Taking rail down a different track

A significant portfolio of capital work is underway, designed to bring transformational change to New Zealand's rail network. As one of three BIM pilots, PACE has played a crucial role in the development of KiwiRail's Digital Engineering Framework.

The PACE (Porirua Area Capacity Enhancements) project is part of the Wellington Metro Upgrade Programme (WMUP) and is one of three Building Information Modelling (BIM) pilot projects for KiwiRail.

The project includes a high-capacity train turn-back facility at Plimmerton and a new freight loop, to ensure freight trains can continue to operate between the more frequent passenger services.

We’ve provided BIM Management and Advisory services on the PACE project, as part of KiwiRail’s collaborative approach with Industry. Our role supported the initial development of KiwiRail’s Digital Engineering maturity.

The project set a baseline for future projects in key areas, supporting the development of the KiwiRail team's digital engineering capabilities using a "fail-fast" approach. Working with rail designers who were primarily used to designing in 2D, a collaboration environment was implemented to identify, track and review design coordination issues. The collaboration environment enabled the democratisation of information and we’ve played a key role in its implementation.

One of the major challenges of the project was the interoperability of the different software, as there were multiple different models used for design. Our collaborative and transparent BIM processes and workflows enabled us to produce innovative clash detection outputs, supporting the overall project coordination and reducing risks in construction.

The adoption of rail specific clash detection included a much greater coordination with existing services through the development and adoption of a services rating system. This will significantly reduce the potential cost of service strikes on site.