Scope
To achieve the Department of Transport and Main Roads’
(TMR’s) goals to increase capacity and upgrading Mains Road for public
transport.
Project Summary
The intersection of Mains
and Kessels Roads is located on the Brisbane Urban Corridor and is used by
approximately 90,000 vehicles each day. The Kessels Road corridor is extremely
constrained, with commercial and residential properties on both sides.
To
achieve TMR’s goal, it is proposed to construct a trough structure so that
Kessels Road will pass under Mains Road.
The project also involved
upgrading approximately 2 km of Kessels Road (existing 6 lanes upgraded to 6
lanes with cycle lanes with minimum lane resumption and minimum service
corridors) and associated intersections.
The Challenge
The Mains Kessels Intersection Upgrade presented PUP engineers and designers
with the huge challenge of how to install a series of new services and manage
the integration with an existing live corridor in a highly constrained
environment.
The corridor included numerous commercial and residential
accesses that needed to be maintained throughout the installation of the new
services.
There were problems with the integration of different
disciplines including permanent road design, construction staging and especially
existing underground services with new services and structural foundations with
services.
Proposed services included drainage networks (with pipe sizes
up to Ø1.35m), Energex (underground and overhead), Telstra, ITS, Lighting,
Sewer, Water and Gas.
In addition to the general underground services,
there were a number of gantries, variable speed limit signs and over 400 cast in
place piles that form the trough structure. Modelling all the piles and footings
is usually missed due to the labour intensive method of getting these into the
model.
Generally these can be checked from a 2d perspective instead of
full 3d, but this site was extremely constrained.
The Solution
Designers were provided with a 12da survey of the existing PUP services.
To ensure the new services would fit:
• Modelling of the underground services
was completed.
• Additional features were included in the model.
• Road
designs (permanent and construction staging) were made available from 12d
projects.
New services modelled included;
• Energex, Telstra, and ITS
pits and conduits were modelled using Super Alignments and Apply Manys.
• Gas
mains were modelled using Super Alignments and Apply Manys.
• Water mains
were modelled using Super Alignments and Super Strings.
• Drainage and sewer
pits and pipes were modelled using the Drainage Network Editor.
The
modelling of services allowed for an easily changeable design as the road design
progressed (referenced super alignments) and provided a detailed understanding
of where new services and existing surveyed services would clash. This allowed
for details to be developed (
e.g. Alignment adjusted or modification to
structures) or changes to be made.
The problem was solved for the general
services using computated super alignments with links to the road design and
tins and then run in chains. The problem was solved for the piles and footings
using the “Spatial Information” toolbar and associated macros.
The macros
incorporated in the “Spatial Information” toolbar were originally created by
Mike Jenson for the placement of railway infrastructure associated with rail
lines. After discussing the problem at hand, the team investigated the use of
its multiple placements of blocks to create the additional structural
information.
The steps included:
• Firstly, the creation of standard
12d blocks (piles and footings of different depths and diameters) using the
“Product Create” button.
• Secondly, draped the post and footing locations on
the surface (lowered by 10mm so the block didn’t stick out of the ground), this
allowed for an “xyz” output of those locations.
• Thirdly, the coordinates
defined in step 2, were then inserted into a pre-formatted table allowing the
“Product Place Reader” to place the blocks at the appropriate locations.
Most of the above can be automated using simple chains and processes and once
the .csv files were updated, they could be read back in with locations changing
automatically.
The Result
A huge amount of information was input into the
design model by using the spatial toolbar innovatively. This was able to be used
early in the project before full 3d structural modelling had occurred and
identified problems early in the design phase.
This helped the designers
identify clashes of services and structural footings as the design progressed.
In addition to using the spatial toolbar to input multiple csv files of
information, they also used the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) writer to
export information.
By exporting to an IFC format, it allowed them to
view drainage, sewer and water main strings (pipe strings) in 3d within
Microstation.
They also exported the 3d road design, Energex, Telstra and
ITS designs.
Combining all of the 3d designs, allowed them to plot a 3d
PDF, this giving them the ability to share what the 12d designers were able to
see on screen to a wider audience of users.
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