Bulk earthworks includes the removal, moving, or adding large quantities of soil or rock from a particular area to another. It is required to make an area suitable as per finished height and level for a specific construction purpose.
When bulk earthworks are taking place, the aim is to reduce as much as possible of the excavated materials to prevent both the costly collection of waste material and delivery of additional earth material.
This is done by using specialized computer software which can calculate both the amount of material that will be removed and what will be needed to complete the job. Surveyors and engineers aims to match the soil volumes being used for cut and fill, both.
We were approached by a client requiring engineering expertise to develop a bulk earthwork project for 5 number of solar power plants having capacities of 50MW to 100MW each. Couple of solar plants are situated in Africa and rest are situated in Middle East.
We decided to utilize Autodesk Civil 3D as an engineering and BIM tool because of its flexible features to develop grading and extensive tools to edit a surface.
We developed the existing earth topography based on surveyor’s raw data. Raw data can be in any form, it can be a satellite digital elevation model, or a drone scan / UAV scan or it can be multiple points taken manually by a surveyor. In our case, we were having a CSV point file provided by our client containing millions of points.
After developing the surface, we created the finished surface that was required as per the suitability of installing and operating solar trackers.
Bulk grading was created for each solar tracker area and cut/fill volumes were calculated. There were several iterations to finished surface and grading to ensure cut and fill values are balanced to avoid cost-overruns. Generally for a bulk earthwork contractor, these engineering techniques ensures their project bids and operating costs are as accurate as possible.
We then generated a cut/fill layout plan with 5m x 5m grids showing cut and fill values along with several profile views in Civil 3D to ensure the accuracy of existing and finished surfaces. These were a part of the shop drawings directly from Autodesk Civil 3D.
Similarly, access roads alignments, assembly, daylight cut and fill parametric slopes helped us to effectively model the corridors and generate shop drawings.
Through this approach, we successfully delivered Bulk Earthwork Design Services & BIM using Autodesk Civil 3D for Solar Power Plant Projects.
At BIMNCAD, we work on outsourcing projects involving Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D for land development, bulk gradings, developing and analyzing roads & highways, landscape detailing, produce shop drawings and much more. Feel free to get in touch with us or request a FREE quote for your projects by writing to us at contact@bimncad.com