Revised 20030717

Active Information Corporation's
Global Construction Industry Projects



Peter William Lount, OOSPLA 1998, Vancouver, B.C., Canada Active Information Corporation
1917 West Fourth Avenue, Suite 14
Vancouver, B.C., CANADA, V6J 1M7

604 736 2461 Office
604 831-3072 Fax
604 831-3071 Cellular
email: peter@ActiveInfo.CA
web: http://www.ActiveInfo.CA, http://www.smalltalk.org, http://www.peter.lount.com
Peter W. Lount's Resume: http://www.peter.lount.com/resume.html

Consulting Services Provided by Active Information Corporation
 Active Information Corporation (AIC) offers Consulting Services and Custom Application Development to companies in the Global Construction Industry and other fields that require complex modern software applications and systems to gain a competitive edge and succeed in business. The consulting services include Systems Requirements, Analysis, Design and Implementation, Mentoring, Training, Design and Implementation Reviews, and more.

Background
Peter W. Lount first got involved with the construction industry over twenty years ago when he started learning about rebar detailing and computer and graphic software systems in the late 1970's. Peter was working at a part-time job in high school for Great West Steel's subsidary, CADSys Ltd. based in Edmonton, Alberta. Times have changed and so have the technologies.

Peter Lount and AIC re-entered the construction industry in the early 1990's bringing advanced personal computer software tools to bear in the creation of an advanced Pre-Cast Segmental Bridge Design System. Since 1998 AIC has consulted intensively in the construction industry on the advancement of software technologies for various areas of the construction industry including:

It's very important for the construction industry to catch up with the latest advances in software technologies and AIC is here to assist with this enterprise.

AIC's Advanced Application Technology
AIC's primary domain expertise is in advanced software systems. AIC works closely with it's clients domain experts to transfer their domain knowledge into advanced software systems. In the case of the engineering field AIC consulted closely with a client's senior professional engineer, engineering staff and rebar experts over a period of many years, to research, design, implement and re-implement a number of different engineering application systems.

The process of knowledge transfer from a highly skilled domain expert to a software system is often a lengthly and involved process due to the complexity of the domain knowedge and the essential and critical nature of getting the details right. This is certinaly true of the engineering field where the risks are much higher. AIC has actively developed it's skills and capabilities with the aim of effectively transfering client's domain knowledge into financially successful software systems.

In the following section the major areas of AIC's recent and current focus in the engineering field is described in some depth.
Applications of Computer Graphics in Civil Engineering
AIC, and Peter Lount, have an active interest in computer graphics and their application in a number of fields including civil engineering. Recent decades has seen an explosion in the use of two and three dimensional graphics and animation in the engineering fields. AIC provides it's clients with cusomtized graphic solutions. AIC is working on an advanaced Collaborative Computer Assisted Design (CCAD) graphic system.

"Customized visualization of engineering structures before they are built increases productivity and reduces errors since the engineer can see the results as they work with the virtual design model. You can see mistakes as they are made in the design process thus saving time and money, rather than during the construction process where it's very expensive to correct errors. Seeing a mass of numbers as a picture is a lot easier than reading a mass of printed numbers. Pictures let you see patterns in the mass of numbers allowing clairity of understanding, often much faster. That's the power of visualization in the engineering workplace. That's the power of including visualization within your engineering applicaitions".
- Peter W. Lount, Design Consultant, Active Information Corporation

Pre-Cast Segmental Bridge Design Systems
Peter Lount was one of two designers who implementored an innovative Pre-Cast Segmental Bridge Design system used in the construction of many bridges around the world. The client's senior professional engineer handled the engineering domain issues such as the bridge domain knowledge and calculations. Peter Lount, a software technology specialist, designed the software architecture. Peter Lount and the client's senior professional engineer implemented the system together.

The design of the bridge sofware includes the ability to specify the path and alignment geometry of the bridge's roadway through three dimensional space including curves, banking slopes and hills. The system supports the specification of the bridge design into it's seperate components or "software objects". This allows a model of the bridge to be represented in the software. More importantly this allows all the essential details of the bridge to be calculated, such as bridge alignment and segment shapes (to the milimeter), from it's "virtual model". Essentially the Segmental Bridge Design system is a "bridge calculator". Visualization of the calculated bridge was made possible by exporting AutoCAD document exchange files (DXF). Visuailzation was essential for detecting flaws in the bridge design specifications used to calculate the bridge details. In addition essential reports with other verification checks were implemented.

A segmental bridge design breaks a bridge into very large "segments" that are prefabircated on the ground and then transported to the site and hoisted into place with a gantry crane. Support cables are then strung through interior tubes within the segments stiching them together into spans. A key aspect of this design are the placement of the support columns, or piers, that hold the bridge up. The segments are strung up into two spans, one on each side of a pier (except for the end cases). The spans are joined in the center by casting them in place with very short segments.

The output of the Segmental Bridge Calculator is sent to other programs that assist in the fabrication of the actual bridge segements. AIC was not involved with these other segmental bridge fabrication systems except in a minor design advice and debugging support role.

Peter Lount trained and mentored the client's senior professional engineer in the use of the advanced computer language Smalltalk, which was used in the implementation of these systems.

Segmental Bridge Designs are a very popular bridge design due to their many advantages.

Rebar Design Systems and Rebar Detailing Production Systems
The design and placement of rebar in structures is a major and critically important area of civil engineering. All concrete structures being built in the world make use of rebar including buildings, bridges, stadiums, roads and dams.

AIC was extensively involved with the re-design of a client's existing first generation rebar design system. The rebar software is being used on many projects in the USA, Canada and globally with millions of tons of rebar detailing under it's belt. The re-designed of the system included research into how advanced collborative software technologies could be used in the system. AIC was instrumental in moving the design of this rebar software forward towards a fully paperless process. In addition, AIC enhanced the design of the Rebar Detailing software so that the detailers could visualize the rebar layouts before commiting them for construction. This capability is anticipated to reduce errors and, more significantly to, improve productivity.

There are many considerations involved in the placement of rebar including the determination of where to place rebar in a concrete structure, what kind, length, thickness and shape of rebar to place, how much rebar to place, and what sequence to place the rebar in during construction. In addition, rebar comes in many standardized shapes and sizes, although custom shapes are sometimes required. A rebar system enables professional rebar detailers to enter their specifcations of the placement of rebar in a structure and produces the necessary drawings and cusomized reports which are sent to the Rebar Fabricators, who manufacture the specific pieces of rebar, and to the Rebar Placers at the construction site, who build the real structure.

Rebar Detailing systems must fit into the overall context of the architectural, engineering, fabrication, construction, contractural and legal work flow and framework of a constuction project. As such rebar detailing systems are work flow and collaborative information systems. AIC has focused much of it's research and design activities to bring advanced collaborative software technologies to this essential construction industry activity.

Civil Engineering Applications in General
AIC has an interest and focus on bringing advanced collborative technologies to applications in the civil engineering field. Engineering applications tend to be very complex, detailed and varied due to the bredth and depth of this field. AIC's focus in on how it's collaborative technologies can be applied to a wide variety of engineering applications.

Interoperation of Engineering Application and Information Systems
A key area and concern to those who work in the engineering field is that of how to have their diverse applications interoperate with each other. This interoperation is complicated due to the highly complex nature of engineering information. AIC has performed many years of research into this specific problem including working with a client on a National Research Council of Canada (NRC) grant funded project. AIC was instrumental in the design of a system for Interoperatability in the Construction Industry. This system was designed to enable various kinds of engineering software to interoperate with each other. This systems design makes use of XML as a transport medium for information and common database storage. The system also provides solutions for conversion of one enginerring data format into another.

The problems of interoperation in the engineering field are many and, while there are some possible solutions, much work needs to be done to address this issue. The key problems involve the many different ways that engineering software applications "represent" their "domain knowledge" and how to "translate" between two or more different "representations". Often the solution to this problem isn't easy due to redundant data, missing data, conflicting data and misunderstandings of what the data "mean" or what it really represents. The data design of a given applciation data's can be called it's "data schema". The problem to be solved in translating between disparate systems is that the data schema from different programs don't match up. That is to say, the problem is a "data schema mismatch".

This "data schema mismatch" is an information systems problem in general in the field of knowledge reprentation, conversion, translation and "evolution". AIC applied it's knowledge and research skills to find solutions to the many issues and problems involved in order to derive usable solutions for the engineering field.

Collaborative and Workgroup Engineering Applications
Since 1987, Peter Lount, and AIC have been focused on Collaborative Software technologies for many application areas including Civil Engineering applications. AIC has studied, in depth, the work flow of a typical rebar detaining operation and the related work groups that rebar detailers interoperate with. AIC is in the process of developing a new generalized collaborative information system that would be usable by people in all phases of construction projects: archiects, engineers, fabricators, construction workers and the support staff that make a construction project a reality.

Advanced Collaborative CAD Systems
AIC has designed and is implementing an advanced computer aided design software system that supports all aspects of collaborative activities required in the construction industry. AIC's Collaborative CAD system incorporates all the required atomic aspects of engineering software applications and enables engineers to develop their own advanced custom applications atop of this Framework. AIC is not developing specific engineering applications, rather AIC is focused on a general purpose Collaborative CAD (CCAD) system that engineers can use to rapidly build their own applications. You can think of the CCAD system as a generic engineering tool box that is based upon a generic Collaboration System. For example, an engineer using AIC's Collaborative CAD system will be able to rapidly, easily and elegantly implement application systems such as Rebar Detailing and Pre-Cast Segmental Bridge Design systems. AIC's expertise is in advanced collaborative application systems, not specific engineering domain knowledge. Our expertise is building tools that domain experts can use to construct their own systems in a rapid manner. AIC is building a development tools usable in a wide variety of fields. AIC solves the computer science problems so that users of our tools, such as engineers, can get on with the real work of their projects.

Summary
AIC can bring it's experience in the software and construction industry to bear and fulfill the information technology needs of the constrcution industry. I look forward to working with you to provide solutions to any construction industry problems that you might have. Please contact me to discuss your needs at your convenience.

Best regards,

ACTIVE INFORMATION CORPORATION
per:

Peter Lount, President and Senior Design Consultant
peter@ActiveInfo.CA
Illustrative Examples of Structures Built with Advanced Engineering Software
The following examples are presented to demonstrate the types of construction projects that have been built using the kind of software systems that AIC has researched, designed, re-designed and implemented for construction industry clients. Some of these example projects used software developed by AIC. Some of these examples did not use software developed by AIC. Some of the examples were projects of AIC's clients while some were not. The examples detail specific aspects of AIC's technological areas of interest and capabilities.



Rebar Design Examples
 The following global construction industry projects were built, in whole or in part, using rebar detailing software of an AIC client. AIC was involved in the re-design of the rebar detialing software system. Some of these projects were completed with the first generation rebar system before it's re-design. All are illustrative of the kinds of structures built using Rebar Design software.


The Pacific Bell Ball Park under construction in San Francisco. The extent of the rebar involved becomes apparent.


The completed Pacific Bell Ball Park.

"The 12.9 kilometre Confederation Bridge joins Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island and Cape Jourimain, New-Brunswick and is the longest bridge over ice covered waters in the world. This historic bridge, which opened on May 31, 1997 brings a new age of transportation to Atlantic Canada. The Bridge carries two lanes of traffic 24 hours a day, seven days a week and takes approximately 10 minutes to cross at normal travelling speeds." ... "The main bridge consists of 44 spans, each 820 feet long and weighing in at 8,000-plus metric tons. They rest on support piers placed in water up to 115 feet deep that are protected from harsh wintertime conditions by conical ice shields.

The driving surface of the bridge is 11 meters (36 feet) wide, allowing two lanes of traffic plus an emergency shoulder lane in each direction." ... "Rather than being cast in place in the strait, bridge components were built on land and moved to the jetty via a special Huisman slider system. The massive pieces were then positioned in the strait by the world’s largest floating catamaran crane, the Svanen."

There is a truely massive amount of rebar in this structure. Some of it was placed using the Rebar Design System.

The steel bones of the Anniston Chemical Demilitarization facility dwarf a nearby contract worker. The rebar design and placement was especially difficult given the large amount of rebar to be placed in the walls to provide containment strength in case of an internal chemical explosion.



Pre-Cast Segmental Bridge Examples
The following global construction industry projects were built, in whole or in part, using Segmental Bridge Design software of an AIC client. AIC's client provided the Rebar Detailing software to the construction company that actually built these structures. AIC was involved in the original design and subsequent re-design of the software system that was used in these projects.

The following photos show excellent examples of the Segmental Pre-Cast Bridge Design under construction and completed. The computer images are showing aspects of the engineering design process: need, research, concept, people, design, feedback, verification, changes and finally construction.


The SkyTrain in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is a segmental bridge. The first extension of the Sky Train was the first project to use the Pre-Cast Segmental Design Software.


An example of a segmental bridge segment. It's quite a feat to calculate the exact shape of a segment like this to the millimeter! You'll notice that the segments are not simply rectangular boxes with nice straight edges. They are almost never a perfect box due to the curvature of the roadway alighnment as it twists and turns, rises and lowers, and meanders on it's way. Each segment is unique in a segmental bridge design although more than one segment may be calculated from a single template. You can see the scale by looking at the construction worker inside on of the segments already attached to the bridge. These things are huge!


An example of a segmental bridge segment under construction with the gantry that moves the pre-cast bridge segments into place.


Another example of a segmental bridge segment under construction with the gantry that moves the pre-cast bridge segments into place. In this photo you can see how they use the gantry to move the segments into place over water even onto a column, having no segments yet, that has just been built.


An example of a segmental bridge segment after completion. This is the New Rosevelt Bridge in Stuart, Florida, USA.


The Segmental Bridge software was used in the construction of the Second Link Crossing between Singapore and Malyasia.


Another picture of the Second Link Crossing between Singapore and Malyasia.



Graphic Examples
The following photos are illustrative a few of the customized graphics components developed by AIC.


One of the challenges in desiging bridges and other engineering structures is finding the mistakes before the structure is built. The Segmental Bridge Design software has tools built in to it that assist the bridge design engineer to ensure that mistakes are found before it's too late. The use of these tools enables the engineer to see mistakes, such as the one in this bridge section where the road surface of the bridge alignment data drops when it should be a continous and smooth surface. This error was caught by the verification software. This is a image used for verification from one of the projects that used the software, the Pakse bridge in Laos.


Interoperation with AutoCAD was important on the bridge projects. This image shows the segments of one of the lanes of the a segmental bridge output to AutoCAD for viewing and close inspection.


AIC designed and implemented the above customized Graphical User Interface (GUI) especially for easy specification of Varying the horizontal offsets of the segments from the bridge's center geometry alignment. This GUI made use of Bezier curves for producing a smooth curve. The Bezier curves were also used in displaying the information to the user. Ultimately the user is able to adjust the Bezier curves and thus adjust the bridge alignment as needed.


An early wireframe prototype of concrete column with rebar contained within.


Another early wireframe prototype of concrete column plus a slab intersection with the column. Both with some of the rebar showing.


An image illustrating the direction that AIC's CAD system is headed. This is a visualization of an engine block with solid geometry modeling and cut away views. We are working on our an integrated custom 3-d visualization and modeling system for CAD tied in with our collaborative technology framework.