Lobster Pictures collaborated with Shell Polymers on its multi-billion-dollar construction of a world-scale polyethylene plant in Western Pennsylvania, United States – the Pennsylvania Chemicals project. 13 Lobster Pot cameras were installed on-site, and BIM integration was deployed extensively.
The scale of the project is impressive:
One of the biggest issues on this extensive project was the availability, and reliability of the temporary electrical power throughout the ever-changing environment of this construction site – Shell Polymers needed a time lapse solution to monitor and track the progress of construction with considerable technology capabilities that could still maintain high performance despite the challenges with site power.
The complexity of the 3D design model, consisting of more than 10 million objects, presented an additional challenge for the BIM integration. Lobster’s partner software company was unable to offer the sophistication required here. Ways of working and proven tools, long used successfully in projects for the commercial building construction industry, failed to scale up and handle the complexity of a petrochemical plant’s 3D model.
To be able to handle the highly complex plant design 3D model data, Lobster Pictures collaborated with plant specialists CAXperts, to design a new, first-to-market BIM integration pipeline. The solution centered on the Universal Plant Viewer, a unique database-driven 3D model viewer tool based on the Unity 3D real-time rendering engine, capable of handling engineering models of virtually any complexity. The innovations here meant that rendering the BIM model imagery precisely matched the field of view of the time lapse camera.
This work enabled the Shell Polymers team to access powerful and unique BIM integration in Lobster Vision – which was critical to validating the progress on the PennChem scheme and for understanding the status planned versus actual work. The technology proved as an excellent communication tool for Shell Polymer stakeholders as well as a powerful aid in explaining upcoming work for the field crews.
Shell Polymers developed an digital system for managing the concurrent activity on the construction site in real-time. In order to maximise the value of the investment in technology, the project was keen to expose Lobster Pictures’ time lapse and BIM content to the existing community of portal users.
Lobster Pictures worked with the team to create a live feed between the Lobster Vision cloud data management system and the portal, enriching the overall user experience without adding extra complexity.
The Shell Polymers team also benefited from Lobster’s Make A Film feature, designed for this project. The tool allows users to make their own time lapse videos in just a few clicks.
Throughout the project, the Lobster Pictures team were on hand to respond to any challenges or technical issues that arose and scheduled regular meetings to ensure robust communications.
With BIM integration, stakeholders can:
BIM integration also makes time lapse relevant to forward work planning; today, as part of the execution of this project, and in 20 years from now, when stress-testing construction schedules for new projects. Time lapse integrated with BIM offers a powerful legacy.
“The quality of the time lapse imagery combined with the precisely rendered 3D/4D model shots represents a unique digital technology advancement that created tangible benefits for the active user community of nearly 1,000 people. It helps the project plan and organize the works better, improving the quality of the decisions being made across hundreds of planning and coordination meetings and the work face level interactions that take place on this construction site every single day.”
“Lobster Pictures got it all to work seamlessly, and very quickly. We were really impressed with the energy and commitment from Robbie and the Lobster team for their relentless drive to make the BIM integration work. Through our strong relationship, we hope to build and expand on this so that other Shell sites can benefit from this technology just as Shell Polymers did.”