simon, Author at BaseStone

BaseStone supports Skanska’s 4D BIM on the Waterloo Station Upgrade Project

October 3, 2017October 2, 2017 by simon

Network Rail’s mammoth £400m Waterloo Station Upgrade Project is set to deliver a 30% increase in the passenger capacity into and out of Waterloo everyday. The improvement work at the UK’s busiest station is being carried out by the Wessex Capacity Alliance – a collaboration between Skanska, Colas Rail, Mott Macdonald, AECOM and Network Rail. The BaseStone team work closely with the Alliance, and Skanska specifically, in supporting their 4D Building Information Modelling (BIM) initiative on the project.

Throughout August, the Wessex Capacity Alliance carried out a blockade where platforms 1–10 were closed so that platforms 1–4 could be extended to accommodate longer trains, and platforms 5–8 could be modified. This was not any old blockade, it was the largest blockade in Europe and the biggest in Network Rail history. The Wessex team had their work cut out as around 300 people were working on site for 24 hours every day.

See the full #waterlooupgrade in just 90 secs. Thanks to everyone for their patience over August while we build a bigger, better Waterloo pic.twitter.com/0ozchfjFLs

— NR Press Office (@networkrailPR) August 29, 2017

Coordination was essential to ensure that the blockade ran smoothly. Luckily Skanska’s leading BIM team were working tirelessly on the project to ensure that there was easy access to construction and programme information using the 4D model.

The B1M define BIM as “the process of creating information models or data sets formed of graphical and non-graphical information in a shared digital space known as a Common Data Environment (CDE)”. The 4D Model adds scheduling data to the 3D model and enables effective coordination of the programme information.

Skanska’s BIM team used Synchro Pro to build the 4D model, add the scheduling data and export PDFs and video animations. As BaseStone was already being used on the project for capturing site information, viewing and marking up construction drawings on site, the team knew it was the perfect choice for enabling fast access to the 4D information.

In preparation for the blockade, the BaseStone engineering team built a bespoke integration to Synchro which made the transfer of the 4D information from Synchro to BaseStone seamless. During the blockade, the BaseStone mobile application was used to view the PDFs of 4D data, giving instant access to critical construction programme information. The BaseStone application was kept up to date with the latest version via automatic syncing so that the information was always accurate.

Robert Leach, BIM Coordinator on the project, said ‘throughout the blockade I could see when the next trains were coming and what work was programmed to be taking place because the information was on BaseStone – that was extremely useful’

He added that ‘we could spot potential errors out on site with BaseStone and could get this information back to the planners sooner’.

Once the blockade had commenced, a few delays ensued, but due to the quick access of the 4D model via BaseStone, awareness was raised, and the contingency was enacted, resulting in delivering the project on time.

The successful delivery of the August Blockade was a momentous achievement. Our congratulations go out to the Wessex team and our thanks for choosing to work with BaseStone!

References

The B1M definition of 4D BIM – http://www.theb1m.com/video/what-is-4d-bim

BaseStone reporting features for handover

September 1, 2017September 1, 2017 by simon

At BaseStone we focus on delivering what the construction industry needs. Recently we have been improving our reporting functionality to help streamline the handover process for our users.

We heard many horror stories about how handover was dragged out over months, even years sometimes, because documentation was all over place and in paper form.

So we added more functionality to our reports to make them more customisable and hence more applicable to the varying handover processes. We would love to hear your feedback and more about your handover requirements – please get in touch!

Create reports with issue selection

You can now select issues across the project to be included in the report. Select the individual issues and then create either a PDF or CSV. This is available from both the mobile and web application.

You can also use tags to group issues and then create reports based on tags.

Multi-drawing reports

You can now create reports of issues across multiple drawings. Just use the issue selection function (see above) and create either a PDF or CSV report. The PDF report will include a snapshot of each of the drawings referenced as well as the issue details.

Report Options

We recognise that everyone has different requirements for their handover and reporting.

You now have many more options when creating reports – customise the content by including/excluding attachments, comments, callouts (on the drawing), photos and signatures.

Signatures in reports

When an issue is signed off on BaseStone, the signatures are included in the PDF reports along with a timestamp. We hope this will help to streamline the sign-off process during handover.

We hope you find the new features useful.

Product Update: Reporting Special

August 11, 2017May 23, 2017 by simon

Creating reports is a necessary but time consuming task. At BaseStone we believe that engineers shouldn’t have to spend half of their time creating reports. Our latest reporting features help to reduce the admin burden by letting you generate bespoke reports in one click.

New features:

Timestamped photos on reports (web & mobile)
Report options to include/exclude (web & mobile):
- Attachments
- Comments
- Callouts
- Photos
- Signatures
Select issues across multiple drawings to include in report (web & mobile)

Here’s how to create a typical report on BaseStone with our new reporting functionality:

Create issues on BaseStone

Open the BaseStone mobile app and record snags, site observations or notes from the site
Add tags and photos to the issues. Mark up the drawing to show the location
If needed, assign the item to a team member
Use our signature functionality to sign off the item

Select the issues to include in the report

Navigate to the project and ‘Issues’ tab
Use the tags/filters to select the issues to include in the report (e.g. select the high priority and ‘open’ items, or select all items tagged as a ‘snag’). Or select the items using the tick boxes on the left to include (web only).
Click ‘Create Report’

Customise the content of the report

Choose whether to create a CSV report (to be imported into excel) or a PDF report
Customise the content by including/excluding attachments, comments, callouts (on the drawing), photos and signatures

Download this example report created on BaseStone

Have a more productive day with BaseStone! We hope you enjoy using our new reporting functionality, let us know if you have any feedback.

Use the BaseStone web application

Download the BaseStone mobile app

Introducing Electronic Sign-off

September 1, 2017March 30, 2017 by simon

Assuring quality and resolving issues are critical to the delivery of any successful project. At BaseStone, we want to help engineers be as productive as possible, using our digital platform to record and assist in achieving your deliverables.

That’s why, in support of this, we’re proud to announce our latest feature: “Electronic Sign-off”.

With Electronic Sign-off, any number of engineers, managers, or construction professionals can now sign-off against any issue within BaseStone, with full date and time stamp auditing to show exactly when they gave their “seal of approval”. To streamline the sign-off process, any user within the account can “sign-off” an issue and they will receive a receipt of their signature to their email address.

Compared to traditional paper-signatures, Electronic Sign-off provides a permanent record, not only on the issue, but also on reports created. Any revoked signatures are also fully date and time-stamped against the issue providing protection against the risk of forgery.

Our Electronic Sign-off, as well as any other attachment to an issue (such as file, photo, or comment), is now also highlighted upon the closed issue card, providing engineers with an at-a-glance summary of the contents of that issue, without the need to open it.

The same is true upon the issues page of a project, where issues across all drawings within the project can be seen.

We have plans to add further functionality to our Electronic Sign-off but first want to hear back from our users!

If you want to be involved within one of our User Groups and input into the future developments and future plans for the BaseStone platform, get in touch using the link below!