Building Information Modeling (BIM): Prospects for the development of railway infrastructure industry

摘要

The last decade has seen a profound change of information representation tools with which the Infrastructure Manager must necessarily interact with the other parties involved, to explore all the essential decision-making processes for railway development and operation. In all phases of infrastructure life (project, construction, operation, adjustment, etc.), the digital representation can greatly facilitate the organizational model that always puts the information content of all railway components (geometry, size, location, materials, design and proper maintenance, stress state, etc.) at the center of any decision-making process. On account of its strong multidisciplinary nature, a railway infrastructure causes numerous interactions that need to be coordinated properly to meet the performance levels now required in any transportation system. In this sense, the development of BIM processes for punctual building has now reached a level of maturity able to satisfy also the recent guidelines of the European Standards (2014/24/EU) adopted to promote, first of all, the transparency of public work contracts and design contests. However, as regards linear construction, the full application of these BIM processes with an adequate level of maturity still remains rather complex considering that the current processes representation in use has achieved an adequate level of development. In this case study, applications have been developed in BIM mode with the aim of highlighting the main potential of this innovative process including some improvements in order to promote the full implementation of the BIM technology for rail infrastructure.