How Britain’s largest light rail network was built on budget and ahead of schedule
For nearly two decades, the MPT Joint Venture (a consortium including Laing O’Rourke) has been a cornerstone of the Manchester Metrolink network’s expansion. This long-term partnership with Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has been instrumental in tripling the size of the system, a success rooted in extensive experience and a commitment to continuous improvement.
The Trafford Park Line was the latest and most significant project in this long-standing relationship. This complex 5.5km extension, running through the heart of Europe’s largest trading estate, was unique. It was the first Metrolink line to use advanced digital engineering capabilities from start to finish, with the federated BIM model placed at the heart of the design and delivery process.
Challenge: Overcoming the inefficiencies of manual issue management
Despite a successful track record, the MPT Joint Venture team knew that to stay ahead of this project, they needed more efficient ways of working. Their ambition to fully leverage BIM for the Trafford Park Line highlighted a critical bottleneck in their traditional workflow: the manual management of design issues.
The use of Excel spreadsheets for issue tracking was a major obstacle to efficiency and collaboration. This method resulted in:
- Delayed communication: Issues were not shared in real time, creating a lag between identification and resolution that risked project timelines.
- Lack of visibility: Key stakeholders, from designers to the client, did not have a centralized, up-to-date view of all design issues. This siloed approach made it difficult to manage the high volume of problems that arise on a large-scale infrastructure project.
- Inefficient workflows: Manually capturing and reporting issues was a time-consuming, separate task from model viewing, which discouraged proactive problem-solving.
To deliver a project of this scale and complexity, the team needed a solution that would eliminate these manual processes and create a truly collaborative, digital environment.
Solution: Centralizing issue management with BIMcollab
The MPT Joint Venture implemented BIMcollab to create a centralized, cloud-based platform for BIM issue management. This solution was chosen specifically to connect all project stakeholders and ensure everyone was working from the same source of truth.
By integrating BIMcollab with their existing software, notably Navisworks through the BCF Managers, the team was able to:
- Enable real-time collaboration: All users could view, comment on, and track design issues simultaneously, providing immediate visibility and speeding up the decision-making process.
- Streamline the issue-capture workflow: Digital engineers like Lindsay Collier could now identify and raise issues directly from the federated model, seamlessly linking the problem to its exact location in the BIM environment. This made issue tracking a natural extension of the design review process.
- Improve quality and certainty: The centralized platform allowed the team to implement lessons learned from previous projects, improving the quality of the final design and adding certainty to the project’s delivery schedule.
“BIMcollab is a great tool for making sure everyone has the opportunity to identify and share issues as they find them, especially when working with software that does not necessarily handle mass capturing and reporting of design issues linked to the model. It helps to reduce the waiting time before issues are shared and provides everyone from the designer, contractor to client visibility of the issues earlier and easier. The live connection with Navisworks is a great feature through the BCF Managers, and allows the capturing of issues to not be a separate task to the viewing of the model, which means raising issues is less of a time-consuming task. “
— Lindsay Collier, Digital Engineer, Laing O’Rourke
Results: Vastly improved infrastructure, delivered ahead of schedule
The implementation of BIMcollab and a collaborative, digital-first approach had a profound impact on the Trafford Park Line project. By eliminating the manual and fragmented issue-management process, the team achieved unprecedented levels of efficiency and coordination.
The results speak for themselves:
- Project completion ahead of schedule: The Trafford Park Line was delivered and opened to the public six months ahead of its original program, a testament to the seamless collaboration and rapid issue resolution enabled by BIMcollab.
- Improved quality: The ability to “get it right the first time”, with meticulous attention to detail, was a direct result of the enhanced visibility and communication.
- A new benchmark for delivery: The project was so successful that Transport for Greater Manchester hailed it as “the finest piece of infrastructure delivered by the team” in its 10-year program.
The success of the Trafford Park Line not only delivered a vital piece of transport infrastructure but also demonstrated the transformative power of modern digital engineering on even the largest and most complex construction projects. It stands as a testament to what’s possible when innovative digital tools, collaborative delivery, and a shared commitment to excellence come together. It not only enhanced Greater Manchester’s connectivity but set a new industry standard for infrastructure delivery: on time, on budget, and with uncompromising quality.
