The German government wants to make digital planning, construction and operation of the public infrastructure the standard. A flagship project in the field of "Building Information Modeling" is now starting. The partners are the Federal Information Technology Center (ITZBund) and CONTACT Software.
For 15 years now, the ITZBund in Ilmenau has been operating a central civil engineering application for the Federal Waterway and Shipping Administration (WSV). The DVtU solution, realized with CONTACT Software for the digital management of technical documents, is now being expanded into a common data environment platform for Building Information Modeling (BIM).
"DVtU already fulfils many future BIM requirements of DIN SPEC 91391-1," says IT project manager Uwe Seyffarth of the ITZBund Ilmenau. Today, the WSV´s long-term archive comprises hundreds of thousands of building inventory documents which are accessed online by more than 2,500 users throughout Germany. And DVtU's project management component is already accelerating the maintenance and construction measures of the waterway infrastructure by means of cross-office approval, processing and release procedures.
In the future, the data required for the life cycle of a WSV structure will also be recorded, exchanged and processed on the base of digital structure models - from planning through construction to operation. ITZBund and CONTACT integrate IFC files into the processes and will supplement the DVtU solution with an interface to the open standard BCF (BIM Collaboration Format).
After implementation, the WSV departments can communicate internally and with external contractors directly on the building model or parts of it what needs to be processed or checked. DVtU's project management will also be functionally enhanced in order to make collaboration easier and comprehensible for all parties involved.
The WSV is responsible for safe and smooth traffic on Germany's waterways. Its tasks include the maintenance, operation and expansion of the federal waterways, including their necessary infrastructure such as locks, weirs, bridges and ship lifts. In total, WSV is responsible for 23,000 km² of seawater and around 7,300 km of inland waterways with over 50,000 associated construction objects.
