172 (landscaping, groundwater, and even wildlife and biodiversity considerations). The advice also helped Cross River handle a broad mandate. When Queensland’s government created the Cross River Rail Delivery Authority, it required the agency to be responsible not just for the railway itself, but also for planning and assessing the project’s economic impact. There was a good reason to include this mandate in the agency’s charter. Although Cross River’s aim anticipates future developments in the region, its location means Cross River will also influence those developments. “Cross River Rail is going right under the CBD, so the area around the stations is already prime land where the city will grow next,” Vine said. Everything In Federation Crossrail’s second piece of advice related to BIM data coming from the project’s many contractors and subcontractors. Create a “federated” BIM model, the Brits advised. That meant combining the disparate BIM information into a single BIM file that depicts everything. For that to happen, Cross River needed to ensure that every contracting entity was using exactly the same data formats, standards, and protocols. “What the Crossrail team didn’t realize until it was too late is that all their contractors were telling Crossrail how they were going to submit their BIM models—it was baked into the contracts,” Vine said. “They told us, ‘We indulged them, and we shouldn’t have.’” Rail Games Crossrail’s third recommendation is “the party piece, the one everybody loves,” Vine said, because it’s about making the model immersive. “They told us they should’ve put all their data into a game engine and turned it into virtual reality.” The Australian team did just that, using Unreal Engine, a 3D gaming tool, to tie it all together, so anyone sitting anywhere could be transported inside the place they were set to build. So we have a federated BIM model of all the stations and all the tunnels, and GIS land mapping in 3D. But then we put it all into Unreal, crank the magic gaming engine handle, and it gives us back a single virtual reality. — Russell Vine, chief innovation officer at Cross River The result is 17 kilometers of immersive railway infrastructure that can be explored, similar to a first-person game, on a screen manipulating a web scene or with a virtual reality (VR) headset. The Cross River team even built a VR theater using a five-way projection system, so that many people can explore the project together. The VR component transcends mere flash, providing a way for nontechnical stakeholders—people not directly involved in the design and construction of Cross River—to view the project as it proceeds. It also gives those who are part of the design team the kind of visual assessments that even the most detailed 3D BIM model cannot provide. As one example, Vine points to the Roma Street station, where teams are experimenting with ways to install a massive art exhibition Workers enter the Roma Street cavern to conduct an inspection.
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