We completed a design project originally estimated to take six months in just 39 days! For the Toba Hydropower Project, China Hydropower Consulting Group’s Zhongnan Survey and Design Institute (hereafter referred to as Zhongnan Survey Institute) leveraged the advantages of 3D collaborative design to effortlessly meet the stringent deadlines set by the project owner. But how exactly did the Central South Survey Institute achieve this remarkable feat?
Meeting the Demanding Schedule
The Toba Hydropower Station, located in Yunnan Province, is the fourth cascade dam constructed on China’s Lancang River. It boasts an installed capacity of 1,400 megawatts and involves a total investment of approximately 15.3 billion yuan. This project is expected to generate 6.36 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and create a reservoir with a storage capacity of 1.04 billion cubic meters.
Designing the Toba Hydroelectric Power Station is a complex hydraulic engineering challenge that spans multiple disciplines, including surveying, geology, construction, civil engineering, turbine and electrical engineering, and architecture. Using traditional design management methods would require distributing all documents to designers and specific reviewers for cumbersome and time-consuming document review processes.
The entire design and construction schedule for this complex project is tight: 75 months total, with 24 months allocated for design and preparation, 39 months for construction, and 12 months for subsequent operations. Additionally, the station’s location on the Lancang River imposes significant constraints on design and construction due to environmental factors.
Zhongnan Survey Institute, established in 1949, is responsible for the project design. As a comprehensive engineering design, procurement, and construction consulting firm specializing in hydropower and wind power projects, Zhongnan deployed a project team of 60 to 80 designers across an on-site office, the Changsha headquarters, and Diqing Prefecture in Yunnan Province to ensure the design tasks were completed within the owner’s deadlines.
The Toba Hydroelectric Power Station survey and design project began in early 2011, coinciding with Zhongnan Survey Institute’s preparation to launch a 3D visualization collaborative design system based on Bentley’s ProjectWise platform. To deliver the design on time and with quality, Zhongnan took the lead in adopting 3D collaborative design for this project.
Taking a Challenging and Long-Term Leap
Zhongnan Survey Institute aimed to integrate the entire suite of 3D design software within the Toba Hydropower Station project to streamline engineering workflows, enhance collaboration among diverse design professionals, and improve overall project management. Key software tools included Bentley’s ProjectWise, Navigator, PlantSpace, Architecture, Structural Modeler, Substation, Promis·E, and the GEOPAK Civil Engineering Suite.
Bentley ProjectWise facilitated design information collaboration among geographically dispersed team members. Bentley Navigator was used for dynamic model review and analysis, while PlantSpace handled comprehensive pipeline design and modeling. Bentley Architecture supported Building Information Modeling (BIM), Structural Modeler aided in BIM design and structural documentation, Bentley Substation focused on intelligent electrical and physical substation design, Promis·E targeted intelligent electrical control system design, and GEOPAK was utilized for highway and transportation infrastructure planning.
The primary goal of using 3D collaborative design was to meet Toba’s tight schedule requirements. However, none of the design team members were initially familiar with these software products. Conventional wisdom suggests that this unfamiliarity might delay the project, but Zhongnan Survey Institute viewed 3D collaborative design as a permanent solution. Following its successful application at Toba, they planned to rapidly implement it across other projects.
Consequently, project team members committed to quickly learning and applying the necessary software. Impressively, within just 40 days, they were proficient enough to incorporate various professional 3D design tools into the project.
Remarkable Improvements in Design Accuracy
Thanks to the efforts of Zhongnan’s project team, Toba Hydropower Station became the first hydropower project in China to adopt 3D collaborative design. This innovative approach not only enabled the team to meet the owner’s deadlines but also demonstrated significant benefits in several key areas:
First, collaboration among team members across different locations and specialties was greatly enhanced. Using Bentley’s collaborative environment, the specialized teams distributed in three locations could simultaneously work on the same project, access each other’s design outputs in real time, and communicate more efficiently. ProjectWise ensured the design results were consistently accurate and rational, regardless of team members’ locations or disciplines.
Second, design efficiency improved dramatically. Chief Engineer Gong Deyu explained, “By fully leveraging Bentley Navigator and i-models, we completed six months’ worth of design work in just 39 days with the same number of designers involved.”
During the early stages, the value of 3D collaborative design was particularly evident in comparing and selecting dam engineering plans. Engineer He Leihui revealed that by using Bentley’s GEOPAK and other 3D software, excavation plans that previously took two weeks were completed in only 5 to 8 hours. Bentley software also enabled fast and precise project workload calculations.
Additionally, the system substantially reduced drawing time. Traditionally, preparing final drawings for the Toba project would require 2 to 3 days, but with 3D design, this was reduced to just 1 day. Gong Deyu noted, “Using 3D models, we optimized the entire design, automatically generated 2D drawings, and calculated project workloads, significantly boosting efficiency and shortening project cycles.”
Furthermore, collision detection and model validation minimized errors, oversights, and conflicts in the internal structural layout, improving design quality and spatial rationality. Traditionally, hydropower projects using 2D designs without effective collision checks often face conflicts during construction, requiring costly redesigns. The 3D approach prevented such issues.
Bentley’s 3D technology offers clearer, more intuitive, and vivid design representations, allowing designers to visualize spatial relationships between structures and equipment with ease. Many spatial layouts challenging to achieve in 2D were realized seamlessly in 3D. Complex-shaped components were displayed dynamically in multiple dimensions, making their configuration immediately clear. This technology shortened layout design time from 1-2 weeks with 2D methods to under 8 hours for the Toba project.
Finally, the digital handover enabled by 3D collaborative design established a comprehensive project engineering database for the hydropower plant owners. This database consolidates unified information throughout the entire design lifecycle, ensuring data accuracy and consistency. It facilitates efficient equipment maintenance, employee training, and reporting through 3D model demonstrations.
Following the successful completion of the Toba Hydropower Station design project at the end of May 2011, Zhongnan Survey Institute quickly launched the 3D visualization collaborative design system across the institute on July 15, marking its official practical adoption.
(Editor in charge: Sun Yue)
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