Climate change, urbanisation and population growth are putting immense pressure on our cities and regions. And our infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the change needed. From resourcing constraints to increasing pressure to demonstrate societal benefits, the global infrastructure industry is looking to digital engineering to tackle this growing burden.
Digital engineering is a collaborative way of working using digital processes, tools, and technological innovations to manage information in infrastructure lifecycle activities, right from early planning through to operating and maintaining the assets.
The process helps evaluate project goals at every phase which in turn empowers project managers and asset owners with confidence and transparency when demonstrating progress to stakeholders.
The digital engineering process allows efficient management of asset data throughout its lifecycle and prepares the data for integrating with the Asset Management Information System (AMIS) to improve asset operational readiness. Collecting information across an asset’s lifecycle creates valuable data that can be turned into asset intelligence - where people, systems and processes work together.
For Wellington Water, fast tracking its digital engineering implementation process was critical, however ambiguity around where to begin was the main barrier hindering progress. Operating at capacity, the opportunity to implement digital engineering was also being challenged by stakeholders with insufficient knowledge around exactly what these first steps look like. Digital engineering requires the whole business to come on that journey, yet to free capacity to do so is difficult and becomes an immediate barrier.
“One of the sticking points of digital engineering is that many of your resources can’t actually visualise what that journey looks like, and it often becomes immensely overwhelming – it’s difficult to get engagement from the outset,” shared Ben Waters, Network Engineering Manager, Wellington Water.
Despite these challenges, Wellington Water was determined to adopt digital engineering to enhance the reliability and safety of its services, whilst also efficiently developing its capital delivery program to provide greater customer value.
In partnering with GHD Digital, Wellington Water started small with GHD’s BIM (Building Information Modelling) accelerator program. This is a short-term, quickly executable methodology that enabled Wellington Water to demonstrate the value early to these internal stakeholders – showcasing the benefit digital engineering creates and long term, engaging more of the business to invest in this journey.
Starting with a small cohort of digitally passionate stakeholders proved the smoothest entry for Wellington Water. Initially tackling a small project allowed the team to demonstrate value in a focused manner with a project already set to launch.
Through the process, Wellington Water was equipped with elevated confidence and knowledge to the performance of their assets. Ultimately, supporting Wellington Water to provide more reliable services to their customers.
“Digital engineering provides better data and information management that leads to better business outcomes such as improved safety, reduced risk, greater cost certainty and improved sustainability,” shared Asem.
Working alongside GHD Digital accelerated their capability, understanding, and ensured focus on delivering the right foundations to meet their business strategy and future state. Through a strategic approach, the best fit tools and processes were implemented.
GHD implemented an integrated digital and professional services waste management and compliance program across 500 sites for a leading North American midstream oil and gas company. Our integrated approach streamlined operations, enhanced visibility and delivered significant cost savings while ensuring regulatory compliance, transforming a fragmented system into an efficient enterprise-wide program.
GHD Digital led the digitisation of TasPorts’ assets into a geographic information system (GIS) to enhance data visibility, asset management, maintenance processes and overall operational efficiency. These tools helped TasPorts gain a comprehensive view of activities across its multi-port networks.
GHD Digital supported the New Zealand government in monitoring the construction of the Ara Tūhono – Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway through a custom geographic information system (GIS). This solution enabled the project team to record a large volume of geospatial data over a multi-year construction period, resulting in precise data collection, enhanced data visibility and visualisation, and improved access to the large dataset. It facilitated improved information sharing, activity coordination and decision-making, contributing to a safer and future-ready motorway.