BIM Modeling with Lidaretto for Water Utility Company

Water Utility Company located in Bratislava, Slovakia, embarked on a mission to digitize and streamline administration and maintenance processes of their facilities. This required comprehensive Building Information Modeling (BIM) of the entire campus, including outdoor areas like the water pumping plant and reservoir.

Assignment and Task

The assignment was to model the existing state of all buildings on the campus, including the technical equipment of the buildings, into BIM to streamline administration and maintenance in the future. The difficulty of digitization is mainly in the processing of different sources from different periods: project documentation, photographs, and point clouds. 

Expected Benefits of BIM

The BIM model with attached project documentation should replace the existing archive with paper drawings, facilitate renovations and reconstructions, and should be the basis for other technologies - e.g. smart sensors, repair and inventory management, etc. Basically, if one wanted to find past drawings of a specific part of the engine room, he had to physically go to the archive and search in the files and old drawings, which could take several hours or days. Today, he can find the same information in the 3D BIM model, where there can be any documentation attached to a specific object or device. If he wants, in the future, notifications from various sensors can warn of exceeding certain limits directly on the mobile phone. Information about the type of device and sensor is displayed in 3D.

Compliance with Regulations

There are no unified European Union regulations in this regard to be applied in Slovakia. It is the customer's initiative to digitize and streamline their procedures. In the individual countries of the European Union, there are different approaches to the obligation to prepare BIM for public contracts. The obligation usually results from a certain financial volume of the project. In principle, both the private and public sectors of the developed world understand the importance of building information models because they perceive them as the basis for permitting procedures, transparency and various other technologies: IoT, Smart cities, etc.

 Implementation with Lidaretto

To fulfill the project requirements efficiently, we leveraged Lidaretto's advanced capabilities as the sole scanning device. Lidaretto H32 was utilized for all scanning tasks, providing versatility across aerial, ground, and indoor environments:

• Aerial scanning with Lidaretto H32 on UAV captured an overarching perspective of the water facility, while RGB camera was used for coloring the point cloud.

• Ground scanning with Lidaretto H32, carried on a backpack with a 360 camera, ensured detailed capture of specific outdoor areas.

• Indoor scanning with handheld Lidaretto H32 configuration enabled precise capture of building interiors and technical equipment

Benefits of Lidaretto for BIM Modeling

• Unified Solution: Utilizing Lidaretto as the sole scanning device ensured consistency and coherence across all scans, simplifying data processing and integration into the BIM model.

• Accuracy: Lidaretto's integration of high-end Lidar and GNSS/IMU technology ensured the generation of highly accurate point clouds, providing a reliable foundation for BIM modeling.

• Efficiency: Lidaretto's mobile scanning capabilities streamlined the data collection process, reducing time and resources required for comprehensive scanning of the water facility.

• Versatility: Lidaretto's adaptability to different scanning environments enabled comprehensive coverage and detailed capture of both outdoor and indoor areas.

• Streamlined Maintenance: The BIM model derived from Lidaretto's point clouds will streamline administration and maintenance processes for Water Utility Company, facilitating easy access to documentation and supporting future renovations and upgrades.

Conclusion

Through the strategic utilization of Lidaretto as the unified scanning solution, the client successfully digitized the outdoor and indoor areas of the water facility for Water Utility Company, enabling efficient BIM modeling and paving the way for streamlined administration and maintenance processes. This use case underscores the transformative impact of Lidaretto in optimizing BIM workflows and facilitating the digitization of complex infrastructure projects.