In today’s fast-growing construction tech sector, “continuous improvement” is more than just a corporate slogan, it’s an absolute imperative.
Just ask AtkinsRealis (formerly SNC-Lavalin), which this year marked the 20th anniversary of the launch of its VUEWorks asset management platform.
Upgrades have come in waves over the years as clients have asked for more functionality, explained Todd Spangler, U.S.-based VUEWorks senior business development manager.
In May, VUEWorks was introduced by Brun-Way Highway Operations to track highway maintenance on parts of the Trans-Canada Highway and Route 95 in New Brunswick. AtkinsRealis is responsible for operating, maintaining (O&M) and rehabilitating 275 kilometres of four-lane highway until 2033 as part of a P3 team.
Why wait till failure?
“There’s a trend now, more heavily, to move away from the failure modes of managing assets to wanting to extend life cycle, maintain a higher level of state of good repair of your assets, and the only way to do that is to know what the level of service your assets are in,” said Spangler.
“And so our application allows our customers to monitor and to inspect and to track the health of their assets, not only through periodic condition inspections, but also looking at your modes, what’s the likelihood of this going to fail based on different criteria, and also what’s the consequence of these assets if they do fail to the organization.”
The P3 arrangement in New Brunswick enables the O&M team to preserve, operate and reinvest in the asset in a cost-effective manner, says the engineering firm. Spangler said money is saved by prioritizing preventative work.
“It’s a way for them to not only capture that for internal planning purposes, but it also allows them to be able to report that information and provide it to the funding agencies, the grant agencies, the regulatory agencies,” he said.
Spangler pointed to the Indiana Toll Road Concession Company (ITRCC) as a proven VUEWorks success story. By proactively maintaining assets, he said, the ITRCC anticipates saving $100 million over the next 65 years.
“They’ve done that through their bridge maintenance, their roadway maintenance, their lighting, all the assets, their toll equipment, everything they use on that toll road has been included in that program,” said Spangler.
VUEWorks is also used to plan projects. One module, called budget forecasting, is an investment planning tool that allows the user to set criteria for maintenance, levels of service and types of treatments to be considered, and running multi-year scenarios up to 100 years.
Addressing the Canadian climate
AtkinsRealis has also incorporated different deterioration forecasts based on location — a Canadian client is going to have a different deterioration curve than a southern U.S. client because of climate, soils and more.
In Virginia, AtkinsRealis said, the VUEWorks solution addresses all business requirements for asset and inventory management of highways including maintenance planning, budgeting, expenditure tracking, work order management, fixed bridges and culverts, roadway and roadside maintenance and tunnels and movable bridges.
VUEWorks has also developed a citizen engagement component. Citizens are invited to take a photo of a problem, such as a simple pothole, and upload to the project owner.
“We’ve continued to enhance it through our mobile applications. It’s not just a web portal,” said Spangler. “That just keeps getting more and more capabilities surrounding it.”
However, Spangler pointed out, the growth in reporting presents a new set of challenges, such as one pothole triggering 15 complaints.
“The software is able to combine those requests, link them together, so you’re still catching each submitter’s information, but you’re really only doing one work order to resolve that one issue. And then, being able to communicate back to all the customers.”
The next frontier to address is, of course, AI.
“The incorporation of AI into the application will help us more quickly, effectively and accurately manage some of the operations,” he said.
The consultant is also working with Autodesk and Esri on digital twin technologies.
“You’re able to run it virtually and match what it does in real life, so that you’re able to maintain it, operate it more completely,” he said of digital twinning. “All of that integrated within the asset management program we currently integrate with Esri GIS two-dimensional mapping.”
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