Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/27856
BY LIAM SPEDEN he geospatial world is undergoing a seis- mic shift that’s already increasing the impact of geotechnology professionals on heavy construction and infrastructure projects. Driving the change is building information modeling (BIM), an intelligent 3-D model-based process that helps design teams more-efficiently incorporate geospatial data into planning, design, construction, operations and asset management. Many industry professionals already are familiar with “geodesign,” the use of geospatial data and analysis during a project’s conceptual design phase. Project teams analyze geospatial data to better under- stand the impact of a wide variety of social, physical and geographic factors on a given project’s design. 18 G E O W O R L D / M A R C H 2 O 1 1 These factors can make the difference between a good design and a great one. But “geodesign” is only one part of how project teams can significantly accelerate the iterative design/ analysis/update cycle while reducing many of its associ- ated costs. Using BIM, infrastructure design teams can seamlessly incorporate information from a wide variety of native data formats, overlay layers of geospatial and CAD data, conduct spatial analyses, and update the designs—often performing multiple design/analysis/ update iterations in a single work session. The benefits of BIM don’t stop there. Municipalities, utilities, transportation departments, civil engineers and contractors can use the data-rich BIM models to digitally explore a project’s physical and functional Industry Trends