Customer profile: Duna Aszfalt Zrt is one of Hungary’s largest local contractors, employing approximately 1600 employees. The company is involved in every aspect of infrastructure construction, like roads and highways, as well as environmental projects and bridges. Duna Aszfalt is also a prominent company in the field of asphalt technology, such as their use of low-energy asphalt (LEA) methods in their asphalt work.
business challenge: Utilizing the most advanced building information modeling (BIM) methods and technology for infrastructure and civil construction projects
Solution:
- Trimble Earthworks Grade Control Platform
- Trimble Roadworks Grade Control Platform
- Trimble Business Center Software
- Trimble SX10 Scanning Total Station
- Trimble WorksManager Software
- Trimble WorksOS
- Trimble MX50 Mobile Mapping System
- Trimble Sitevision
- Trimble Quadri
- Trimble Novapoint
- Trimble Tilos
- Trimble Connect
Benefits:
- Accurately and quickly capture the conditions of your site, progress, and the as-built information
- Process data quickly to make it usable in the future
- 4x faster excavation speed and road construction
- Keeping data consistent between exports
The introduction of the BIM concept into their daily activities has brought about significant improvements in terms of quality, productivity, as well as efficiency. Duna Aszfalt Zrt, one of Hungary’s largest local contractors, has over 1600 employees.
The company works on the entire spectrum of infrastructure construction, including roads and highway construction, as well as environmental projects and bridges. The name implies that Duna Aszfalt is also a top company in the field of asphalt technology, such as their use of low-energy asphalt (LEA) methods in their asphalt work.
We had a conversation about the work of Beatrix Szabo, BIM Manager, Karolina Tiszavolgyi, who is the head of the team for survey, as well as Ervin Bakos, the leader of the modeling and design group in Duna Aszfalt to talk about their experiences working using BIM and making use of Trimble solutions to meet their objectives.
In this article in this article, the BIM management team from Duna Aszfalt tells us about their work and the reasons why they decided to go with Trimble software to meet their goal of becoming the top BIM group in Hungary.
What is the state of the industry of infrastructure in Hungary at the moment?
“Since the 1990s there has been a lot of focus to upgrade the road network after long times of neglected road maintenance. It is the national road administration that builds and maintains most roads,” Ervin informs us.
In terms of BIM maturity, The Hungarian Standard Institution is the one that has adopted more than thirty European as well as International BIM standards, and two of the standards have been translated into Hungarian. The government is helping the market in figuring out ways to meet the BIM requirements. Each of Karolina and Beatrix was involved in the creation of the first BIM guidebook for Hungary at their previous job.
“But that handbook was mainly for building projects and there a lot of differences between building and infrastructure projects,” Beatrix highlights.
“Infrastructure projects, such as road projects are always lengthy and require a lot of data. The data come from a lot of sources and are dispersed so we need a different approach when applying BIM to our business,” Ervin says. Ervin. The construction industry is quite varied in terms of owners, with lots of private owners. In the case of railways and roads, it’s the majority of governmental agencies that are the owners of projects.
Karolina says, “because the infrastructure industry is relying on governmental agencies it is also stable and can support the development of the BIM process.”
Details from the Road 83-project, where Duna Aszfalt Zrt gets involved with BIM
Duna Aszfalt is aiming high in the area of VDC and BIM.
As Duna Aszfalt is one of the top contractors in Hungary, They want to be on the cutting edge of the implementation of new technologies and working methods. Because they’ve already embraced several technologies on construction sites, like drones and machine control systems, their goal is to create an efficient workflow from concept to construction. In the normal scenario, we are given a bunch of drawings. Then, the surveyors at the site make digital models from those sketches by hand.
Ervin informs us that “we want a more controlled and direct data flow from design to construction, and that’s what our strategy is all about.”
“To be able to change our processes we have established two teams dedicated to this transformation of our business. In 2020 we created a 3D modeling team with 3 designers and a 3D survey team with 4 surveyors. We would like to further expand our department as we have more and more tasks to do,” Karolina describes.
Beatrix discusses the strategy as well as its human aspects, “most people at the company are open to changes and appreciate the benefits of altering our methods of work. However that’s true for all organizations, and change can be difficult. We don’t want discourage people from BIM by imposing any rules on them, rather we have a “flagship” project where we show that this really works, and from that, we spread the BIM methodology through the company.”
Duna Aszfalt’s office-to-field-to-office BIM workflow
Why Trimble Quadri?
In the year 2019, as Duna was launching with our BIM approach, the company began to explore different software options. They looked at various solutions from other vendors, but none of them really met their requirements for a standard data environment.
“In my previous workplace, I was in brief contact with Quadri and Novapoint and we decided to contact Trimble about it. So in 2019, we got some evaluation licenses from Trimble and also very good support from them when we were starting to test. We tried out several types of software before. We found out that Quadri is a real BIM software that perfectly fits our BIM strategy,” Ervin adds. Ervin.
Quadri is a real BIM platform since it has all the support you need for object-based models, and we don’t need to think about files anymore. All is within the model. It is constantly updated, and you have instant access to a fully visualized 3D model of the actual information about the project. With regards to the program for designing, Novapoint excels over other design tools that we’ve had experience with. Novapoint is much more efficient when it comes to handling larger models. It has no issues even when it comes to road projects that are more than 40 km; in contrast, similar design programs that it is not able to handle road models greater than 3 km before they get too slow to function.
Another thing that’s great about Quadri is its openness to other options. For Road 83, our Road 83 project, we utilize data from Revit, Novapoint, and Civil 3D, and the Quadri connectors allow us to get the design information directly from different software programs without the need for file exports. This is a first for Quadri in comparison with other available systems, in which you need to work with designs that are part of their portfolio for working collaboratively. Trimble is on the right track when it comes to opening this Quadri system to different systems similar to this.
What is the best way to collaborate with Quadri and Novapoint?
“We are almost surprised how fast our implementation has been. It is really easy to learn to use both Quadri and Novapoint,” Karolina says. Karolina as she continues to discuss the process. “We also want to thank Trimble for their excellent support during this period. They are always happy to help us no matter what.”
“We mainly use Novapoint Road design, but also the Water & Sewer module. To get a better model we also added road markings and some road signs. Today there is no localized version for Novapoint Road Markings and Novapoint Road Sign in Hungary but we used another country localization for that,” Ervin says to us.
Beatrix adds, “Quadri is a total game-changer for us because we have control of what is done, when and by who, Everyone in the project has instant access to the model data and can extract volumes, machine control data, or check what has been done.”
Improvements in productivity and results. Specific improvements have been made since using Quadri as well as Novapoint.
“Well the most important thing for us as a contractor is that we are closing the gap between the construction site and the office by using a common data environment like Quadri,” Karolina and Ervin comment on the matter. “We have also improved the analysis of technical challenges in the field, so we address them early because they cause any problems at the construction phase. And that is valuable because we avoid stops in the production.”
One of the major interconnects in the Road 83 Project was modeled using a blend of Novapoint, Revit, and Civil 3D. All of them are stored in the same information environment, Trimble Quadri.
Because we have a 3-D image of 83 plans of every part of the project, we are able to create information for machine controls in an extremely efficient manner. We can save about 75% of our time as compared to the past when it comes to generating machine control information.
Beatrix says, “the fact that we have a common model for everything also saves us a lot of time. All data is obtained from the same source, no matter if it is volumes, planning data, or machine control data. And that is a real boost for our effectiveness.”
The next step
After more than 1 1/2 years of working together with Quadri and Novapoint, We are now ready for us to move on to another step. This is to create a method for conducting the modeling and designing work. We will make guidelines for how to design certain scenarios to ensure that everyone works in the same manner.
“We all think Trimble has a fantastic portfolio of products so now we are also starting to use TILOS for planning, and we would love to also use Trimble SiteVision (a Trimble augmented reality system) soon,” Karolina concludes.
Our Interviewees
Karolina Tiszavolgyi received her degree from the Budapest University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Industrial and Agricultural Building Design, in the year 2016. Following that, she has been employed as an architect-designer for DVM Group. Karolina then joined the Hungarian Professional Background Institution for construction, architecture real estate registration, and GIS within the Prime Minister’s Office as a project support engineer as well as a BIM specialist. She was involved in the writing of one of the first BIM guides in Hungary in the period. Presently, Karolina is the head of the department for 3D surveys within Duna Aszfalt Zrt.