Digital Revolution - Driving Construction Excellence

Digital Revolution - Driving Construction Excellence

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SNC-Lavalin’s digital journey positions Construction at its core. Our use of key solutions such as mobile equipment, connected systems, safety and integrated logistics has proven to be successful in the delivery of productivity improvements for Construction; resulting in +20% productivity gains on projects. These solutions have enabled better scheduling and budget management on major projects in Latin America and in the Middle East. The nature of digital assets requires constant evolution. SNC-Lavalin is investing in building on its demonstrated innovations in Construction Excellence by continuing to integrate new technologies with the objective of achieving greater standardized use of digital solutions on all projects.

With the advent of digital technologies, entire industries have been revolutionized with new business models made possible and massive disruption to existing business models. These have brought about shifts in how investments are made, customers are served and work carried out. The world of Construction, however, has yet to fully ride the digital wave. Mining and Metallurgy construction projects are no exception. While digitized solutions, models and platforms exist that could benefit the Construction industry, few are in practice today.

Based on SNC-Lavalin’s experience in construction excellence

and the deployment of innovative construction methods, the

adoption of digital ways of working can yield significant gains.

What’s more, these digital solutions can deliver significant value

without requiring large investment. Powerful new technologies

and innovations allow Mining & Metallurgy companies to explore

leaps in construction productivity and constructability with small

step changes to overall project budgets.

With Mining & Metallurgy mega projects, as much as 85% of the

total capital investment associated with a new or expanded mine

site is attributed to construction costs. Any small percentage gain

applied to these can generate a significant impact. As miners look

to optimize their cost structure and drive greater productivity

without extending already tight capital expenditure budgets,

digital solutions can offer a pragmatic and impactful path to

realizing these objectives.

The digital journey

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The state of digital adoption in construction-heavy industriesWith tightening budgets and environmental regulations as well as increased efficiency expectations from investors, the need to adopt new technologies is great. The adoption of 3D and information modelling technologies is significant within manufacturing, infrastructure and energy industries with 17 to 30+% of construction contractors using building information modeling (BIM) as part of projects (McGraw Hill Construction, 2014). This is not the case within the Mining and Natural Resource sectors, with only 5% adoption.

It is SNC-Lavalin’s experience

that the challenges that have

traditionally discouraged projects

from considering digital ways

of working can easily be overcome

and can even present significant

opportunities when addressed

with an eye towards pragmatic

value-based applications.

While solutions have been available to digitize Construction activities within Mining and Metallurgy, these have raised many questions in Project Directors and Construction Managers as to how best to leverage them. In effect, a number of challenges have blocked projects from considering these as real value generators:

• There is no one-size-fits-all digital platform that can easily be applied to every project in the same way.

• Real benefits are not generated from only one solution – real gains are captured with a holistic multi-dimensional digital approach involving several digital solutions.

• Depending on the digital approach adopted, benefactors vary across the construction value chain.

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1. Delivering Safely – With digital solutions, safety performance is enhanced while minimizing the onboarding time and training costs required.

2. Creating physical assets digitally – in the digital world, physical assets can be created digitally first from engineering to operations to maximize constructability while minimizing waste.

3. Enabling construction workers to be efficient – with the democratization of mobile technologies, workers can be more connected and reduce transcription and re-work to significantly boost productive hours.

4. Integrated construction platform – the base of any digital construction project, cloud-based platforms allow projects to work with one common and up-to date source of the truth.

One source of the truth

Creating physical assets digitally

Enabling the connected

workerConstruction Productivity

Digitizing the building blocks of construction excellence

Updated in real-time Common platform

Integrated cloud-based construction platform4

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Harvesting the value of digital construction

THE DIGITAL IMPERATIVE

By looking to accelerate the four main building blocks of construction management, SNC-Lavalin has adopted a holistic approach to maximize construction productivity while minimizing the investment required. These four main building blocks are:

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1Delivering safely

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Digital 3D Renderings - Visualizing and Enhancing Safety on Site

During the Engineering phase of the project, the 3D drawings created allow engineers to visualize and properly validate the design. This digital design, discussed further in section 2. Creating Physical Assets Digitally brings significant benefits in the pre-operations phases of the project as well as throughout operations by enabling not only a better understanding of the site design, but also ensuring that the site is as safe as possible. By converting these 3D drawings into a full site 3D rendering or site "digital twin", safety managers can:

• Walk through construction sites virtually and perform security walkthroughs to ensure that safety protocols are comprehensive and safety hazards and risks are addressed.

• Better onboard new project team and operations team members for safety protocols that are particular to the mine / plant site and known site hazards.

Wearables and the Internet of Things - Better Managing Incidents and Productivity

With the growing availability of solutions leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT), the ability of safety solutions to track employees and assets has greatly advanced. While some solutions require large investment in telecommunication infrastructure, some are more nimble and require only minimal infrastructure upgrades by relying on sensors and tags to transmit information on assets back to the control room, empowering miners with the ability to geo-locate assets and people and thus allow for constant monitoring and enhanced safety of the overall mine and plant.

Safety is always the first concern. Construction cannot be productive nor efficient without ensuring that projects are built safely and pave the way for safe operations. By looking to digital technologies to construct safely, miners can increase safety performance by avoiding and better responding to incidents. At the same time, these solutions can reduce the ramp-up time of new employees on safety methods and facilitate the introduction of new processes and standard operating procedures, contributing to a reduction in safety related training costs.

Delivering safely1.

A 3D rendering of a plant allows safety manager to perform safety walk throughs in a site "digital twin.

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Delivering safely

A few of the most effective applications including:

• Creating virtual zones in plant and mine to enable a connected and real-time mine site map.

• Monitoring dashboards connected to wearable devices on employees and tags on equipment create alerts to allow safety personnel to avoid incidents and respond quickly when an incident has occurred.

• The use of electronic tag-in / tag-out boards can allow operators to remotely view who is physically present in the mine, where they are presently located and where they have been through time with the help of breadcrumb analysis.

SNC-Lavalin and Cyest Corporation have jointly developed a safety solution that combines 3D site visualization, geo-tagging and wearables to enhance safety and maximize worker and contractor productivity. This solution, while highly effective for construction projects, also transitions well into

Operations. In effect, throughout operations, it can be used to improve and maintain safe operations, especially during important events such as shutdowns / turnarounds as well as day-to-day operations.

These types of solutions allow Mining and Metallurgy companies to better assess, prevent and learn from incidents and near-misses while providing the basis to also boost productivity. Indeed, by leveraging wearables and digital applications for safety, miners can track the density of workers and contractors in all work zones for productivity purposes. In addition, the data collected from wearable devices, sensors and tags allows for data to be automatically loaded in the company database, paving the way for automated, cross-referenced and comprehensive reporting.

Visualizing safety alerts within a virtual zone on a simulated mine site map updated in real-time.

The ability to geo-locate assets and people allows for more effective monitoring and improved safety performance.

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• Constructability reviews - In the design phase, constructability reviews can be performed via discreet simulation. This provides a 3D routing environment for all disciplines from design to interference reviews and checking.

• Procurement and Material Management in the Field – By using tablets and geo-tagging technology, actual data is collected. Leveraging a solution such as SmartPlant Suite to collect spent-hour data by document type based on progress while also connecting tags to the solution in order to provide an exhaustive service around material tracking and management. Also allowing for bills of materials validation and tracking of design changes; which proved to improve productivity on one of SNC-Lavalin’s Asia Pacific major projects.

Taking a page from the Manufacturing industry’s digital playbook, miners now have the ability to simulate designs and drawings from engineering to operations. In recent years, SNC-Lavalin has used digital solutions to support planning and management when executing construction projects. While these innovations have been deployed for Mining and Metallurgy projects mainly in Latin America and the Middle East, SNC-Lavalin is actively integrating these new solutions and methods across all its active projects with a view to full integration globally. With the ability to create the physical asset’s digital mirror, project and operations teams have the ability to visualize, review and validate constructability while augmenting the quality of constructed facilities and minimizing associated costs. From constructability reviews to facilitated commissioning and operations, 3D simulations allow for enhanced productivity in construction as listed below.

• Clash and conflict detection - Before trade contractors even set foot in the field, clash and conflict detection can take place within the structural fabrication model, allowing for validation of designs against potential conflicts and clashes between every discipline.

• Comparing and reconciling construction on site versus design – Digital cloud point technology can be used with sensors to validate that construction has been done to design specifications, allowing for rapid discrepancy identification and correction. A recent application of this technology was used to validate the structural component of a large infrastructural project. Quickly within the review, an inverted slope within the plumbing was identified under the concrete, allowing for repairs to take place in a timely manner and without impact to the project schedule.


2.

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Validating that construction is as per design is facilitated with digital cloud point technology.

Training becomes more effective when delivered within a simulated 3D model.

• Seamless updates to the as-built by Operations and Maintenance – Since the various trades and discipline drawings are all linked to the same 3D model, they can input their updates to the as-built directly in the 3D model. This allows engineering to access, review and then upload changes into the final model for access by all teams and work crews.

• Connected Logistics – Using sensors to track materials and equipment on-site and using solutions such as SmartPlant Material to quantify which materials were received and / or consumed to enable better planning of construction team on site and greater efficiencies overall. Solutions also enable vendor quality control as well as GPS tracking and staging.

• Facilitated Commissioning and Operations – Since the plant operations and maintenance software is linked to the 3D model, providing a 3D view of the ‘as built’. Working from this model, Commissioning and Operations team

members can visualize their work areas and access real-time information on any equipment within the simulated environment. Equipped with mobile devices, workers could, for example, go to the mechanical room and visualize this room on their mobile device. They could click on a pump within the simulated environment on their mobile device and view information related to this equipment, such as the serial number, name tag, guarantee data, maintenance activities performed, etc.

• Accelerated training – Just as with safety training, general project and operational training is enhanced and facilitated by allowing for trainees to engage with the augmented reality of the 3D model’s training environment for virtual installation procedures and groundwork training. This reduces the amount of ramp-up time required for new resources and upskilling on new methods, while increasing standardi-zation of work executed.


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Mobile device usage on the job allows workers not only to access up-to date information while in the field, but also feed up-to date databases, creating opportunities for meaningful analysis of operations. In effect, analytics solutions plugged into corporate databases can easily detect trends and patterns of inefficiencies and safety risks, paving the road for targeted and effective improvements.

With the availability of low cost mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, construction teams have access to the latest 3D drawings at all times, allowing all workers to work with the same version of the plan at all times. As employees interact with drawings, they can redline these and capture notes and pictures directly from their mobile devices as well as note deficiencies during site inspection.

With access to the latest 3D model, construction workers can more easily validate and inspect constructed facilities

Enabling the connected worker

3.

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On a large infrastructure project with over 300 resources and inspectors, the connected

worker solution was put in place by equipping all with iPads. Workers were able to capture

deficiency pictures and notes directly on their tablets as they inspected the site. This allowed

the project to eliminate the need to have inspectors capture these deficiencies on paper and

via digital camera, re-transcribe notes, download pictures, link them to notes and then upload

all to a database. Overall, PRODUCTIVE HOURS WERE INCREASED BY 20-25% while

facilitating work satisfaction and motivation. The solution, built using SNC-Lavalin tools

currently in use, is low cost to implement, use and maintain, demonstrating that significant

gains are possible without over extending existing budgets. Project controls also have

benefited from these new capabilities. Field engineers using mobile devices can access

information, manage work orders, budget and schedule while sending information that allow

for real-time updates of project control systems. Moreover, such technology allows the

tracking of timecards in the field, using tablets, providing a daily headcount by contractor

and skill type.

On a large construction project, workers were equipped with mobile devices that provided them with access to capture inspection notes and images directly in one common database.

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Enabling the connected worker

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Supporting safe delivery of physical assets, the creation of physical assets digitally and the connected worker is the ability to rely on one common, integrated platform that allows all project and operations personnel to connect into and update one source of the truth. By integrating workflows and data for all systems and areas, as shown below, into one common construction platform, all workers, including vendors and subcontractors, can access and work with the same version of information. This enables closer collaboration and a better flow of information, by minimizing multiple entries and risk of errors and maximizing visibility of required information and better sequencing of activities.

Using a common platform and defining project tools to transition into an asset repository connecting cost to schedule, plan, material, equipment and status, for one integrated, real-time view of the project or operation.

Integrated systems - Common platform

Integrated cloud-based construction platform

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Integrated construction platforms present a common system for all relevant workflows and databases

Engineering systems Cost management

Planning and scheduling

Project collaboration (website)

Contracts management

Completion / turnover and commissioning progress and management

ConstructionFinance / accounting

Field progress and performance

Procurement and materials management

Document control estimating

Engineering / home office progress and performance

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Nathalie ViensVice-President, Sustaining Capital and Consulting Services

[email protected]

Tel. 514.393.1000

For more information...

HEAD OFFICE455 René-Lévesque Blvd. West Montreal, QC, H2Z 1Z3, Canada Telephone: +1 514 393-1000

www.snclavalin.com

Founded in 1911, SNC-Lavalin is one of the leading engineering and construction groups in the world and a major player in the ownership of infrastructure. From offices in over 50 countries, SNC-Lavalin’s employees provide EPC and EPCM services to clients in a variety of industry sectors, including mining and metallurgy, oil and gas, environment and water, infrastructure and clean power. SNC-Lavalin can also combine these services with its financing and operations and maintenance capabilities to provide complete end-to-end project solutions.

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