John’s role on this project began over four years ago, working with the client, Network Rail, to create and cement the project construction strategy. This involved negotiating and agreeing the access required to implement an effective strategy. Around two years ago, a consortium of specialist civil and rail engineering companies were awarded the contract to deliver the design and construction of the Ordsall Chord. This consortium is called the Northern Hub Alliance, within which John was appointed the role of project planner as part of a large planning team.

In this role, John used his previous knowledge to constantly drive home the importance of maintaining and communicating the construction strategy, as well as all the detailed staging requirements with all alliance partners. The project was split into seven key stages, one of the largest being Stage A6. It was suggested that the detailed programme for Stage A6 would be far too complex for the majority of people involved to fully understand without hours of briefing. D2 Rail therefore sought to find more effective ways to help communicate the plan for Stage A6. It had always been our intention to promote the use of 4D Planning and Synchro on the project from an early stage and this was an opportune time.

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Benefits of 4D

We realised one advantage of this method of communication is having the means to share the same information with a varied audience, for varied purposes. For example, the animation was used to help brief the workforce undertaking the work, as well as helping to explain to external parties the reasons for the disruption.

Building on our experience with the Northern Hub Alliance, we see many more benefits to using Synchro in the future. We believe instigating the use of Synchro much earlier on in a project is necessary to enable its use as a planning tool throughout the whole process, rather than just a visualisation tool towards the end of the process. It should be used to give the planner and all the participants much more transparency in the development of a programme. The key here is promoting and implementing the supporting functions, such as an adequate information management system and the timely production of 3D designs to a suitable standard. As planners we know this instinctively, but we must ensure that others in the industry understand, in order to give them the opportunity to really explore the full potential of 4D planning.