Published on: Wednesday, 21 February 2018

The Republic of Ireland branch of the Institution of Structural Engineers held its Annual Dinner and Student Awards evening in Dublin on Friday 16th February and there was another success for a graduate of the CIT BEng(Hons) in Structural Engineering programme.

Nick Bailey, who completed the BEng(Hons) programme as an online student, was presented with the Level 8 Student Award. Nick emerged as the winner from the shortlist of four students with the runners-up from DIT, TCD & UCD providing a significant challenge. The Award is judged on the final year research project work of the students. Nick’s supervisor was Ted McKenna and Ted had a further reason for celebration as he was presented with his Chartered Membership parchment following his success in the Chartered Membership Examination of the Institution last summer. Congratulation to Nick and to Ted. Details of the project are included at the foot of this email.

The Student Award has been won by graduates of the BEng(Hons) in Structural Engineering programme on no less than four occasions in the last seven years, a remarkable achievement for the students and for the various supervising lecturers.

• 2010/11: Gerry Murphy, Experimental Investigation of Foundation Solutions for Offshore Wind Turbines, Supervisor: David Cadogan
• 2012/13: James Barry, Stressing Geometry Control of Cable Stayed Bridges, Supervisors: John J Murphy & Kieran Ruane
• 2014/15: Kieran Ward, Design and Testing of Bridge Half Joints, Supervisors: John J Murphy & Kieran Ruane
• 2016/17: Nick Bailey, Application of Bridge Information Modelling in the rehabilitation of the 19th Century Chetwynd Viaduct, Supervisor: Ted McKenna

Congratulations to the entire programme team and to the Course Co-Ordinator, Brian O’Rourke.

The research presented was completed in part fulfilment of the online Bachelor of Structural Engineering (Honours) degree at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). 

Application of Bridge Information Modelling (BrIM) in the rehabilitation of the 19th Century Chetwynd Viaduct (Cork)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has gained significance in the Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) industry and is heralded by many as the panacea for the inefficiencies and waste prevalent in the sector. Bridge Information Modelling (BrIM) is the application of BIM to bridge infrastructure. 

Nick’s project evaluates the application of a Bridge Information Modelling approach in the rehabilitation of the 19th century Chetwynd Viaduct (Cork). The research undertaken built upon previous research by CIT in collaboration with international consultants, RPS Group. 

The historic nature of the viaduct presented a significant challenge in terms of successfully executing a BrIM workflow. Due to software limitations, geometric imperfections present in the actual viaduct proved extremely difficult/impossible to correctly capture in the Autodesk Revit 3D intelligent model, using standard modelling techniques. This served to negatively impact on the overall accuracy of the ‘as-is’ physical model, as well as subsequent analyses carried out thereon. A by-product of adopting a BrIM workflow is the relative ease with which various 3D presentation and communication media forms can be produced. 

Further investigation revealed that people consider the media forms which are developed as part of a BrIM workflow to be much more effective in communicating design intent than traditional forms such as 2D drawings.