Navigating Digital Project Delivery: Oh, the Possibilities We Have at Our Fingertips

KELLY BARBER: Hello, everyone. My name is Kelly Barber, and I'm the division chief for PennDOT's engineering automation and services division, which is situated within the Department's Bureau of Construction and Materials. Thank you for the opportunity today to share with you how PennDOT is navigating digital project delivery, with all of the possibilities or opportunities at our fingertips.

This session will provide a brief background on how we got started with our digital transformation over two decades ago, with the focus on our Project Delivery Collaboration Center and our efforts moving into a virtual world, focusing on bridging innovations and system interoperability.

First, a little background on the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Our organizational structure consists of a central office and 11 engineering districts. We are responsible for over 40,000 road miles and a little bit over 25,000 bridges within the Commonwealth. On the average, we let between 600 and 800 construction contracts annually, with the program being over $2.8 billion in lettings. For design, we typically have two to three times more projects in the pipeline at any given time.

The department started leveraging technology early on with our electronic bidding system known as ECMS and expand it to multiple in-house systems over the years to address key interactions with our partners, being the Federal Highway Administration, other state agencies, contracting associations, and our consultants.

This type of technological involvement expanded into our construction world around 2010. And as you can see, our construction projects alone had a lot of paper. And our goal was to streamline those processes, collaborate, and to get rid of all of that paper. And this was the start of our e construct efforts. So while we are continuing to evolve and enhance our e construct efforts, we also had at this time other systems being developed to help other parts of our project delivery process.

And this is a snapshot of some of our key solutions developed as a result of our efforts. They cover the entire project delivery process, from planning to design to construction and maintenance. And as mentioned earlier, the contract management solution, ECMS, has evolved from its first rollout in 2002 and continues to advance as needs are recognized today.

We've also developed multiple mobile applications, and they are shown here in the right hand side of our screen. These are our construction specific ones, but we also have them for maintenance as well. So when our staff is out in the field, they are able to capitalize and fill out any forms, identify any issues, and share that back. All of our construction team members are equipped with an iPad to perform their daily duties in the field.

So with all of these different systems in place, the need to bring everything together into a collaboration center was realized about a decade ago, at this point. So keep that in mind. And the primary goal of this collaboration center really is to implement a solution to manage our roadway and bridge design processes, with that focus on the need for collaboration across all of those project stakeholders.

So what is the Project Delivery Collaboration Center? Formerly known as our Design Collaboration Solution, it's envisioned to be a project manager's portal. It's to be used from project creation through final design, including but not limited to a project portfolio, which could include a two-week look ahead with their schedule, costing and budgeting-- cost of projects is very important, monitoring our consultant costs, again, having those items at their fingertips to assist would be very helpful-- project dashboards and workflow reviews

Collaboration center would also allow for file management, which brought changes to our business process, good changes, and include automated workflows for project reviews, concurrent reviews, which is key for design. Our design is not the typical one reviewer in line going across. We have multiple stakeholders in reviewing documents at the same time. So having that concurrent review process was key for this to be successful, and also being able to have that knowledge of other reviewer's comments.

And the portal is to be able to provide links to those other systems that you saw earlier in the screen, to be able to have links to them but then also to share key information to those systems, but then also pull key information into this portal for those systems. And it's going to provide a collaborative environment to allow all of our project development stakeholders.

So as you can see here on the screen at the far left, there are a lot of different types of users. It says it's not just for the department. It's being able to coordinate with our federal agencies. Again, there's other state agencies, locals, utilities, getting that information, and being able to share it and get that feedback back to them.

And also, we want it to be able to work on multiple devices and not have our design staff in the office, at a desk, on a laptop all day but being able to take the iPads out into the field or utilizing their phones, potentially HoloLens in the future. Having that flexibility was key for a device.

And tying in-- again, we already spoke about this-- the different systems that we have, one key thing for our project managers was being able to talk with us Asta Powerproject, which is our scheduling tool here at the department. And then, tying into that contract management system, that ECMS, and MPMS is our planning tool.

And as we look into it a little bit further, working with different file types and being able to work with all of them and coordinate, and not necessarily that all these files are located within the collaboration center but being able to communicate with those systems that they might be in, that is different and outside of it.

So again, this is kind of on the high level, but knowing all of these requirements and to be honest, I think we had just under 100 requirements for collaboration center, which is a lot high expectations. And this solution, it really needs to be flexible in nature, not only allowing for how we do business today, but how we plan to operate in the future and beyond.

So what we are anticipating the benefits to be for this collaboration center is increase communication between our design teams as well as that communication with construction and maintenance through that project delivery process, increased communication with our business partners, Federal Highway Administration, and executive staff through that collaboration, the dashboards, and reports that are able to be provided.

We're going to be leveraging consistency amongst our engineering districts and the central office through standardized submittals and file-naming conventions, as well as streamlining processes by utilizing electronic workflows and reviews. So we're no longer requiring transmittal letters or memos to be submitted with those documents to central office or FHWA review.

Prior to COVID, we would actually have a letter attached to every submission that would be coming in. It was all paper based. During COVID, everything was email and trying to keep things organized. Who has what? Who's on deck? This solution will also be bringing in accountability. So by knowing who is reviewing the document, what their comments are, and what are the next steps in the process are all laid out within this collaboration center. So it is very key for the department with this solution.

So with all of these innovative opportunities at our fingertips, it's important that we have a digital backbone that is platform inclusive. And by having this, we're able to capitalize on the investments that we've made at the department and also what our business partners have made in their investments as well to keep their teams up and running.

It allows for change to be more accepted, as we at the department are providing solutions that will work with others, as long as, again, they can provide the data exchange that's needed. There is that caveat, but it allows our external partners to work in solutions that they offer familiar with and provide that information to the department. And an example of this is our scheduling solution, Asta Powerproject.

So our contractors are able to utilize their scheduling solution of choice, and the Asta program will perform the conversion for the department's team to review. So you'll start to notice that theme throughout the presentation. We want to have interoperability. We want to be able to work with our business partners, meet them where they are at, and share with them our expectations and not necessarily require them to purchase a solution to be working with the department.

So with all of the different opportunities that are available today, one, you might be asking, how can we bring it all together? How can we bridge these innovative technologies? And this is where the department will be utilizing the Autodesk Construction Cloud as the PDCC, so that Project Delivery Collaboration Center backbone. We're capitalizing on the department's GIS database for our project master data, and we're applying PennDOT specific customizations and configurations.

The initial roll out of PDCC for the department does evolve around the doc's solution within ACC, allowing teams to collaborate on reviews, bringing standardization to our workflows, roles, and file structure, and issue tracking as well. So our engineering district started-- we started introducing this to those districts here this past summer, and we currently have-- again, we're only in the October time frame.

We currently have over 100 projects in the system and over 1,200 users in to date. And as you can kind of see here in the word art, it really shows the different components of PDCC, but the key focus, again, is collaboration and making sure that we have that information that's needed and available for our project managers at the fingertips.

So you might be wondering, how does a PM get started? What do we have set up? What's in the works now that we have rolled out the initial phase of our collaboration center? So this is our PDCC home page, and GIO decisions is leading our configuration effort on the behalf of the department. And they have developed a portal that's tied directly into ACC to assist in the setup of the department's project.

So within this portal, we are able to speak to those legacy systems. The information you're seeing here on screen actually comes from our MPMS, the planning system, and project managers are able to go in and link their projects into ACC, which is really the PDCC. So I'll probably use them interchangeably throughout this presentation.

As part of this, they are also able to identify any department specific cards that they would like to be able to view-- and I will touch on cards here in a little bit-- as well as identifying their project team members.

So instead of having to go in and individually do this at the project level within that collaboration center environment, they come to this landing page first, they create their project here, and this page imports all of that information over into the ACC environment, so streamlining that process, being able to replicate the process within ACC for the department.

So once they've gotten into the PDCC, they are able to use their My Home Screen. And here's just a snapshot of what the My Home Screen is looking like for them. They're able to see the status of their reviews. They have their bookmark links to some of those other systems, status of where their projects are at. They're able to click on the map and go in and have access to their projects in that manner, as well as see those recently viewed documents.

And also, on the My Home Screen, we have access to other partner cards. And you'll notice some of these solutions, they are external to the department, but some of these solutions will be mentioned a little bit later on in the presentation and how we're using this interoperability and the ability to speak out to their systems here in a little bit. But again, these are partner cards. So they're solutions outside. They're not PennDOT custom builds. They're separate vendors from Autodesk, hence the name partner cards.

So design, this is more of like a visual side of things for once they are in. So design currently is focusing our efforts in this initial rollout in docs, so the docs portion of the ACC environment. They have access to their files.

If there's any draft specifications that they're looking for, they are able to go through their review process and their markups through the doc side of the house, as well as create those transmittals in case they do need to send. Maybe they're sending a letter over to Federal Highways through this process. And they have all their issues as well that they can track at their fingertips, as well as manage the members of their team. And if they wanted to, they could bridge between other projects.

One thing that does occur within the department, which is-- I've kind of-- talk about bridge here in a moment-- is we have-- on occasion, we have parent projects with children. So utilizing the bridge function will allow those files to go back and forth between those parent and child projects. So just kind of a key thing there, that will be very helpful for our project managers.

So our initial focus for design really is on docs, but we will be utilizing the build component of ACC as well. And a key area for design is forms. So in our environment today, we have a forms of publication website where our designers need to go out.

They download the document to make sure they have the latest and greatest form. They then fill out the form. They either upload it if it's not fully electronic, or they complete it, and then they may send it through an email for people to review and sign off on to get that process covered.

By utilizing and managing our forms in the ACC library, we are able to streamline that process for them. And as all of our forms become more in the electronic smart form arena, like the one here, they're able to go in, fill the form out. If it has a workflow associated with it, they can send it on for signatures, but again, bringing things in so the PMs do not necessarily have to go out to that website. It's all here at their fingertips. If they are in the field, they would also have access to complete these forms as well.

A key component here also is part of the PDCC is our document path. So once a document is created, it's going to live in the PDCC environment. It'll go through those reviews and approval process. And once it's done, we have what is called our project development checklist, which sits in the ECMS system, so that contracting system.

So as we're getting our bid packages ready to go out, that project development checklist is populated with those key approvals, whether it's a 30% design approval, a final design approval, again, just different design approvals within the process that are required prior to advertising a project.

And once that document is ready to go on the PDC, that document is placed into our ECS system, which is different from ECMS. ECS is our record retention system, and that is where all of our contractual documents, our project files are stored in accordance with our record retention schedule. So that being said, ECS is a key component in tying into and with the PDCC.

So what we have been able to do is actually, as our documents are going through the review process and once they are approved, we are able to send over our documents from the PDCC environment to ECS. And that is a huge, huge improvement as far as timing and efficiency gain for the department.

To put things in perspective, we still have staff members that, in all honesty, may print something out today to get it into ECS. So they have an electronic version of the document. They print it out to scan it into our ECS system to be able to then put it on the PDC. So a lot of work goes into the effort today, so there'll be a lot of efficiency gained by having this and the documents within the environment having access over to ECS.

So in addition to process workflows and document management, the PDCC has multiple dashboard opportunities. And we'll touch on those. You already saw the My Home Screen, but we'll touch on project dashboards as well here. And part of the dashboards are those partner cards that I was talking about. There is a pretty extensive list as far as who already has partner cards within the environment, but then we are also able to create our own partner cards and track different issues, as you can see here.

So we do have PennDOT custom cards. I talked about previously about how we have that front end build portal-- I guess would probably the best way to call it-- where our PMs can decide which custom PennDOT cards they would like to be able to see and have as part of their project. This particular card is coming from our planning system, so it's covering key project information that the project manager might be interested in or someone else on the project.

We also bring in our Asta information. So if they're looking at their schedule and they want to know what their lookahead is-- and this is more at a portfolio level, but again, it can be brought down to the specific project. So tying into Asta Powerproject's portal, as well as having the ability to tie in and potentially have some deep links into our existing department systems.

And last but definitely not least, bringing in that project map for the department and being able to have that location for where your project is with the limits, so georeferencing in the project. So these are just a sample of some of the cards that we have to date. And we've been continuing to build out new ones as well.

So we've talked a lot about design. And again, our focus right now is the design side of the house, but we are leveraging PDCC for construction as well. We currently have two large dollar projects utilizing the PDCC environment.

We have the I-376 over Commercial Street Bridge in our engineering district 11 office, which is near Pittsburgh, and we also have our high-speed interchange project on Interstate 80 at Bellefonte near our district two office. If you are familiar with the Commonwealth, it's just north of State College. So if you know where Penn State is, pretty much almost done or the state, just north of there on 80.

I'm going to walk you through so you see what our construction team is up. And you can see here some additional cards that have been developed. We have our bridge card. We also have our video log, so they can drive the project. And we go over to the build environment.

And on the construction side, they are utilizing sheets, taking advantage of the collections because right now in a plant set world, there are a lot of different plant sets. So they can break that up and mark things up, as well as specifications that are tied to the project, easy access. They are also utilizing forms. So you can see how that dropdown list starts to get populated, and they can fill the forms out.

They're also going to be utilizing it for photos, meetings, correspondence, and schedule. And I did not record it here, but the scheduling component is also key for the department, by having easy access and not having to be in the scheduling software to be able to view the contract or schedule and their updates. That was another area that they will be capitalizing on as part of these two projects.

So in addition to utilizing the PDCC, those two large projects are also utilizing UAS for construction analytics, and our major bridge P3 project is also utilizing both the UAS for construction analytics and augmented reality. So we're going to jump into those projects a little bit more here and show you some videos of what we're up to on the virtual world component side.

So for the high-speed interchange in Bellefonte and our major bridge P3 program, we are utilizing DotuBIM for it. So just walk you through what we're up to here and how we're utilizing at this point in time. So you'll notice we do have a couple of different files here, and most are in IFC file format. But what I would say was interesting about this was they started as a DGN. Contractor converted them to a DWG, and they are sending in IFC here.

So when you're looking at the video for this bridge, right now, you're noticing they are clicking on elements within the model and able to gather key information based off of what was provided there. And you can see how they're checking out the opacity here and switching that up on the screen so you can see how things are honing in to the point that you can take that entire background out and just hone in there on the structure.

And again, because it's a model and it has different elements associated with it, you are able to focus in on certain areas of interest, which again is key if you're looking at certain things. But again, this is the Randolph Bridge up on our interstate 81 project here in Susquehanna County for the department. And this is them using DotuBIM. And you'll see across the top, we've had a handful of flights already on this project. So again, they'll be able to compare timelines and view how this project is progressing over time visually out in the field.

And then, we jump over to AR in the field, same project. So they are out utilizing what we-- the product is called Sitelink just for reference, but in general AR being out on site with their iPads, being able to visualize where things plan to be, lining things up. And you can see here the inspector had noted a piling issue and the date and time, and they're able to take their photos with the AR device-- well, with the iPad and the AR solution and be able to bring that back in.

So again, just some snapshots of what they're up to out in the field and then to touch on the interoperability of it. So again, the product that they were using during that capture was Sitelink. So you'll see here on my folder structure, I have Sitelink files and that is where we put our model files.

And again, this is going to walk you through. We're going over to Sitelink on the web portal portion of it, web browser side, just showing here that, yes, it's the same project that we're tied together. And as we're doing those settings here, it's going to show, OK, the bridge model has come in. It's showing you that we've activated our connectivity with the ACC environment.

As we're going through, moving it around, we're able to go in. Now, in reality, the previous slide, you're able to see how they're out in the field on their marking issues. So this is what they would see on their screen out there. Again, those issues are tracked. You saw what those were here. And those issues then feed back into our PDCC environment.

And you'll notice here, Sitelink 1, crane operator needs some additional water and just some other things that are there. But again, tying it in and not having everything necessarily sitting out in different systems, bringing it in so that way, whether it's a construction or a design, they have access to that information all within one solution.

And then, so jumping away from the Bellefonte project and our P3 project over to our I-376 over Commercial Street project, we will be utilizing the reconstruct platform there for its UAS capture and analytics.

This project has just started, so we're using a previous project that we had used reconstruct for the McLaughlin Run Roundabout, so for today, for our visualization side of things and our scope of the project, but we do plan to be test driving aerial mapping with drones and ground level 360 cameras for our data capture.

And while I was just going through everything, you probably were able to see here on the screen, on the left, being able to go in and take your dimensions, calculate your areas, and continuing to move forward with your analytics and your analysis beyond that. But again, volume measurement and then moving things on and loading your other projects over.

So again, just bringing that in, being able to hone in. You can see based off of the time lapse, the work that's being done and the equipment that's out on site. And here you're bringing in the point cloud and overlaying that as well.

All right. So once our flights have started and the images are available, we will-- our plan is to do a check between what has been accomplished versus what was scheduled. So we'll be tying in our construction schedule as part of these efforts. So we'll be testing out 4D, so not only an IFC model for a structure but then 4D components on top of that. And this is really just kind of visualizing for you how that would look within the solution.

And here we're seeing the 3D, they call it. We call it the time machine, with drone reality captures. Again, zooming in there on the McLaughlin Run Roundabout, coming in. This is a better view, I guess, from the previous one. You'll be able to see the different distances and measurements. This is a better view for you from the previous. And then you're able to see here, again, more of a zoomed in image of that cut and fill calculation.

So you can see the-- now switch to the August 4, 2022. You're bringing in your point clouds, zooming back in, and showing you again at that point in time. So if you didn't get the chance to catch this earlier, this is a larger image of what was going on in that smaller left hand screen.

All right. Similar concept, I would say, with the 2D. Again, most of our projects at this point are still 2D with plan sets but being able to go in, load our project. You can zoom in and out, check to see what's going on.

And then you can bring in your plan sets behind it. So you can see where things should be and being able to make those plans more defined, maybe take off the reality and bring it back out. But again, having those ground control points as well, being able to show those and create any potential issues or mark ups. So, as you can see, is being written here.

You can see ground control points. You can see RFI 23. So again, ability to go in, mark it up, be able to view it not only in 2D but in 3D as well, and 4D here in the future. And this one here is actually going to be bringing in the review work sequence with as-builts.

So this project did not have a model. If you were in my presentation last year, you may recall this, but again, we just went in and created some four quadrants for us to be able to test drive time, this in with our project schedule and as built condition. So you can see here, again, pulling it in with the schedule. You can see certain areas highlighted, where we're at.

And again, this would be the Asta Powerproject schedule being able to tie in. And all of these solutions work with different scheduling solutions. It doesn't have to be-- it's not one specific, again, that interoperability, having our contractors being able to work with different potential solutions.

It's going out, capturing a certain time frame, bringing in the plan, and being able to see where we're at, whether we're on schedule. At some point, it-- you can also be able to see if you're going to be yellow, if we're running a chance of being behind or also red, if we're behind schedule. So all of that will come up within these sequences with the as-builts.

So then tying in that interconnectivity with PDCC, the solutions and the plan sets that everything you're seeing are all coming from within the PDCC environment, and you're also able to track issues. And it's bidirectional, that connectivity with the PDCC environment. So you will see that here in the next video.

So you can see down here, we have our issue. That's just kind of there for you to be able to see it, but bringing it out, having that remote inspection, and issue management, going into that particular location, toggling their issue manager. So there's already three available, and you can see those there. And then adding in the new issue, which is review site conditions. And then you can see it comes in here within the PDCC environment.

So again, they're sitting in both locations, but as that construction PM inspector, if they're not the ones necessarily utilizing this particular solution, they're at least able to get the feedback and have that easily accessible at their fingertips.

So there's a lot of things going on in the virtual world that we are still continuing to test drive and looking to develop policy and expand upon the usage here at the department with those solutions. But overall, just kind of bringing things somewhat to a close and final thoughts for today, as we're going through our project delivery collaboration, you can see here, it's the infinity symbol, but sometimes I'm like, oh, I think it's a bow.

But anyhow, Project Delivery Collaboration Center, that's where the design information is going to be. That's where our construction documents will end up being, depending upon what they are. It's complementing our current construction systems that we have in place. But working through project creation through design, being CAD agnostic, being able to work with any CAD solution is key for this, getting things through to construction and bringing those as-builts in.

So we have that side of it, but then we also have those existing systems that we have in place and being able to capitalize on that data as well and making sure that we have that connected data environment that feeds our asset system. And then being able to view and visualize all this information within the department's GIS environment is key moving forward.

So you can see on our asset side some key things that have been touched upon lately that are tying in with GIS are our outdoor advertising monitoring, right of way plans, our as-builts, e-ticketing. We're still looking into and working with RFID tags. eCAMMS was not mentioned today, but eCAMMS is our materials management system and having that information available at our fingertips as well, all within this GIS component. And then we've already talked about ECMS and MPMS, so having that stuff as well.

So again, it's bringing all this stuff together and at the end of the day, having that visualization for our executive teams to make the decisions that they need or for our project managers to have that information as they're going through and designing a project, or even if construction has any questions, they're able to go into the area and have that information as well and maintenance. So again, communication is key collaboration and being able to make sure that all of our data is flowing and not staying siloed.

So wrapping things up, overall, we as a department are very excited about all of these opportunities that technology is bringing our industry today and looking forward to the future to see what else is coming our way. We are continuing to strive to keep our ecosystem of solutions, which we've got a lot to be platform inclusive and be able to work together and have that interconnectivity.

So if you have any questions on our efforts to date, please feel free to reach out. This is my contact information. So thank you very much. Appreciate it.