SSE overcomes cultural challenge of BIM
SSE Transmission has achieved an industry first by becoming Business Information Modelling (BIM) accredited, but the sector faces a huge cultural challenge if it wants to follow suit.
By Lucinda Dann, features editor
SSE overcomes cultural challenge of BIM
SSE Transmission has achieved an industry first by becoming Business Information Modelling (BIM) accredited, but the sector faces a huge cultural challenge if it wants to follow suit.
By Lucinda Dann, features editor
Faced with a programme of work totalling £3 billion across its transmission system to enable the government’s Clean Power targets, Scottish and Southern Electric Networks (SSEN) decided the time was ripe to implement new ways of working.
Having been left out of the government’s Business Information Modelling (BIM) mandate in 2016, it decided to forge ahead of the transmission industry to become ISO19650 (BIM) accredited. BIM is a collaborative process for the creation, management and storage of information relating to a construction project.
The benefits of adopting BIM are clear: more standardisation helps both to accelerate infrastructure delivery and enables better long-term asset management, cutting both capex and opex costs. But achieving the accreditation has not been without its challenges, which largely revolve around changing a working culture that has existed for potentially decades.
Having now set the benchmark, the rest of the industry is likely to follow suit. However, as well as being a key driver, the sheer scale of the work programme facing the industry is also likely to provoke some resistance to change among industry players.
Capex and opex
The electricity transmission sector is lagging roughly ten years behind the built environment sectors on its digital transformation, acknowledges lead digital information manager at SSEN, Scott Pritchard.
Left out of the government mandate on using BIM that came into force in 2016, the sector has to date lacked the investment that would be necessary to push through such transformative change, he says. That changed with the government’s plan for Clean Power 2030, which sees electricity transmission operators faced with developing and upscaling the grid to connect both offshore wind and onshore assets.
“The size of the programme has made people think we need to do things differently if we want to deliver what we’ve got to deliver. At SSE we have been looking at it for some time, but information management using BIM is a difficult thing to implement so it can be quite challenging to get organisations pointed in that direction,” he says.
For SSEN alone, its Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) pathway to 2030 programme of work totals around £30 billion, if the RIIO-T3 regulation period is included.
“That’s all running concurrently with different supply chain and delivery partners. Ultimately all that activity involved in doing such a wide upgrade to the network has to be done in a standardised way so that we can deal with the sheer volume of information coming through.”
Standardising is also allowing SSE to lean on tools such as AI to mine information and allow it to make decisions much more quickly. “We need to do more with less,” says Pritchard.
But as well as reducing capex costs, a big driver in the utilities sector is the opportunity to reduce operating costs, says Mark Shaw, who is leading the Global BIM initiatives for consultant Xylem. “Our clients are becoming more data centric. I think they are seeing the value in having the data behind these projects because, while a huge amount of money is spent in the delivery phase, the operational expenditure is far greater," he says. “They are seeing that if they start to make use of the data they can save so much money during the operational phase of an asset."
Pritchard confirms that this opportunity to cut operating costs was a big factor in its decision to fully embrace BIM. “In the delivery phase we need to set our engineers up with standardised information so if they go to any substation, converter or overhead line route they know what they are going to be getting rather than trying to understand how each individual contractor has produced and structured that information to use in asset management and operations.”
“They are seeing that if they start to make use of the data they can save so much money during the operational phase of an asset.”
Mark Shaw, channel account leader, Xylem
Accreditation
All three transmission operators have set out plans during T3 to incorporate BIM practices within their processes, with Scottish Power Energy Networks embarking on a ‘BIM Transformation’ project which will see the company fully implement BIM methodology and associated digital platforms across its strategic contract portfolio by 2030.
"Looking ahead, BIM will continue to play an important role in supporting SP Transmission’s digital ambitions. As investment in the transmission network accelerates and infrastructure programmes become increasingly complex, robust information practices will be essential for enabling efficient delivery, informed decision-making, and the long-term stewardship of critical network assets," says programme manager of the BIM implementation team at SP Transmission Scott Irving.
Meanwhile National Grid will build on investments made during RIIO-T2 by rolling out BIM across its ASTI construction portfolio. In its Digitalisation Strategy and Action Plan for RIIO-T3, National Grid stated that it intends to reduce its project management office staffing costs by 4.7% through the use of BIM and a common data environment.
However, only SSEN has chosen to fully commit to BIM by becoming ISO19650 accredited. Pritchard says the decision was driven by a belief that the operator couldn’t ask its supply chain to transition if it wasn’t prepared to do so itself. “One of the things we have done particularly with both our onshore and offshore ASTI frameworks and EGL (Eastern Green Link) programmes is we have been open with contractors about our direction of travel and it almost didn’t feel right asking them to do this if we don’t walk the walk ourselves.”
Despite its commitment, SSE did not find the accreditation process straightforward, with two attempts needed to achieve the standard. “This wasn’t our first attempt at trying to get certified. We had a first attempt which allowed us to figure out where we were. The feedback allowed us to shape things so its right across our projects,” he says.
Unfortunately, during its first attempt SSEN was found to not have enough integration between its BIM process and its large capital projects process. While it was given the opportunity to fix this and put in a corrective action plan to achieve accreditation faster, it instead chose to walk away from the assessment to reexamine its processes.
“Given we are in a regulated business and dealing with electricity we have a lot of internal process that we have to follow, we had to make sure that our 19650 processes were integrated, so we took a year out to work on making sure that was properly embedded into how SSEN delivers projects,” says Pritchard.
“Doing a corrective action plan would have been a bit like putting a plaster over it, whereas this time round we got the right teams and people involved to make sure everything was covered and there was a level of embedment in the projects that we were putting forward to audit as well,” says his colleague Amanda Shanks, lead digital information manager at SSEN.
The re-evaluation paid off, as SSEN achieved accreditation on its second attempt. Although not without its difficulties, SSEN expects the fact that a transmission operator (TO) has now achieved accreditation to push the rest of the industry forwards. “If we can do this then we are setting a baseline for other TOs across the UK network as well to do the same,” says Shanks.
“Doing a corrective action plan would have been a bit like putting a plaster over it, whereas this time round we got the right teams and people involved to make sure everything was covered.”
Scott Pritchard, lead digital information manager SSEN
Setting the bar
Collaboration within the transmission industry already exists in the form of the IM4Power group, a peer-to-peer network aimed at supporting sector organisations in developing best practice in information management, which Utility Week helped to convene.
Edd Dutton, lead at IM4Power, agrees the move should help drive industry progress. “Initiatives such as IM4Power demonstrate a shared ambition across transmission owners to improve information management practices and strengthen collaboration. Progress within one organisation can provide insights that may help support wider industry development and knowledge sharing,” he says.
“The achievement of BIM accreditation by an individual operator demonstrates that implementation is achievable within a transmission environment and provides valuable learning opportunities for the wider sector.”
Shaw also believes it will push the other operators to go further than they had necessarily been planning. “I think it will set a precedence, the other operators will follow suit. It typically takes one to take the first step and lead, and you usually find others will do the same.”
But much as SSEN found, the path to full implementation and potentially accreditation will not be easy for the other TOs.
“The transmission sector is unique in that it must manage and develop networks containing assets that span many decades of technology evolution. Delivering digital transformation in this environment is not simply a matter of introducing new tools; it requires the integration of new ways of working alongside established operational and engineering practices,” says Dutton.
These ‘new ways of working’ amount to “fundamental change” to how TOs have been used to operating, says Pritchard.
“There is the information management side and a technology side to BIM. The technology side is probably easier to get people’s buy in for. The problem is if you just do the technology side of it without the information management side is it doesn’t work at scale.
“That side is a much more difficult sell to leadership and to the people who then have to change the way they have been working for sometimes decades in order to fit inside this new way of producing and managing information, but unfortunately that piece has to be done in order for the technology piece to work as it should, and that level of cultural change is always difficult in any organisation,” he says.
Shaw agrees that enacting cultural change within an organisation is always the hardest part of implementing BIM. “There is a lot of investment needed in training and having a workforce that understands the requirements and why they are doing it, its not just a tick box exercise, it’s a cultural change within the organisation,” he says.
But it is not just the operators themselves that will need to transition. Pritchard says it is a mixed picture on adoption across the industry’s contractor base. “It’s a bit of a mixed bag," he says. "There’s some ahead of us who have been doing BIM on our projects for a number of years, but we have some that are brand new to the table and have never looked at this before. Something we really want to be able to do is share with those that are at the start of their journey.”
He adds that the lack of industry mandate means BIM is still seen by some in the industry as optional, and the pain of change is likely to lead to some resistance.
“It hampers us from the perspective that those that are a bit more mature with BIM can see the benefits, but it’s sometimes a bit of a harder sell for those contractors that are just coming to this. They don’t necessarily see the benefits in reducing their time and effort in delivering projects because it is such a cultural change for any organisation.
“Trying to implement it, particularly now that we are in the throes of trying to deliver such a massive programme of work, there is a little bit of disruption but hopefully if it’s done in the right way with the right level of engagement, that disruption should be eclipsed by the acceleration that it brings.”
Resistance or not, all parties agree that the transition to full BIM implementation can be a journey that lasts many years and is without a firm end date, meaning it is likely to remain a hot topic beyond the current regulatory period.
“The achievement of BIM accreditation by an individual operator demonstrates that implementation is achievable within a transmission environment and provides valuable learning opportunities for the wider sector.”
Edd Dutton, lead, IM4Power
