Computational Support for Tunneling Activities: A Case Study in the Construction of the New Subway System of Santiago, Chile

Technology implementation has become crucial to reduce costs and diminish errors in construction projects. In massive projects such as tunneling construction, computational modeling can be useful for several planning, execution and control activities during the lifecycle of the project. An analysis of the building requirements was done in a particular case study with the aim of evaluating how the current computational schemas support tunneling activities during the construction phase. Then, these requirements were compared with the Model View Definitions (MVD) used by the Industry Foundation Classes version 4 (IFC4) from BuildingSmart. Finally, based on this comparison, an assessment on how IFC4 supports tunneling activities was performed. The construction of the new subway station 'Estación Ñuñoa' (one of the new ten stations of the subway system of Santiago, Chile), was used as the case study. Its building requirements, specifications and tasks were gathered and studied. Since excavation and structural support of the tunnel represent the largest investment of the project the analysis was performed on these tasks. This study summarizes the information requirements of these tasks and whether or not they are supported by the IFC4. Based on our findings, a proposal to include the not-supported information requirements in the current IFC4 schema is presented.