BIM in Nuclear Decommissioning

When Dutch firm Arcadis acquired Hyder Consulting in October last year, the two companies quickly realised that they needed to have a common building information modelling (BIM) strategy.

Arcadis European BIM business development manager Bram Mommers suggests the ink was barely dry on the deal before he got together with representatives from Hyder - and fellow Arcadis group companies EC Harris and RTKL - to form a European BIM group.

“One week after the acquisition we had our first phone call and right from the start we were collaborating,” says Mommers. “I was afraid that we would have differing opinions and we’d disagree about all kinds of academic stuff, but it hasn’t been a struggle at all and we have found a way to collaborate and make sure we have a common approach to BIM.”

Mommers says the company worked on translating the “very abstract” story about what BIM means for everybody - both for internal teams within the company and for clients further down the line - into something more concrete that could be applied to projects - the Arcadis BIM White Paper. Drawing on some of the definitions of BIM published in Pennsylvania State University’s widely referenced BIM study, the company set about publishing a list of 18 BIM uses to aid implementation.

“We refer to it as our BIM menu,” he says. “It defines the what of BIM. The how is defined in the Arcadis BIM White Paper. To extend the metaphor, our kitchen delivers these dishes using standards like BS1192.”If, for example, you laser scan a structure or building, that is defined as “capturing” on our menu and if we use that information to size the design, we are “sizing”. Those are two of the 18 BIM uses we might use in a project.”

Mommers says the firm is in the process of creating a BIM poster to communicate the 18 uses to its staff and is working on changing its marketing and HR messaging to aid the transition to BIM in the company. It has also set a target to have worked to BIM level 2 on projects right across Europe, transferring the UK mandate and sharing it with all of Arcadis’ global offices.

Hyder principal engineer and BIM manager Ben Harries says: “Like many companies in Europe and the UK, we have some people already at level 2 and we have others who are at level 1. Therefore for us, it’s more about sharing the knowledge rather than teaching from scratch and for that reason it’s more than achievable.”

Mommers adds that Arcadis also wants to have 25% of all projects at level 2 by the end of the year.

“That’s a huge ambition,” he says. “I’m not afraid that we can perform to level 2 BIM, but to deliver 25% of our projects that way is a real ambition.”

Further down the line, of course, there is BIM Level 3 to worry about.

But as the firm moves towards this, it is also finding new applications for BIM. A good example is the way it is “retrofitting” BIM into existing buildings and exploring a niche for the methodology in nuclear decommissioning.

Nuclear decommissioning project manager Jon Dolphin engaged Arcadis to apply BIM to help decommission redundant nuclear facilities and support their ongoing care and maintenance.

His company, Magnox, is responsible for 12 nuclear sites across the UK including Hunterston A in North Ayrshire pictured above. He recently wrote a paper about the potential for the technology in this respect.

“We could talk all day about nuclear generation and using BIM in the design, construction and operation of new build power stations. That’s where a lot of people’s interest will be,” he says. “But nuclear decommissioning is a £3bn part of the industry, which could also benefit from BIM.”