Digital engineering on the Sydney Metro

Australia has no government mandate for digital projects in the construction industry. The Sydney Metro represents a significant step forward for digital engineering on major projects in the Australasian transport sector. Programme and cost benefits were achieved by coordination in 3D across all subcontracts and the client: eliminating unnecessary production of drawings and facilitating client review directly in a federated model. The design programme was integrated within the Common Data Environment, enabling advanced analytics and monitoring. Rigorous model requirements for Uniclass classification and COBie deliverables were achieved, providing a foundation for the rest of Sydney Metro and beyond. The effective deployment of virtual reality gave next-level customer engagement and crucially, design feedback from the public early enough to make a difference. This paper provides a practical summary of these and other digital engineering elements, and champions the value gained by taking a project digital by default.