Bringing scheme handover into the 21st Century: A19 Norton to Wynyard digital handover

Discover how Balfour Beatty AtkinsRealis pushed new boundaries and improved efficiency in the handover of major highway projects to the maintainer through their work on the A19 Norton to Wynyard project. BBA utilised the data-rich project information model developed throughout design and construction to handover a robust and accurate digital handover model. The digital handover model contained all newly constructed and existing highway elements present such as pavement, barriers, lighting and drainage – geospatially positioned to their real-world coordinates. Each element also contained all asset data required by the client and maintainer which allowed the digital handover model to form the primary maintenance and asset management record for the project. This significantly reduced the requirement for physical 2D drawings and drastically improved asset management workflows.

Discover how adopting a digital handover and not traditional drawings significantly improved how the maintainer of the scheme handles inspections and maintenance of the assets. For the first time, the scheme maintainer has an accurate geometrical representation of every asset on the project and can obtain Asset Data Management Manual (ADMM) asset data and associated maintenance schedules at the click of a button. This was not previously possible with traditional methods in which the maintainer would have to physically trawl through thousands of paper drawings before cross-referencing against asset information likely stored in another system.

This session will discover how adopting the digital handover model BBA developed, led to feedback from the maintainer stating this was a significant improvement to the overall process and experience over the time-consuming traditional method of finding and interpreting asset information. Not only did the digital handover model make the maintainer’s processes more efficient but it also reduced the handover workload on the designer and contractor. Because the digital handover model was maintained throughout design and construction with the as-built information incorporated for the 4500 assets the amount of re-work to prepare for scheme handover was reduced significantly with 1700 hours or £67k of traditional drawing work saved. This brought huge cost benefits for the client. The incorporation of health and safety information reflecting the PAS 1192-6 schema also ensured there is a single source of truth for health and safety data, Something not possible when incorporating hazards into traditional 2D drawings. This drastically improves safety for maintenance personnel and road users.

This session will cover the details of exactly how BBA was able to prepare for a digital handover during design and construction and also explore exactly how the digital handover was undertaken and the activities involved. The digital handover ultimately led to the team winning the award for Digital Innovation in Asset Management at the 2023 Digital Construction Awards.

Learning points:

• Discover the benefits for all parties of adopting a digital scheme handover
• Discover the importance of accurate asset data at handover
• Learn how AtkinsRealis implemented a digital scheme handover