4D BIM visualises complex mining plant in Peru

San Rafael is the largest tin producing mine in South America and the fourth largest in the world. Located in the eastern Andes, it produces approximately 10% of the world’s tin.

To date, the site has maintained a high level of sustainability and environmental responsibility, including its waste management. Now, the company has plans to build a new reprocessing plant, known as the B2 project. The process of managing a significant amount of tailings requires a complex setup. It includes many different processing spaces, mechanical and electrical systems, and an extensive pipeline network, requiring the involvement of a wide variety of specialized disciplines and engineers.

The visualization of a construction of complex nature 

The company felt that the development of this complex project and its numerous subsystems would be better understood if construction progress could be fully visualized at each stage , with easy exchange of information between the owner Minsur and its main contractor .Although the original feasibility schedule for the B2 project in San Rafael had been created in Primavera P6, and this remained the tool of choice for the main contractor, it would not easily allow Minsur to maintain a continuous visualization of the as-built 4D. So, the company set out to bridge that gap. It chose  Elecosoft’s 

PowerProject  not only because of its interoperability and ease of data exchange with Primavera, which would be used as the software platform throughout construction by Cosapi, the main construction contractor, but also because Minsur could easily take progress information and visualize it in a 4D BIM program, through the PowerProject BIM module.

Preparation of fieldwork

The first step was to convert all the plant’s original 3D modeling into complete IFC (Industry Foundation Class) files, considered the baseline interoperability standard for BIM data. The second essential step was to convert the original baseline schedules from the Primavera P6 .XER format into PowerProject files.Carlos Peñaloza, lead planner for B2, said: ” 

The conversion process was quick and easy. Converting the P6 construction schedule tasks to PowerProject only took a few seconds.  We checked the dates and links to ensure the data had been converted correctly, and everything matched up perfectly .”The final critical step was to create an easily repeatable and time-efficient process for updating the 4D schedule with Primavera’s weekly progress updates—because entering this information manually would have been effectively impossible.José Luis Hurtado, B2 Project Control Manager, said: ” 

We couldn’t force our contractors to use our chosen tool, Powerproject, but we knew that updating progress manually would take too much of our team’s time .”

Reducing reporting requirements

To enable the weekly report, APP Consulting recommended using a Powerproject add-on from Elecosoft that could automate .XER file updates directly in Powerproject files.Peñaloza explained: ” 

We just have to let the macro run – then it only takes 60 seconds each week to update the entire schedule .”

This meant that each week the 4D program could be quickly updated to produce 4D BIM reports in various formats.Using PowerProject BIM and another Elecosoft tool, O2C, the team was also able to generate flipbooks to show weekly progress, videos comparing actual progress against the original baseline, and 3D files so managers could view progress in an interactive format. O2C is a compression tool that allows high-speed animated 3D objects to be presented in a compacted format that can be easily incorporated into presentations and reports. Although Minsur’s enterprise technology was capable of handling the processing demands of 3D modeling, the same could not be assumed for all parties.

Establishing a new reporting standard

These features, along with 4D’s scheduling data, allowed the project team to show progress not only weekly to the management team but also monthly to senior executives. The rich 3D visualization, animations, and progress details these reports now contain have changed expectations and become a new standard for the quality of reporting the team expects to require on future projects.

The project team leaders were pleased with their selection of tools. Hurtado concluded: ” Among several 4D solutions on the market, we chose PowerProject because of the simplicity of connecting the main program with the 3D models. We’re confident we’ll replicate it in future projects .”Source: https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/bim-news/4d-bim-plant/85157/

Source: https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/bim-news/4d-bim-plant/85157/