Downer New Zealand leverages 3D modelling, AR and AI

Integrated services company Downer New Zealand is leveraging 3D modelling, augmented reality and computer vision AI to drive smarter project delivery.

Cameron Hyndman, national digital engineering lead at Downer New Zealand recently spoke at the Autodesk Converge event in Sydney about the organisation’s digital engineering journey.

Downer leverages a ‘digital menu’ which outlines a variety of digital tools that are relevant to the planning, build and handover stages of a project.

“The purpose behind the menu is to be able to align upcoming projects with the specific digital solutions that we’ve developed in the past, so that we can give the most amount of benefit to these up-and-coming projects,” he said.

“The key with this is aligning your digital strategy onto the projects so that you have just the right amount of digital input. You don’t want to have too much and you don’t want to have too little.”

Hyndman told audiences that with every project that the company is working on, its looking to new initiatives and smarter ways of working.

In the planning stage, Downer leverages tools including 3D design and construction modelling, 4D simulation and gamification.

“All the design is completed in 3D. And then we, as a contractor rely on the 3D model for geometric setup. And also, likewise, our as-builts and our temporary works are also 3D modelled,” said Hyndman.

“The key point there is that, although it just could be one line in a construction contract, it's very important that the 3D model takes precedence over the drawings.

“What that does is it changes behaviour, and enables the heavy reliance on the 3D model, which opens up the doors for things like quantity take-off.”

Downer relies heavily on Autodesk to bring the 3D models together into a federated model environment where fly throughs and review sessions can occur for testing before implementing them on site, he said.

When it comes to the industrial metaverse Downer is leveraging augmented reality in the build stage of projects.

According to Hyndman, “We use the augmented reality platform as actually part of the process that the client needs to come out on site and actually check that we have put our machine avoidance or our digital shield model around all of the assets on site. So, this augmented reality platform has a purpose, has a job on site.”

Computer vision AI is another tool in the Downer toolkit, which the organisation has used to improve safety on site.

“We have a member of the public walking across one of our sites and the camera is able to automatically detect that a person has crossed over a no-go zone, and its sending out a notification to the to the site team, they then go and fix up the issue,” he said.

“It's also tracking the speed of traffic. And again, people driving too fast, notifications go out, there's also a live dashboard being generated all the time. So, the team are able to log into the system and view a live risk assessment dashboard on site.”