BIM in the Utility Industry

In my opinion, BIM is a sort of nebulous topic for us in the Utility industry. We can see the benefits that our peers in the AEC space are gaining, but we aren't quite sure how to get there from our side. I think some of that is based on how the utility industry operates versus how the AEC industry operates. I also think that, perhaps, vendors who are creating these cool tools and applications might need some education on how we do our thing. Armed with that information, perhaps we can start to see more tools tailored to the specific needs of our industry. I'm going to try to make the case for why BIM is something we need to understand, and why it's something we should chase down and adopt as fast as we can.

The link above will give you a broad understanding of what BIM is and what the overall expectations are regarding its use. But, when many of my customers read that they often wonder what that has to do with them? Many, of not most of the utility folks I work with are still focused on the production of 2D drawings for the construction crews that build utility infrastructure. That is a well established and known process - engineer up some changes to the existing substation or line and then draft it up, or modify whatever existing drawings are present for said changes, and then transmit the drawings and go on to the next job. There is no perceived need for any 3D or 'smart' asset, construction doesn't need it today since they have the drawings and a truck hood to roll them out on. And, frankly in some cases construction doesn't even need the drawings; these folks are professionals and they know what they need to do to get power flowing and keep it flowing. I'm betting that for a pretty large percentage of the work they do, even the drawings are irrelevant. Construction certainly isn't very concerned about the stuff in the titleblocks outside of the title, used to identify which drawing they are looking at. So, why do we need this whole BIM thing if construction doesn't need it?

I think one answer to that lies in thinking about what other role our utility clients fill. See, we aren't just construction people - utility companies are also owners and operators of an EXTREMELY complex, dangerous and frankly life sustaining system, the power grid. And in a lot of places I personally feel like we are leaving out a whole group of customers that could benefit from the information that BIM can provide. Those customers are the operations and maintenance folks at the utility companies - the people who have to operate and maintain the critical infrastructure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through every type of weather, period. Operations and maintenance folks do need to know things like:

• what project certain work was done under (query the project management system)
• what material was ordered and whether there is a shortage or long lead time to get it (lookups from the asset/material tracking system)
• what assets are physically located at a given substation (reports built from all the bills of material for the substation)
• how close is the fence to a particular breaker because when they plan that breaker swap they need to know if they can get a crane in there (an accurate 3D model can easily show this)
• is there some kind of protected critter or environmentally protected area in the proposed transmission line right of way that would require a reroute of the line (GIS can answer this quite often)

Some of this stuff is also important to design since it will ultimately affect the drawings that go out the door, but design already has a multitude of processes to figure that stuff out. The problem there is the word 'multitude' - which can be translated into 'inefficient'. So, there is some reason to create a system that is more efficient, and that would benefit design and operations and maintenance. But still, construction doesn't really that information as long as the drawings are good. But, what if the drawings are not good, or really old, or what if they are not accurate?

Accuracy and change management is something that needs to be addressed quite often in design - there are multiple reasons why a drawing might not be accurate. The simplest reason that most people jump to is that the drawings were not checked well enough. But, I think that the biggest reason has to do with the fact that perhaps we don't have good as-built information of our sites. I don't think we are in the habit of doing scanning in our substations. We certainly do laser scanning of our transmission lines, but probably not at the level of accuracy that is required for a true as-built model. So, most of the time what we rely on are previous revisions of drawings and pictures taken on site-visits. And, then the designers have to pull those pictures off the camera and compare them with the 2D drawings and make educated guesses as to what is going on there. Perhaps the drawings get updated then, probably not though, especially if the pictures or drawings aren't in scope for the given project. So there are potentially lots of drawings that do not reflect the actual as-built condition, and are therefore providing wrong information. This is less than ideal. But our construction crews are quite good and can work through a lot of that. Unless they can't. Perhaps there is something really off and now they have to call an engineer and work it out over the phone. And maybe they are in the middle of nowhere with no cell access, and they have to pack up and drive to find coverage. That costs money, potentially a LOT of it. An accurate representation of what was there, that was modeled with all of that physical information available to design when it needed to be, would save a lot of that money. And that doesn't even take into consideration the safety aspect of having incorrect information, especially if you have a less experienced crew working the job.

Solid BIM processes can solve quite a few of those challenges, and I think benefit everyone. BIM doesn't have to mean a 3D model on a mobile device that you are expected to build off of. What it can and should mean is accurate and pertinent information right alongside whatever asset you need to get your job done, wherever you are in the process. Operations can operate, maintenance can maintain, design can design, and construction can construct, all looking at the same information that can be collaborated on and made up to date right now, or as close to real time as technically feasible. This is where we need to be, and BIM processes can get us there. We have seen the AEC industry do it successfully, and we can do it as well. We just need to adapt and we need solid understanding of our industry as a whole.

We need vendors that really understand what our industry needs. There are certain tools that we have adopted, but I feel confident in stating that NONE of those tools provides a full solution. And, I feel confident that no vendor understands the entire problem well enough to create such a tool. I think that it would benefit everyone across the board to learn about what we do in the utility industry and why we do it, with the intent of understanding the problems we have and creating tools and processes that solve those problems. We don't want or need tools that make us change how we do what we do, we want tools that make us more efficient at what we do. We need vendors to understand that and then cater to us. We need your help, and we need other people to wade in and help as well - there is a lot of potential for innovation in this industry related to automation, integration, and BIM processes in general.

I feel strongly that we can make this work for us if we collectively work together to make it so. I am game to try to explain some of our challenges, which are really opportunities for the vendors out there. Lets all get involved and do good things here - everyone who flips a light switch can benefit from our efforts.