Bentley Systems is working on raising the significance of structural design formats, so that engineering data does not remain locked inaccessibly in files and drawers. With this, operation and maintenance of structures moves from calculated guesswork to managed design systems over the lifecycle of the project. As India rapidly advances in the use of digital twins in the water and surface transport sector, Bentley Systems teams work with the government to evolve appropriate policy write Kaushik Chakraborty, Sr VP, Asia Pacific, Bentley Systems and Kamalakannan Thiruvadi, Regional Executive – South Asia, Bentley Systems About 18 years ago, Singapore’s first water treatment plant was built at a cost of over a billion dollars. It still supplies water to over 3.5 million people, more than half the population of Singapore. Designed 22 years ago using 3D software from three companies, this system, which has functioned efficiently for almost two decades, developed some problems requiring brownfield work. The owner wanted to go for very expensive laser scanning, spending a lot of money to recreate that model. Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software solutions company, pushed for reusing old data to remodel the process and identify the problems and potential solutions. It was able to bring 90 per cent accurate data from all the old models. Now with only spot work or laser scanning the problems were fixed. Not only was the process 80 per cent cheaper but it also was way more efficient. All it did was to reuse the legacy design information to create digital twins. Welcome to the world of digital twinning. India is working on a National Digital Twin policy which is expected to be ready for review soon. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has taken a lead on this policy for Indian infrastructure, primarily for roads and highways, for now. A think tank with government officials, technocrats and industry is part of it. Several sub-working groups are collaborating on this plan. To actually implement the policy, the inputs are standards and specifications architecture. In infrastructure, the primary owner operator is the government for roads, rail, etc. The problem of how to build a structure around it and then allow for industry collaboration is being addressed and there is a clear direction for end-to-end implementation. Take an infrastructure project - the inception of an idea. Digital twins impact it from pre-planning to planning stage, concept to design, construction and handover. How it seamlessly gets integrated in the operations and maintenance stage, is the larger piece. A manual on water in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) on its site refers to digital twin platforms that should be used for this. Digital twins Digital twin is data centric design, for collaborative operations, with information to create a live data model. It helps gain insights into infrastructure. The actual building takes sometimes 3-4 years, in others, about 10-20 years and operationally runs for 100 years. But the cost assessments by governments are still in the 20:80 ratio, finds the Bentley team. Every government talks about the cost of design and building the infrastructure project, which is just about 20 per cent of its life cycle cost, says Kaushik Chakraborty, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific, Bentley Systems. Digital twin is a way of creating a live data model of everything that is designed so that it can help operate over the lifecycle in a more efficient manner. The process of design went from 2D maps to 3D models to Building Information Management (BIM) systems. Each process progressively encapsulated more intelligence. The idea of Digital Twins is to keep data alive in perpetuity, for the life cycle of the projects. The new data policy in the country will work with the existing policy, the National Geo-Spatial Policy, which was released in December 2022. Some of the methods which were already being followed will be referenced. The policy which is under preparation is in relation to the existing data - from all the ministries and all the data. There is a decision pending on who will be the custodian of the data, a new department or maybe even Gati Shakti. This is an important decision. Chakraborty says the United Kingdom leads the world in data use because of a central control on data by a principal secretary, who is responsible for the entire infrastructure. In Europe, any data pertaining to infrastructure using public money has to be made available on a common platform. “Digital twin gives a sense of consequence management through perpetuation of digital information through the lifecycle of a project,” explains Chakraborty. “Everything is collaboratively looked at, designs have to be updated so that the operations team knows the changes made and the reasons for the changes in design. The updated model is created because data has to be stored digitally.” Bentley teams find that the two industries that are taking the lead in data centric design in the country are water and rail and road transport. These are also focus areas for the company globally. MoHUA with the new water manual has become very pro-digital information, defining data which has to be created, saved and stored. Technology allows the equity to be distributed nationally with improvements in every iteration. Says Chakraborthy, “It is phenomenal what India has achieved in the last five years in the water and transport infrastructure sectors, given the size of the country and its population. Water networks have improved thanks to the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and the Jal Jivan Mission (JJM) in water distribution.” Ayodhya water: In the Ayodhya project for 24x7 water management, in which Bentley is involved, the end objectives are defined - 35 per cent saving in non-revenue water in the city. This is the first project in India where variable street pumps have been used instead of constant-feed water pumps, used traditionally. In constant feed pumps, whether you need water or not, it is always pumped. Using this predictive digital technology, in a small district in Ayodhya, energy saving of $165,000 is envisaged. In this project, most leaks are expected to be eliminated, leading to a corresponding benefit of health. Water leaks in urban populations have health implications caused by contaminated water, creating water borne diseases. By not fixing the water pipes huge healthcare issues are left unattended, costing more to the economy. Real time data modelling such as digital twinning with better design can estimate the benefits of healthcare in an urban area. Thus, digital infrastructure modelling also leads to true societal impact. In these efforts, water network modelling has expanded into more digital solutions, integrating all engineering information, including Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and looking at the holistic health of a water system with all valves and pumps working. The goal is to see how much is generated and pumped versus how much is received and charged. Efficiency impact of a water network is being measured. Bentley has done a couple of proofs of concept for cities and the new water manual also talks about this. Especially in urban water, the aim is to generate faster and reduce leaks. The organisation is now working on even more advanced tools to help detect and reduce leaks in urban cities. Chakraborty maintains that “The foundation it has laid will easily go for the next 15-20 years. We have spent years building networks, the focus now is on making it more efficient. Water digital twin systems are all about how to use all that water engineering data and GIS data for more effectiveness. Our participation with ministries is stronger than ever.” Road & rail: In any sector where the cost of infrastructure is high, like the rail industry, highway or road projects, there is a lot of 3D information created and stored, says Kamalakannan Thiruvadi, Regional Executive – South Asia, Bentley Systems. Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is looking at connected construction in all the new projects. It has a digital data-centric construction technology, where it is going from design to construction seamlessly, and making sure information is kept safe. Maharashtra is doing a lot of interesting and challenging projects. In the Versova Bandra sea link project concrete outcomes were pursued - to reduce traffic and travel time and digital modelling helped in it. The first large-scale use of BIM and data centric design in metro modelling was in the Mahametro in Mumbai. DMRC is also very active, in construction from the structural modelling and analysis perspective. So they do a lot of geotechnical modelling as they go underground. Given that Delhi is in a high seismic zone, geo-technical engineering for the viaducts on modelling is critical as a small vibration can lead to a collapse. Retrofitting bridges: With many of the bridges from the British era and the early years of independent India, coming up for retrofitting, a lot of data is required. Bentley is working on bridge-making and inspection solutions globally. In the US, with 68,000 bridges, most more than 50 years old and some over a 100 years old, it has been implemented already. “They have collected a lot of structural data, images and census information to create digital twins. Accuracy comes from more data collected over a longer period of time. If the bridge was built for 100 years, it is estimated what the current year of running is and what is the data that has been collected. Today, with inexpensive Internet of Things (IoT) lick-and-stick sensors, even in a year, displacement and vibration data and sensory load data can be captured. Using a drone, accurate 3D interpretations are possible. The rebar data done by civil engineers by hand 50 years ago is loaded with all the new data gathered and insights on which parts are likely to fail and if so where. Experts can then focus on what part of the bridge needs rework,” explains Thiruvadi. Open platforms: A lot of the advance on the digital twin platform was a vision in which Bentley created a platform that is vendor agnostic, open, scalable and evergreen. The cloud is fully embraced to autoscale the compute facility. “So we make sure we are very local in our cloud. We have teamed up with Microsoft for a lot of our development for two reasons. We saw Microsoft’s evolution from desktop to enterprise to cloud as very similar to the engineering industry. We also saw Microsoft go very local,” says Chakraborty. But going a step ahead of competitors, Bentley is working with the government on creating guidelines for digital twinning. Machine learning is coming in handy. But promoter Craig Bentley has made a conscious decision not to force customers to move from perpetual licensing to the subscription model of the softwares. With the digital revolution in India, the virtuosity store has seen significant success. As one of the three most successful markets in the world for the virtuosity stores, Bentley finds Indian customers shopping online and therefore taking advantage of the offers, seasonal discounts and bundled packages. When a customer buys a structural analysis package for example, recommendations are made for a highway design package, for instance. Or if buying bridge design, the prompt also recommends road design. At the same time Bentley has perpetuated the same data model for 35 years so that consumers can continue to use data stored for over three decades on any of the partners it has interoperability agreements with such as Autodesk. Longevity of use of design structures is, after all, what the world is moving to with digital twinning.E Jayashree Kurup is Director, Wordmeister Editorial Services and Senior Editor, Construction World and Infrastructure Today