British Columbia MMCD Infrastructure Data Initiatives - A Standardized Approach
Introduction
AutoCAD® Civil 3D is an extremely versatile civil design tool used in the transportation, municipal infrastructure, land development, energy, mining, and other engineering design sectors. Each of these sectors has its own nuances that drive data flow requirements and consequently how and where AutoCAD Civil 3D functionality is plugged into the respective processes.
A few years ago I wrote an article for AUGIWORLD entitled “BIM – Fact or Fiction,” which was an attempt to bring some clarity to whether or not AutoCAD Civil 3D could be categorized as BIM software. Unfortunately, this type of categorization is not that cut and dried as industry needs with regards to data usage, movement, and storage are so variable. While many BIM concepts and principles initially founded in the architecture and building industries are applicable to civil engineering, as the saying goes, you simply cannot compare apples and oranges. Generally speaking, and to summarize the past article, BIM concepts applicable to civil engineering manifest themselves in the following areas.
Moving data through process adjacent project phases (data repository to planning to design to construction to data repository);
Data sharing between design team members on a single project; and
Lifecycle management incorporating both asset and financial management needs.
AutoCAD Civil 3D works within the realm of BIM concepts with the first two bullet points. Lifecycle management for civil infrastructure is facilitated by incorporating GIS, asset, maintenance, and financial management systems and standards into municipal and other civil engineering processes.
This article addresses the requirements for consistent standards applicable to the BIM concepts of data movement and data sharing, two key components for process optimization. Standards are now necessary beyond the confines of a single drawing and must accommodate the movement of data between process adjacent phases. Continue reading to learn how organizational support for standards applicable to local governments, surveyors, consulting firms, and construction contractors can have huge impacts on process optimization and overall product usage efficiency.
MMCD – Master Municipal Construction Documents Association
MMCD (www.mmcd.net) is a British Columbia non-profit organization founded in the mid-1980s to develop infrastructure standards to help eliminate the duplicity of infrastructure management efforts by the 170 Local Governments and 200 First Nations Bands in the Province of British Columbia Canada. These standards manifested themselves in both infrastructure specifications and contract documentation and to this day have been adopted by approximately 60 percent of BC Local Governments and First Nations Bands.
Fast forward to 2009 when AutoCAD Civil 3D was starting to take a formidable bite out of Land Desktop as the primary design software used by BC consultants for survey, roads, sanitary sewer, water main, storm drain, and site grading tasks.
Most local governments did not have the internal capabilities to develop standards-laden AutoCAD Civil 3D drawing templates for consultants to use for infrastructure design and land development projects. Compounding the problem was the fact that common base AutoCAD standards—layers, block definitions, text/dimension/multileader styles, page setup definitions, and plotting configuration files—were the exception rather than the norm.
Consequently, engineering consultants embarked on further duplicate efforts to develop their own templates to meet the variable standards requirements for BC local governments. The drawing templates and resulting engineering design and construction drawings were heavily guarded as they exposed internal processes and valuable techniques that perceivably resulted in better productivity and more efficient design processes. This protectionism of “intellectual property” is still a dominant issue facing BC engineering consultants to this day.
Shortly after AutoCAD Civil 3D began to take a strong foothold as the primary design tool in BC, MMCD realized the benefit of developing a common CAD standard, based on AutoCAD Civil 3D, that would be provided to BC local governments and consultants free of charge as part of their MMCD membership. The MMCD Municipal CAD Standard was born.
Since then this new CAD standard has evolved significantly and expanded to include other infrastructure management processes—drawing production, construction, record data collection (as-builts), and lifecycle management. After recommending the development and continued support for a common CAD standard based on AutoCAD, little did I know this was to become an asset management initiative that had far-reaching impacts on infrastructure procurement and lifecycle management practices in BC.
Local Government Financial Accountability for Infrastructure Assets
In 2006 the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants introduced the PSAB 3150 (Public Sector Accounting Board) accounting standard, which provided guidelines and standards for local governments to report tangible capital assets (infrastructure) on annual financial statements. Incidentally a similar infrastructure accounting requirement in the United States is GASB 34 (Governmental Standards Accounting Board).
This new federal mandate not only prompted local governments to update existing infrastructure records, but also added emphasis to the collection of data on new infrastructure. The latter impact emphasized the need to optimize process for the submission of digital as-built data to local governments once completed. The MMCD Municipal CAD Standard was positioned as an asset management initiative due to the fact that once infrastructure construction is complete the digital design document is copied and updated to reflect as constructed conditions. This digital “as-built document,” or record drawing, is inherently data rich by virtue of AutoCAD Civil 3D objects (pipe and pressure networks).
With the addition of other tools for infrastructure data attribution (Map 3D object data) it became reasonable for a local government to require post-construction submissions with all the necessary data that could be directly sourced to update databases shared by GIS, financial management, asset management, and maintenance management systems. This was the first step in the development of the suite of infrastructure data standards, largely based on AutoCAD Civil 3D, to meet the new lifecycle management requirements of local governments.
MMCD Infrastructure Data Standards
As mentioned earlier in the article, the MMCD infrastructure data standards initiative started in 2009 with the introduction of the MMCD Municipal CAD Standard. The intent of this AutoCAD Civil 3D-based standard was to provide local governments and engineering consultants with an opportunity to get on the same page with design document content standardization and consistency with infrastructure and land development drawing production standards.
As a direct result of federal requirements for TCA (Tangible Capital Assets) accounting, local governments’ emphasis also shifted to post-construction data submissions. AutoCAD Civil 3D presented an opportunity for data rich submissions because of the inherent attribution of physical properties in the object data model. The concept was to copy the design document, update it to reflect as constructed conditions, add additional attribution, and submit this “constructed recorded” document to the local government for consumption by their infrastructure databases.
An infrastructure data standards development strategy ensued that outlined development plans for design, drawing production, construction, record data collection, and lifecycle management standards. AutoCAD Civil 3D would play an integral role in all but the lifecycle management component, once the asset data has been received.
The five standardized components that are reflective of the process are shown in the following illustration.
A summary of the individual components is as follows.
Municipal CAD Standard – AutoCAD and Civil 3D standardized components for infrastructure and land development design modeling
Drawing Production Standard – standardized callouts, text heights/styles, pen weights, and engineering drawing appearance based on the Municipal CAD Standard
Construction Modeling Standard – standard for level of detail for design model data (corridors, alignments, profiles, etc.) required for machine control layout and construction
Record Data Submission Standards – IFC (Issued for Construction) and post-construction submission standards for containing both graphical and attribute data
Asset Management Data Register – a standard infrastructure data schema for storage with asset classes, attribute names, values, and standardized naming conventions
At the time this article was written, the individual standardized components are at varying levels of completion. Of significant importance to this initiative is the collaborative nature under which the standards have been developed. Local government and engineering consultants have literally “bought in” to the overall concept and have contributed their own investments in collaborative standards development back to MMCD. MMCD will, in turn, take overall responsibility for continued updates and improvements. This teamwork approach has truly been the key to the standards initiative.
City of Burnaby – Asset Data Exchange Standard
The City of Burnaby (pop. 225,000) is in BC’s lower mainland next to Vancouver and has realized the importance of timely and accurate infrastructure asset data submissions required to update spatial and tabular databases. While graphical data was readily accessible via DWG format, manually transposing data from hard copy drawings provide to be costly and error prone, and was no longer an option. And so began the development of the Asset Data Exchange Standard. Based entirely on AutoCAD objects and AutoCAD Civil 3D data, these attribute-rich submissions could be processed (using Safe FME software) and moved to City of Burnaby Databases.
The Asset Data Exchange Standard applies to the following IFC (Issued for Construction) and post construction deliverables.
- Existing Recorded Assets Drawing – At the beginning of the project this MMCD standardized AutoCAD drawing is created by extracting data from Burnaby ESRI ArcSDE GIS and contains existing infrastructure data within the project limits. Existing tracked assets (manholes, pipe etc.) are attributed with AutoCAD Map 3D object data. Eighty percent of Burnaby’s capital program is for replacing assets that are at the end of their useful life and consultants are therefore required to update lifecycle state attributes to indicate an asset has been either retired or removed. One result is that the finance department can now take an asset “off the books,” so to speak.
- Existing Surveyed Assets Drawing – At the beginning of the project this ACAD/C3D MMCD standardized drawing is created by the consultant from GPS or total station survey data and contains detailed information on existing assets (C3D points and figures). The submitted drawing is used to validate and update location and other data for existing assets.
- Constructed Recorded Drawing – Upon construction completion, the design drawing is copied, renamed, and updated to reflect as constructed conditions. Civil 3D pipe networks updates could include, for example, moving a manhole, adjusting pipe invert elevations, or adding/removing pipes or structures from the network. Further attribution of tracked assets is completed using AutoCAD® Map 3D object data tables—the same ones that are used in the Existing Recorded Assets Drawing.
These DWG-based submissions are then processed through Safe FME software to update City of Burnaby databases. As with all data that is moved through process adjacent roles, standards for data assembly must be developed and implemented. AutoCAD external references along with AutoCAD Civil 3D data shortcuts and reference objects play a key role in ensuring consultants can meet the required deliverables for the City of Burnaby.
Asset Data Exchange Standard and Drawing Assembly
Prior to Xrefs we duplicated data using wblock and insert. This is hugely inefficient especially given the nature of the engineering industry—design change. Nowadays engineering consultants strive to develop drawing data architecture such that data is shared and not duplicated. AutoCAD Xrefs and Civil 3D data shortcuts are the primary tools to share AutoCAD graphical data and Civil 3D surface, alignment, profile, and pipe network data.
These data sharing capabilities allow designers to efficiently share data between drawings and, better yet, allow managers to make best use of staff resources on a project. With data sharing as opposed to data duplication, design changes can naturally propagate through dependent drawings.
A data structure as described not only has enormous productivity benefits, but also lends itself to post-construction submission requirements. While hard copy (PDF) plan and profiles are still the required legal and construction document, it is the spatial and attribute data represented on the engineering drawings that are of significant interest. The value is in the data.
For that reason the City of Burnaby is recommending an ACAD/C3D data structure such that design model data is in a single drawing and ideally separated from the production drawings. As long as the design model data is together, consultants have two options for drawing assembly.
Design model data with attributes in a single drawing with layouts showing plan and profile drawings for different project areas. While completely feasible, the disadvantages are large amounts of data for big projects and layer management required for road, sanitary, storm, and water design drawings.
Design model data with attributes in a single drawing that is sourced from a separate set production drawings. Data is referenced into production drawings using AutoCAD Xrefs and Civil 3D data shortcuts and reference objects.
Regardless of the chosen method it is the data rich design model drawing that is submitted at IFC (design recorded drawing) and post construction (constructed recorded drawing) phases of a project.
To that end it was important for the City of Burnaby to publish data assembly standards that would enable correct submissions. The recommended drawing data architecture is shown in the following illustration.
Of course, there will always be variances to drawing architecture—and every project requires a strategy for data sharing that incorporates design modeling and drawing production at the onset. The main priority to meet submission requirements is to ensure that all attributed design model drawing remains in a single file.
Conclusion
What started in 2009 as an initiative to develop a common AutoCAD Civil 3D-based CAD standard has rapidly evolved to become a full-fledged asset management initiative. It is the design recorded document that leads to the construction recorded (as-built) document, which is submitted to the local government for the purpose of database updates reflective of infrastructure change. After all how can a local government effectively manage assets without data? So while consistency in drawing contents and appearance has its obvious benefits, the real driver behind this initiative is the need for information.
AutoCAD Civil 3D objects coupled with other “out of the box” tools for attribution has created an excellent scenario that allows data-rich design data to be further attributed and submitted. The BC MMCD infrastructure data standards initiatives have gained significant momentum in the last few years, especially since the City of Burnaby has been involved. It is a collaborative effort between local governments, MMCD, and a little help from Provincial funding that has made this initiative so successful.
