something like this, and I think this shows a very good view of just breaking everything down and kind of
Showing how we wanted to do things and how we wanted to pour it.
I think this is just
Short video on kind of how
you know you can proceed through the program of Trimble and kind of how we navigate things into the plan sets, and then through the specs and stuff like that
So we can see here just kind of
Going through this and
Showing the beam details on span one
Okay, so
Basically, as we were going through this, we ran into some quirks and issues where we wanted to make this better. So, as we saw before on those
peer columns and the caps and stuff details. When we first got into this, you can see your X, Y, and Z, you know, when we got to building this and it kind of got to be a lot of information on the 3D model, we didn't really want this, the X and the Y elevations. We didn't mind the Z because the Z helps us, you know
We're
BMC elevations have to be and stuff, so that's very helpful and whatnot. But what we did was, instead of the XYZ, we kind of broke this down and took this out and tried to make it less of an issue. And then, as you can see, we simplified things here.
On, this peer cap and the inch and a half there is just the beam C elevations as you step up and down, and then kind of our, you know, dimensions between each step and what we got going, and how tall the
The cap and everything was, so this is one of the ways we showed how we simplified some of these issues where we just kind of really wanted to dumb things down and just
Make it honestly as simple as possible, and I think, you know, this is what we talked with the designer with HDR and Grant, and this is what he came up with, and very, very helpful during this entire process.
So then also while we were doing this, we did Trimble site vision
And it was actually, this is pretty neat going out there in the real world and seeing this basically on a tablet, as you see, like a phone. There will be improvements made to this. Like, we have a few issues with it. It's… I mean, it works very well,
I know they're getting better. There's a new model coming out that helps us because of some of the
Ways to do things whatever we decide, you know, we kind of experiment with this thing, and it is getting better, but this basically
showed the augmented reality devices on the project, and then it was slightly more beneficial to, like, I would say, our inspectors on the site, where they could see like our form lines and make sure the rebars in the… in the right spot. It was a good visualization for them to be able to
know that we're not building this bridge, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 feet off of where it's supposed to be
It, you know, it pretty much puts the realities of the design model versus the reality of the construction site and the tolerances, and it limits the accuracy when comparing the 2, so we know we're in the right area, and, you know, we're not just
wrong, and at least it gives us as a contractor somewhat of a good, you know, good helpful knowledge that we are in the right spot, not just on survey, but also on the model itself
So our summary is we are still looking to use the 2D plan sets
I mean, me and Thomas have discussed in the past, basically what we called is
2D light or 3D, you know, or as we transition into the 3D world, we'd like to call it 2D light, you know, use the paper plans as we can, but also use the 3D model just because of how beneficial it really was
And it really assisted us during the design, you know, during the construction, and having HDR and Grant come up with all these saved views for us during the construction made this
Pretty much as easy and efficient as possible to build since it was an accelerated job. We are looking kind of what we discussed throughout our meetings was for the DOT to if we're going to use this in the future, we'd like to get some standardization
You know, for these 3D models, for save views and other such areas that we think are possible, you know, such as color coordination and things like that that make it really easy for us to be able
bid on these models in the future, and I know we're not quite there, unable to bid on these just from the 3D model, but I know in the future it's gonna become this, and this is kind of what we're looking forward to, and
We really
Really appreciate it that, you know, this helped us visually see things while we were building and actually how beneficial it really was. I mean, it really… our superintendent on site, he's not very tech-savvy, and he loved it. He
Really grab things
hands-on during the process and mess with the model as much as possible, and by the time he was said and done, he was basically an expert at it, and went through the model very well. And so if he needed something, he could just talk to
HDR himself and Grant and just get, you know what he wanted. He didn't have to go through me to play with the model and stuff like that. So it really was beneficial for us to play with this model through the construction process, and I believe it did help us very much during it.
Yeah, and I would add from a DOT perspective, I think we had very good partners and Converson Smith and HDR working in tandem to kind of make this project a success, even though it wasn't a model legal document, we definitely they were willing to work with us and I think that was an important success to this pilot project is
The contractor that was willing to give it a try. And willing to go out there and
Give us feedback about what was working, what wasn't working. And I think that is definitely what comes up to these the summary here of how to work forward and get to this. And I think that's
Very important moving forward for agencies and contractors and designers altogether when you have a non-DOT designer, it's all about that communication and working forward and communicating and getting it all together. I think that's what made this a pretty successful pilot.
That's great, Thomas and Brian.
Good to know that all of this is ultimately going to be worth it
So if we can't get it to work in the field, then
We're doing a lot of work without getting the full benefit, so this is really encouraging to hear.
We actually have a little more time than I thought we'd have
Unfortunately, Jonathan has a family situation and is not going to be able to join us today. So
We are not going to be hearing from AGC, but that gives us time to maybe take a few of the questions that there might be on for Brian and Thomas right now, and then we'll branch over to Building Smart, but it might be good
pause here and pursue a few questions. There's a few that have come into the chat
If you asked a question and you want to speak it, go ahead
Or we can also
ask it for you, but if somebody wants to
Raise their hand. We can let you speak.
I think. Maybe I should be careful when I say that
I'll tell you
Yes, we can do that, Roger.
Okay, yeah.
If they raise their hand, we'll unmute them
Oh, yeah, yes.
Roger, there's a number of items on the mural board too. I've been trying to copy and paste over as they come in, but I'm not catching all of them for every single one.
I don't know if we have time
Well, we can take a few. There's one technical kind of technical question about just the software. You know, what did you use to look at the models and make them visible to the contractors in the field and
Was there something that made that particularly helpful or
A good experience
We use Trimble Connect as the main platform for viewing the models on our project here. We did do an evaluation of several different platforms. We decided to go upon Trimble for a couple of reasons. One, it offered several aspects to civil understanding as well as gave us the opportunity to test the site vision augmented reality as well in the same
kind of platform. There was some complications between the two when it came to geolocating, having to, I believe it was a conversion of metric to survey feed when it ultimately came down to the location, but that was… that's not a
Dig at the software, it's just the reality of the things that came with our model.
I don't know if that's necessarily the issue of the software or how we developed it. I think, Grant, you might be able to answer that if you… but all in all, we decided to use that because of, one, the native experience for the first
Contractor, we decided against using or requiring anything at all. So throughout the process, we talked to contractors, we demonstrated with Trimble Connect leading up to bidding and advertising, and then once we finally award the contracts, we worked with Brian, and
And Galveston and the Smith team to kind of say, hey, what would you like to use? I said, do you already in Trimble, we'll go ahead and use Trimble
And so that's how we ultimately decided on using that platform.
clearly evaluated Contenda, as well as
There was a couple others. We did look at Bentley Infrastructure Cloud as well, but Trimble was the platform we used. I saw a question about reducing the file size of the rebar
Yeah
I don't believe we actually ever had to do any of that. The Trimble platform was able to view the rebar model
just fine. Like I said, it was a pretty simple project. It was just 3-span, almost 200 feet long bridge, so although there's a lot of rebar elements in there, so, like, the whole deck, the rails, the abutments, the piers, as well as the rebar and strands within all of the
precious beams as well. I remember exactly how many elements that was, but the triple platform, I managed it just fine. It works a lot better on the desktop than it does in the mobile app currently, but I think that's kind of similar for most
model viewing devices, there's just a lot more powerful than an iPad is. I use an iPad Pro. I don't recall if we had iPad Pros for all of our field staff that use it, or if it was just a
You'll see a different iPad. So that's one thing to consider as we go forth. So a lot of what they did was looking at it on there and from my perspective, digital delivery doesn't mean you can't print. It just means that your model is the source of any prints you do
And any prints you do need to be dated so you know exactly when they were done, so that you know the source, you know when it was updated, so you know whether or not it is up to date
That's a good piece of advice or reminder there, I think, Thomas, to keep that in mind. Yeah.
And I think Brian was also saying earlier with this project, we'll call it plan light or paper light. Not paperless, because I think paper is going to exist for a long time. There's lots of situations, at least in bridge construction, where you don't want to bring an iPad down into
Yeah.
a cofferdam like you can't bring it underwater, things like that. There's certain places where paper is a lot more able to be destroyed, and you don't want to destroy a $1,000 iPad if you're out on
barge and it gets welding slag on it. So, I mean, there's lots of situations where
paper is still going to be utilized in the site, even if it is digital delivery
I'm going to make a little, we're going to talk about this a little bit more in the session tomorrow, but we're planning for the next DDSG in-person hybrid meeting to go into this topic a little bit more and look at several of the ADCMS projects, including Iowa
What applications were used and what were the pluses and minuses with those applications to help sort of
continue to advance that area and give people knowledge of what's out there. So
We're hoping to have more on this at the next meeting, but this is helpful to hear about this. So I guess the other thing when you brought that up, and that some of the other questions that are in there are about
model as a legal deliverable. So the the idea that the model is the basis of the contract, not the 2D plan set
One question was for Brian
Would you bid on a project if the model was the basis after what you've learned from this project?
I think
We could bid on it. It would be difficult. We'd probably have a lot of questions still
I mean, we still would like the 2D plant sets with kind of the breakdowns and quantities and stuff like that. But if there's a way to be able to add that all into the model and stuff like that, I would think we could. I don't know when I would feel comfortable doing it. I think there's still more
To learn from these 3D models, but from using Trimble Connect, I do believe we are closer now than we have been, and
I wouldn't say I would feel comfortable, but I think we could do it, potentially, just maybe with a few more questions
Also, I can answer that question about constructability issues and conflicts. No, I don't think we really had that many constructability issues just because, yeah, it was a simple bridge. But we
In the Trimmel Connect site, there's a way to be able to, if we have questions, I believe it's the BCF topics is what it's called, but we can go in there, tag something, and I think Grant could
you know, he'd be able to answer this a little more or whatever, but you could tag it and leave a comment, and then you can email it to
you know, everybody that was involved with the model, I can email it just to my superintendent, I can email it to Grant, the designers, I can email to the dot asking questions, hey, you know, is this an extra work order? We need to work on this, or we think this is wrong? Can we get some clarification? But
Honestly, the model that HDR and what Grant designed was very, very good and broke down everything, and we ran into very little issues. And if we had some issues, we pretty much could answer
Right then and there, where I don't think it took anywhere over a week to answer something, if not less, so that was very helpful during the whole entire process that Grant and HDR were there with us pretty much 24 7 if we wanted them to be
to answer any of our questions about the model, and if we needed some, you know, answers
And I'll add in, we did have weekly coordination meetings with Guberson and HDR and our construction technology staff and our inspector on the project. And so we kind of had that ongoing communication throughout the whole process. So if, like Brian said, if there was anything that was necessary, he reached out to Grant
was able to get that, get any views made a little bit more clarifying, a lot faster is really done very well. We had to… we used the ACMS grant funding to kind of help keep that… the designer on contract
Throughout construction, I don't remember the exact hours, but I believe it was, enough to cover the weekly meetings throughout the construction of the process, as well as several hours per week to be able to modify anything that is… or not modify, update any views. Like, we never modified the model, we just
augmented how you can look at it. That's the best way of looking at it. Like the model has never changed. Just the way you see it is was augmented.
It's somewhat because it's a different way of working. You kind of have to
Give yourself over a little bit to it. It, I think, is one thing. I like that comment that Brian made about
constructability and the ability to, like, tag things and respond to things, and it's just a different
approach that you have to get yourself
And
Yeah, it was really easy to break it down. And yeah, since it was 3D, we, you know, you could just circle it and point it out real quick and not have to try and explain it through multiple plan, you know, sheets on the 2D plan. So yeah, it was very, very helpful and
We're excited to do this and I'm glad we did do it. And it was a huge learning curve and
I appreciate, you know, Thomas and the dot and Grant with HDR and how helpful they were during this whole entire construction process
Looking forward in the future to
you know, do more of these
Yeah. Devin, you want to, I think we got time for one more question before we switch over to the Building Smart team.
Sure. Yeah. Hey, Thomas, Brian, thanks for the presentation. Before I ask my question, I do want to also just agree with Thomas and echo. We feel the same way of this whole digital delivery. The idea is model first and derive information from your model. So make sure you're starting with that
But contractors will tell you every carpenter, every person who's actually building something, they're not going to measure from a three dimensional model on a screen that's nice to have a 2D 2D information from it.
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox there for that. But Thomas
My question is more of, you know, you mentioned you're using Trimble Connect in the field, and you did mention a little bit of the design to construction handoff. It'd be nice to hear a little bit more of how you handled that. We are running into that same issue of like a seamless exchange of information from the authoring tools to the
The field representation tool. Be nice to know how you were addressing that
Okay.
So, I'm not gonna be able to do it justice. Probably Grant could. I can tell you that the process we did on this project was not straightforward to get to a fully structured IFC model
Based upon the IDM IDS from the BIM for Bridget Fund, there was post-processing that had to be done in Blender, with the Bonsai add-on. So basically, just using
That software, and I believe Grant and some other HDR staff, they had to do some programmatic structuring. So basically through
The design authoring software open bridge modeler, we used item types. I don't know what the Autodesk equivalent is, but basically just metadata attached to every single element. And within there, we identified how it should be structured within the model, and then we used some
The Blender app to basically kind of programmatically structure all that into a complete model that was done throughout within triple. So it was all structured. So like all the superstructure things were on the superstructure and then peers and all the sub components of peers and so forth and so on. All those things were identified and put together
And that work was that the open data standards that were standards that were developed by the British Instructors Food Fund were instrumental in making this pretty simple to navigate and look at and see how it's going on. So to tell you that it was easy, I'm not going to say it was easy. I do know that there has been updates and making it a little bit easier
In the authoring software, on the bridge side at least. Again, it's not native to the platform yet. I believe there's some Python scripts that have been developed by Bentley to kind of
structure a little bit better. and you get a little bit more clarification upon them from that. But basically, there there's still some some efforts to be done. I think part of that is like to my knowledge, Penn dot and us are the only States that have used
the… any… any deliverables from the pooled funds, an IFC 4.3, any production project. If anyone else has, correct me, but I believe we're the only ones that have done it yet. I know that PennDOT used
On the couple of their projects they did, they used different want to use the diverg software
for the structuring and the IFC creation. I don't remember coming on all plans coming off my head, but I don't know if that's right. I don't want to speak for PennDOT.
Open brim
But I do believe there's… there's… thanks, Alvin
No problem, buddy.
There's work to be done, but I think from the software developer's perspective, they need more examples from us states of what we want it to look like. And I think like the PennDOT, the Iowa DOT, ADCMS projects are good examples to share with them and say, this is how an IFC file for a bridge project needs to be structured
As infrastructure gets there, as we're working through that, we just kind of got our drafts going on this summer for IDM IDS.
So those are coming through, and we need to get more pilots going for that. So, I'm hoping
potentially try to do something in the future. ADCMS funding to kind of get more of those things, get those developed. But
Long story short, it's still a work in progress, but I think that the software vendors are working on that and it's good. It should get better.
Well, and Thomas
And that's also a good endorsement for the session I mentioned, and it's a good transition over to Building Smart to let them tell us what's going on on the
standard side that's helping with what the pool funds are doing. Devin, I hope that's okay. Maybe we'll have a little more time to keep the dialogue going at the end, but I want to make sure we get building smart in here
Understood. And I was the only thing I was going to say is Thomas and even Alan, I'll reach out to the two of you because that interoperability piece is what we've been running into as well. And we're trying to kick off a
an effort with the vendors to kind of have a little bit more conversation on that. So, what you were saying is exactly what we've seen, and I just want to make sure it was similar. So, thank you, Roger, for a little extra time.
Sure, sure. No problem, Devin.
Calvin, I see your camera is on. Will you be the presenter or will or who's going to take the slides here?
Yeah, Roger, I'll be presenting, so you should be able to see my screen soon
You see that? Okay
It's coming through just fine. Yep, I'm seeing it. Well
Okay, great, great.
And I hear you loud and clear.
Okay.
Good, and hopefully the rest of the team is on the line, too. So
I think I saw everyone had was a presenter. But yeah, I'm just a second, I'll turn on my camera too.
Yeah, I'm Will Sharpe with HDR and yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity to provide an update on open BIM and US transportation, both from Building Smart International and Building Smart USA point of view
And let me just one second, Roger, I need to switch one thing on my end. Just one second.
Oh, no problem.
Well, this should work a little better. All right. So can you see that okay, Roger?
You're someone
Oh
Yeah, we see your mode that's what the presenter sees, not the full screen
All right, just a second
That one. Okay.
Hello, Will Holmes. Good to see you
I have a little trouble with that in Zoom too, Will. You got to find the right there we go. Now we got you
Okay
your full screen mode
Sure.
Great! Okay, now we're ready to rock and roll. Thanks, Roger. So we're going to provide updates today, like I said, both on BuildSmart USA and Building Smart International
And to kind of
I thought it would be good to start off with just a really quick overview of Building Smart International for folks on this call that may not be aware of building smart international and how they fit into the bigger picture. So I did reach out to
to Aiden Mercer, he's the managing director at Building Sprout International, and he provided just a few general slides on them. And I thought this was a good slide to kind of note what Building Smart is about
And I'm going to read this one, but really open BIM, it's about providing a sustainable, less expensive built environment. It's about improving decision making, automation and efficiency, and it's about enabling an operable, accessible, and enduring data
Now, that's really what voting spot is about. You know, they're an international nonprofit about developing these ISO-adopted open standards that are used around the globe
For the built environment.
And this is kind of their open BIM workflow. You know, a lot of people, when they think about building smart, they think about IFC, which really is the foundation of their work
of the data that they create, but really they developed an entire OpenBIM workflow, and it really starts with your requirements. You know, what are your project information requirements? They have many tools to use there. There's something called a
of building smart data dictionary that's very specific about what information is in these models, how the information models maps to IFC
The spatial containment of that information. There's something called an IDS or information delivery specification on provides tools for owners to be able to check to make sure those information requirements are met.
And also there's validation tools. And, you know, we use this on the pilot that we just talked about
on validating that these IFC files, you know, meet the global requirements or valid IFC files to give you that interoperability. So, BuildingSmart has really developed an entire workflow. BCF was also briefly mentioned, you know, that's a way to
communicate and collaborate, and all this is in a software-agnostic way, so it really provides us the flexibility to use the best software for the project needs, and like the Iowa project, two completely different technologies were used, one for design authoring
One for construction. IFC really provided that interoperability between the two software packages.
IFC is international, you know, this is… they're up to 40 chapters across the globe. I can tell you Will Holmes and I have met many of these countries. We've been to many summits, but it is very much a global
Effort with Building Smart. And I can tell you there's a lot of countries that are struggling with the same things we are, have this very similar goals that we have, and it's just great tying in internationally as well.
And building smart, it's not all just about IFC, you know, building smart has done a great job of partnering with some of the other
International standards organizations like OGC, for example, like the digital twin consortium. So they're working with many other groups, like I said, they're very much tied to ISO, that iso adoption is very important to them, and they're working with a number of standard
organizations across the globe
And that's including NIPS, of course, Roger, which we're used to work.
So with building smart, this is one slide. Just wanted to explain a little bit about building smart and how Building Smart works with the state DOTs and AASHTO.
So one of my roles is I'm on the Building Smart USA roads and Bridges Industry Committee. I co-chair that with Alan Melly, and we work with a lot of the industry organizations. We work with Federal Highway, with AGC, ARPDA, ACC
We work very closely with the AASHTO JSTAN group that Trisha Stefansky leads, and I know, Will, I think you're the co-chair on that group
And also very closely with the AASHTO Joint Committee, Joint Committee on Electronic Engineering Standards that Jennifer Lloyd out of Tennessee leads and work closely with the pooled funds as well. So we're really working in close collaboration and developing these national open data standards
AASHDO also made the decision to join Building Smart International at a principal level, and this provides them not only tying into the operation side and these types of things, but also the governance side and the actual schema itself
So AASHTO does have rights to has voting rights on the schema, they're part of the infraredomain Steering Committee. I know you said on that, Will. And really has a role to be able to influence these international standards as well
So this just gives you an idea of kind of how this fits together, and I guess, Will, anything to add on this slide? I know there's a lot going on with this one
Yeah, the key thing is that
We're trying to do this in partnership, you know, as… as the pooled funds discover and learn things, we're trying to share that through
And to our international peers, and in turn get feedback from our international peers to speed up our own adoption process. So, it's really
Just like the DDSG, it's not done in isolation. We're trying to get communication across the entire world and the entire BIM ecosystem
Right? Okay. No, thanks, Will.
All right.
So now what we want to do is talk a little bit about building Smart USA and the Roads and Bridges Industry Committee.
So as I… I mentioned, I'm really pleased that earlier this year, Alan Melly is my new co-chair with the roads and Bridges Industry Committee. Trisha Stefanski was the previous co-chair on this and it's I from day one with Building Smart USA, when we set up the roads and bridges Industry Committee
I thought it was very important to have an asset owner as the co-chair of this committee. So that's kind of the way we've designed the committee, and it's… it's truly a partnership with the asset owners as we develop these standards.
And our vision is really not changed since I started working with Boating Smart International, which has been about seven years ago. So
And this is one… this vision was actually developed through the BIM for Bridges and Structures Pooled Fund, and it's really about moving to those digital workflows where we're able to move data from design to construction and fabrication and into asset management
using these open data standards. And we do see a key part of this is bottle as the the legal deliverable as well as digital as builds. So this is something that is really driving the pooled fund efforts is driving a lot of the efforts in the Us.
is moving to these full digital workflows. And this, I really think this workflow is what enabled that Iowa pilot project to happen, you know, without having these open standards. I think it would have been much more difficult for that pilot, and and our whole goal is to have
These standards, regardless of the state that a project is built in, the standard should be the same. You know, they should be formatted the same way and consistently. So that's really what we're trying to achieve here.
Other things with the chapter, roads and bridges is one of eight committees we have on our chapter. We also have a rail committee, a building committee, an airport committee
There's an executive committee that we all work together between all these chapters. Also an education and certification committee. Our chapter helps support open BIM training that voting smart has developed
So there's a number of courses you can see on the slide. We also do a number of webinars that are open to all at no cost.
And we also have a technical committee, and you're going to hear from Scott Letcher in a little bit. But supporting these efforts, the technical details are very important with this and how we work through these open standards. So it's been a great group to work with. Calvin Cam is on the line. Calvin is our president
of our Us. Chapter, and it's… I can tell you, it's been a very proactive chapter, and it's great connectivity with our U.S. chapter and the international work.
And this is an example of some of the engagement we do with Building Smart USA
The picture that's in the upper left, that was our open BIM Roads and Bridges summit that we had last year in November in San Diego
And this was an event that over 35 DOTs were there. We had over 200 people participating in person and online, and those are the types of meetings we like to have. You know, it's really about getting the right folks together
and really working through the challenges and and developing these open standards. So this is one I think our chapter is very proactive in a number of ways, you know, and working with different groups to really advance open standards in the Us.
And these are the partners that work with our chapter. Building Smart USA, just like Building Smart International, is nonprofit. You know, we rely on our chapters and our sponsors to really do what we need to do. So there's 18 different
Building Smart International members that designate U.S. as one of the chapters they support
So this is… this is very important, our efforts. We also have three chapter members, 13, sorry, chapter members, 13 chapter sponsors
And 15 chapter partners, which these partners are other transportation industry organizations that have similar goals that we do.
So it's very much working with a lot of different groups as we develop these open standards. And you can see there's a wide variety of technology providers. There's engineering companies, there's contractors, there's a lot of different organizations on this slide
that we're working with
So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Alan Melly to talk about our 2026 Open BIM Summit.
Yes, so our next engagement, like Will spoke, is coming up here in November in Pittsburgh. It's at the beginning of the week, so it's a Monday into Tuesday ahead of BIM week
Where the pulled funds get to get together. So working with collaboration with all of these, you know, various areas, IHEAP and the pulled funds, JSTAN and so forth, working to put on another
Great open BIM summit which here next slide will
We'll give you a brief
overview of what we plan to cover, so really going over the national updates. We have Aiden Mercer coming in from the UK to, speak on
Building smart international. Also some of the national updates. Also, some of these industry and stakeholder updates. So we are working to get a few of the contractors there to speak about their experiences with
With the open standards and some of our consultants to talk about what they've done as well. So really showing what you know open boom
is really doing, and where we've advanced over the years, so far, especially with these ADCMS grants putting putting this really into action. So, as you heard from Thomas a little bit ago
You know, putting this, you know, the pen to paper as far as showing what this can actually do, and open up the possibilities for our contractors to interact with
With these projects. So, the registration is open, for this session. That's what the QR code there, will take you to the registration link for this, two-day session
It will have a virtual session to it as well, so if you cannot make it to Pittsburgh here in November, it will have an online
Part to it that is free of charge to state and local agencies. So if you're from one of the DOTs, it is free of charge for you to join in in person or
are online. So
Anything else you want to add to that, Will
That was great, Alan. One other thing to add is that we do plan similar to last year on doing a technology provider challenge
What we did last year is we… we provided these IFC files from the pilots, so the Iowa one you heard about, as well as the Pennsylvania work, and we challenged the technology providers, show us how you can use this data
for construction. And I thought it was very good, you know, different tools using an open data standard to quickly get that into their technology for construction use. You know, it was… there were some very good presentations there, and
Plan on having a similar technology provider challenge this year that's related to the use of the open data standards and really the interoperability that provides. So no, thanks, Alan. That was great.
So we'll move now to the International Summit update, and I asked Will Holmes to kind of join me to help with this
And this is one the international, the latest international summit was in Porto, Portugal in March, a beautiful location to have a summit. As Roger, I'm sure can attest to, but it was, it was a great location, a great event
You know, this is the group that was there. We had over nearly 800 people registered for this event. I think 45 countries were represented. But this was just a great venue and just a great event for international collaboration
With open data standards. And this slide gives you a little sense of the event itself. The picture in the upper left is kind of where we did the keynote presentations where we all were able to meet as a group together
You can also see when we had our collaboration with the technology providers, the lower left. The upper right, we're going to talk about this further, but this was one of the panel discussions that we did with the infrastructure domain where we pulled together many countries that are using
IFC 4.3 for horizontal infrastructure projects, just to talk about what's going well, what's not, how can we work together. So I'll talk about that in detail in a minute. And then this lower right graph is those are some of the US representatives that were at the summit
You know, I thought we had good representation at the summit and just really good engagement there from the US.
So the presentations that we had at the summit in Porto that were related to transportation
Will Holmes and I were fortunate enough to be asked to do a keynote on open BIM and US transportation, building long-term success
I can tell you that internationally there's a lot of interest in the US. We're approaching things a little differently. Where we're trying to develop these nationally AASHO endorsed open standards to use on our everyday bread and butter projects
So in really trying to scale that up in the US. So lots of interest on what we're doing, you know, what's going well, what are our challenges
There were also several panel discussions that were sponsored by the infrastructure domain
One was the discussion I mentioned before on implementing 4.3, what different countries are doing there and how that's going. And then we had a follow-up panel discussion with a technology providers, how are we going to address these challenges with implementing 4.3?
So it's very interesting to identify the issues and then also discuss how to solve those issues. We also got an update from the the effort domain steering committee on, you know, what is their roadmap? Where are we going with the infrastructure domain
So a lot of really good presentations in Porto. The panel discussion that we had on the 4.3 and the infra domain, this one was attended by Finland, France, China, Italy, and the US. Of course, Will, you were part of that panel
Alexa Mitchell was the moderator, and it was just a great panel just to explain to me how you're using this, what's going well, what's not, you know, and really understand lessons learned and how we can learn from each other
You know, a couple of key challenges that we identified during this discussion
One of those is the inconsistent software implementation on geolocation. I think Thomas Hamsky mentioned that as they had a little issue with some of the treble software, different software were handling geolocation a little differently.
So I had a really good discussion on identifying that challenge and how to address it. Also, alignment and letter of referencing gaps
and assemblies, like assembly could be a light or a signal. How we handle those more consistently. So this was just a great opportunity to talk about this at the global level on what are the challenges, and also talk how are we solving those challenges as well.
And I don't know, Will, if you want to mention, but I know we had some follow-up in Australia from this event as well, but I can mention that or you can. It's up to you
Go ahead.
Okay, but no, we were when Will Holmes and I were in Porto, we
The folks from BuildingSpark Australasia asked us if we would come out and support their their national event in Australia and really also participate in a peer exchange to talk about some of these challenges and how do we work together
It's just one example, I think, of how the US is working with other countries. We're leveraging those connections through Building Smart International and really working on this in a global way
We also had at the Building Smart International Summit in Porto, a building smart international and US Transportation Leadership Meeting. We think this is very important to get the US folks and the Building Smart International folks together in person
And really talk about what we're doing in the US, what are our challenges? How can we all work together? So you can see the attendees on the slide on this for this meeting. But we had great representation from Federal Highway. I know, Will, you were there to represent AASHTO at this meeting
And just some real candid and good discussions with voting smart. And we had great staff from Building Smart as well, several folks from their board of directors attended this meeting, as well as Aiden Mercer, which he was the marketing director, now he's the managing director
Building Smart International. And really, one of the key outcomes of this meeting is we have decided to set up quarterly meetings where the US and building smart international working together at the leadership level and also at the technical level
To really identify any issues we're having and address those collaboratively. So I thought this was a really positive meeting and I look forward to more similar meetings at other summits and these quarterly online meetings as well with Building Smart International
And then we also had some key takeaways from the summit, and I was going to have Will kind of walk through those. Will and I were talking and kind of compared notes on some of the key takeaways we took from the summit, but go ahead and take it away, Will.
Sure. So just as ACEC was talking about kind of the future direction for their organization was going to digital delivery and that's the beginning point, not the final destination. I believe that's true for DOTs and other asset owners.
So we need to be clear, and we need to be having those conversations within our own organizations and driving that, that we've got some hard work to do, but the transformation that's coming, the payoff will
Tremendous again short-term pain but long-term gain, so we've got to do that work. And again, we need to be doing this not just in isolation in the United States. The United States is not an island.
And we need to make sure that we're engaging our peers across the globe because
If we're gonna get the big software development farms to work for us and do the things we need them to do, if we're all giving them the same consistent message, we will get that in place much faster than if the United States is a standalone, isolated
Standard compared to the rest of the world
And again, some of our peers are ahead of us in some areas, and we should learn from them, embrace that. And just like when Will was talking about what we did with Australasia, we had some things that we in the United States could share with them that was beneficial, and they in turn have reciprocated and shared some things back with us
That again, we want to distribute more broadly. So we need to focus on making sure that we connect with our peers and also look at these systems as a system of systems rather than
kind of isolated files that we're moving
And then finally, shifting to the true asset lifecycle and managing not only the asset but all the data related to that. So that means data stewardship as well.
But if we will embrace that bigger picture, we will enjoy the dividends that come from that, rather than sort of the classic waterfall project development that we've done for the last 100 years.
Anything else, Will?
Oh, I think that sums it up great, but I know others were there as well. Calvin Cam, did you have any other key takeaways that you want to note at this meeting? I know you've been to many of these summits, and any key takeaways you wanted to share, Calvin?
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Will and Will, Roger and the border team. So thank you all for giving Building Smart USA, Building Smart International some opportunity to introduce what we do. And indeed, I think a lot of what we do, the takeaway of building upon the foundation, the dedication
The thoughtfulness, the teamwork of more than three decades of what a lot of our American peers and global friends are doing. For example, our former chairman, Patrick McLamey, Ian Howell
Longtime fellows like Walter Grant on this call, it's all this hard work, it's all this foundation that, as we just heard, we now have more than 40, almost 42 chapters globally with one of the most popular, well-attended summit in Porto. And I would say that the takeaway as Will and Will just mentioned on the infrastructure side, on the on the
on the roads and which side, certainly right on. And then what we also saw, the including transportation and beyond is that how do we articulate the business impact? How do we
First of all, we do see that, like some of us working on this for 25 years and counting, 25 years ago, there used to be one pilot at a time, but nowadays we do see that more and more countries are turning into changing the national laws, changing procurement, changing practice
We're changing the way to turn this into kind of like a table stick, part of the way they do business beyond one project, but across jurisdiction and procurement coverage. So we also saw that a lot of chapters, a lot of owners are coming
To also contributes and what runs into those global open bid mandates. And beyond that, asking for the requirements is one thing. How do we measure the business value? How do we articulate? How do we articulate, measure the expected and also the actual
benefits the business value. Sure, it may take, as we heard from earlier this call, it would take investment to go from pilot to deployment. But how can we actually start to fast forward those so actually there were also quite a number of chapters, including US
Portugal, the host chapter and a number of chapters coming together and try to contribute that for ESI. And I think that we have heard is that it's as we talk about, it's also about the future. Some of you may heard about IFC 5. It is much more modular, get away from STEP, get away from the old days and really be much more machine readable, be much more lightweight
And then during the portal summit, there was also being recoined, relabeled as IFCX so as not to imply that five gets sequential after 4. We also kind of like signaling that FCX is something that would work with all the existing IFC as well, and rest assured that we also got a good assurance in public and also in some of the smaller group meeting that FC 4.3, 4.4
Or will certainly be continue to be supported. Very quickly, two more highlights. One is that the concept of artificial intelligence, how in a two-day hackathon, we have seen a number of cross-country teams able to spend a few hours and come up with, we talk about BCF, BIM collaboration format earlier to turn BCF into a time capsule and be able to do that with the aid of AI in two days time.
Very promising. And then, last but not least, the US chapter is part of the Building Smart International Compliance Committee Executive, represented by four chapters. US is one of them, who is also rethinking and reviving how we do both software certification and also professional certification
We now have more than 20,000 professionals globally, but may only be a couple dozens, there may be 100 in the US, right? So how do we also learn about those global certification? How do we contribute? How do we align, make it all value to the US community? And similarly, as we look into global and national or local certification, how do we draw those lines so that's also what
the CCD with BSI is about. But in Sean, we are the ambassador. We look forward to making sure that OpenBIM brings value to our U.S. community, and also whenever cases that we can find peers, as mentioned, who share the same challenges and opportunities, how we can team up with one another. And that's building upon 30 years and counting. And let's look forward to see how we can continue to grow and make it a value and of impacts
All right. Thank you so much, Calvin.
Now, a lot going on with Boning Sport International these days, so
All right.
Well, with that, I think we're going to move to the implementers update too. And I think Grant Smith is going to kick this effort off with support from Scott Letcher and Rick Bryce. So Grant, do you want to kick this one off?
And Roger, we might need to check. I know Grant was having some audio
We might need to send him another link, you know, he was having some Zoom challenges earlier
Yeah, I'm not hearing Grant. Are you out there, Grant? Are you having issues or maybe Scott can start off if Grant's not available
Until we get him sorted out.
Yeah, I'd be happy to pinch it for Grant in the interest of time.
Okay.
Sure.
Yeah, well, if you could do that, Scott, maybe that'd be good because we're, yeah, we don't have a lot of time left.
Yep.
That'd be great.
Yeah, so this is just a quick
Recap from the implementers assembly that was held in February 2026. One of the nice things for the US market here is that some of the folks from Building Smart International were able to come a day early
And meet with various groups on the day before the implementer assembly. So that's what we'll go over here first. Will, if you want to move to the next slide.
So the first part of that meeting was a closed session in the morning with the old fund teams, BIM for Bridges and structures and BIM for infrastructure. Again, meeting with the building smart executives, providing an update and accomplishments
Discussing some of these open issues and pain points, some similar things that we've seen in some of the other slides as we've been going through, but the key takeaway that we wanted to highlight here is that we do have a receptive ear at the international level that
They're listening to the concerns that are being raised and and they're taking action and even taking some of these things directly into the implementers assembly that took place the following 2 days after that, as we'll see here shortly. And then Will, if you want to move ahead again
So then the second half of that meeting in the afternoon was an open session and a hybrid session. And this provided again some interaction with Building Smart at the international level
But also was the second meeting for our technical committee within the US chapter that I co-chair along with Min Song of SBI. And this was, I believe our second meeting as a newly formed technical committee
We went over our charter, got some updates from some of the focus groups. And this was also when we first started brainstorming some of our initiatives and goals for 2026. And I'm happy to say now here in July, seven months into this, that we already have
A new focus group that's moving forward. Looking at use case management. We also have a number of folks supporting some other issues regarding implementation of 4.3. So lots of good things happening with the technical committee.
And I think now I'll hand off to Rick Bryce.
Yeah, thanks. Like I said, we met at Bentley's headquarters in Pennsylvania, and this is the implementers assembly meeting of BSI where they bring together software developers from all around the world and they do it twice a year
Locations hosted by different software vendors, and we, you know, get into some of the nitty-gritty details. Of course, you know, there's the somewhat obligatory updates from Building Smart International and their progress with open BIM, like new chapters and
And IFC 4.3 has been adopted as an ISO standard. Training certification programs are being updated and revamped, and so on. There's lots of kind of statistics shown about what's going on in all the different working areas.
compatibility policy they've developed with ISO.
In advance of starting to be worked. So it's not a replacement for four. It's a new standard that'll ally alongside of it and so on. Next
So, we had some technical updates on some of the
Specifications, IFC, IDS, BCF. There is a segment they always have in there called the voice of the customers. And it gives local customers an opportunity to directly address the software vendors.
And so I gave a presentation about there is a I've strong need for implementation support of IFC 4x3. I gave some examples from one of Washington State DOT's ADCS project on signage
And
And we were kind of noting that there is really a lack of authoritative guidance on how to implement around 4x3 standard. You know, there's lots of posts on LinkedIn about it, but there's nothing authoritative, right? Joe Brenner from Michael Baker and Grant Schmitz from HDR
Both gave updates on their IFC based ADCMS projects, you know, project overviews, the tools they use and the lessons that they learned. And of course, both different projects use different tools and learn different lessons.
Today we'll share that directly with the vendors. Next, please.
We spent some time looking at some real life IFC challenges. IFC forecast challenges and discussed some how to maybe resolve them having to do with
Section surface and advanced swept geometries. We did a workshop on IFC5.
Some brainstorming ideas of what could we do with it. There's some updates on different
Building smart standards.
There's a working group looking at updating BCF to a version 3.
And there's work undergoing on right now, having to do with IDS 1.0, some minor changes, and possibly scoping of a 1.1 release of that. And also, some announcements and information around the
software validation service and software certifications that they're out of beta. Version one is now live, and they're collecting live data for certification scorecards
Next
That's the next one coming up.
Yeah, this is just all the recordings from those meetings are available online, you can listen to them. Announcing the next assembly in September in Italy. Next slide. I think this will wrap up what I have
Yes. So in addition to the implementers assembly, there is an online implementers forum
kind of hosted through GitHub. And so building smart international in response to
concerns of a lack of quality support in IFC 4x3, and I think those those 2 sessions that came out of those panel sessions that came out of Porto really
underscored this, that they're getting inconsistent data transfers and software vendors, developers are saying we need more guidance on how to implement this. And so
Through the Implementers Forum, Building Smart International is running every two weeks, sprints on different topics of outstanding issues around ISC 4.3 to help clarify what misunderstandings may be and get folks up to a level implementation as well as starting a technical review process
For IFC4X4, which is around tunnels, and the other big topic there is the voxelated geometries.
So, that is kind of the update from what's happened with the
Building Smart technical chapter and the things we're involved in.
All right.
Well, thanks. Thanks, Rick
And Scott and Grant and Will, and appreciate that. And Roger, thanks for you and Matt for the invitation to address the DDSG with Buildings Part 2.
So we appreciate the opportunity.
Well, you're welcome, Will. Thank you to all of your group for sharing all that good information with us.
That was nice to get an update on and lots to unpack there, but maybe if you do want more, we will… we do have the slides in the mural. You can dig in there and take a look. Rackley's been copying them in if you have questions
Drop those in there, and we'll compile them and share them out later. I don't think we'll be able to do any question and discussion right now, just given that we're three minutes away from wrapping up, but you know everything follows
course, so we had a few switches up today, but I think we've been able to
get a lot of good information out there. We do have our Mentimeter poll that's running still. We've put the link in the chat a few times
And there's two closing questions, which would be helpful for you to give us your feedback. So that, Matt, maybe if you want to say anything, I'll put that back up on the
screen here as we're wrapping up. Whoops
There we go.
Yeah.
While you take the time to answer the Mentimeter and
The link… I know the link is good that's in the chat as well that Mona had provided and linked
Again, we appreciate your participation today
We do have two more sessions coming up
And, just wanted again to remind everybody that if you did not register for each of the three sessions individually
You still have the opportunity, so please go back into the DDSG Hub
And find the other two sessions and register for those. Tomorrow's is scheduled for 11 a.m. Eastern Time. And we've got some updates on some ongoing Federal Highway
Sponsored research projects specifically, and then we've got some additional updates and discussion and engagement that we want to do with the group and some additional polling
As well, and then we'll be wrapping up on Wednesday with some details on a combination of efforts between Federal Highway and also Caltrans as it relates to
Bim Transportation Library and Data Artifacts associated with BIM per infrastructure
Again, thank you all for your time and effort and your engagement
And your great questions and feedback and sticky notes that you posted in the mural, we used the mural and Menti quite a bit. We always will have the mural up, so just in case
You know, on your way home from the office today, or after reflection, you were like, oh, I should ask that question, or I had, you know another comment, you can always go into the mural and append
Or add another sticky note, at any point in time down the road
With that, we will wrap up and adjourn for today, and I hope to see you all again tomorrow.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks, Matt. Thanks, everybody.
Alrighty, so I will close out the webinar now. That's everything.
Recording has been saved
transcript as well. So
Excellent. Thanks, everyone
Alrighty.
See ya!
See you tomorrow