High-speed Railway xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

High-speed Railway
journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/high-speed-railway

Research article

The design and application of BIM + refined management and control

platform for the Jingxiong railway bridge
Jinghan Zhang, Jiayu Li, Beisheng Liu , Hui Li, Wei Yang
⁎

China Academy of Railway Sciences Corporation Limited, Beijing 100081, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The high-speed railway construction involves multiple professional fields, such as railway design, construction,
Informatization and supervision. This paper architects the "BIM+ " project refined management platform, designs the platform's
The Jingxiong Bridge Project logical architecture, physical architecture, and solves several key technology difficulties. This "BIM+ " platform
Platform architecture has been applied on the Jingxiong Bridge Project and achieved all-round, whole-process and multi- management
GIS (Geographic Information System)
of high-speed railway engineering construction. It significantly improves the level of construction management,
BIM (Building Information Modelling)
and plays a role in promoting the development of high-speed railway construction informatization.

1. Introduction coordination, performance analysis, engineering quantity statistics,

Chinese railway market is facing a critical period full of challenges
and opportunities. Compared with other engineering project, high-
speed railway engineering projects have larger investment scale, longer
implementation period, huger amount of information, and more eco­
nomic and technical risks. It is a complex system engineering composed
of multiple disciplines. During the whole life cycle of the high-speed
railway, tremendous companies and labors are involved in, different
technologies and their interconnections are applied, various disciplines
from different aspects jointly interact with others, which makes the
whole process intricate and complicated.
It is necessary to deeply integrate the cutting-edge information
technologies and the railway technologies in order standardize the
railway engineering construction, improve the efficiency, ensure the
construction quality, and reduce costs.
For instance, combine BIM with other technologies to realize the
railway "BIM+ " service model. “BIM+ ” technique means to integrate
and innovate BIM technology with other advanced technologies, such
as big data, Internet of Things, cloud storage technology, etc. This can
give full play to their respective advantages and achieve greater group
effect. The purpose of applying "BIM+ " technology to the railway in­
dustry is to design, supervise, evaluate, and optimize the railway con­
struction process, to achieve the expected effects of resource con­
servation, environmental friendliness, and pollution reduction.
“BIM+ ” is used in railway site analysis, railway construction planning,
technical solution demonstration, railway visual design, project
etc., to achieve construction coordination, 3D visualization and fine
management.
The bottleneck restricting Chinese BIM development in railway is
the lack of related resources, like the complete BIM standards covering
Chinese railway industry, mature railway-specific BIM software, and
the railway software framework libraries [1]. Additionally, BIM pro­
motion fee is high due to different user habits between BIM software
and CAD, and current BIM railway plug-ins cannot meet the require­
ments of Chinese railway industry [2]. These shortages make the BIM
software cannot fulfil the requirements of railway design, thus difficult
to popularize. And what’s more, BIM models can be affected jointly by
the design complexity, project complexity, project organization and
management model, while the impact is currently unpredictable, thus
restricts BIM promotion on a large scale [3]. Although BIM has various
disadvantages, it is sure to be the future trend since it has unique ad­
vantages. BIM model can express the building information intuitively,
simulate or optimize the design effectively, work collaboratively and
share resources from different participants [4]. It can combine with
different life stage of railway design industry, enable the information
exchange and resource interaction, and gradually complete the data­
base during project advancement to meet the requirements of project
data resource sharing [5].
In one word, although BIM has various limitations, its advantages
weight more. It can intuitively display the railway information, simu­
late and optimize the railway design, and integrate the resources ef­
fectively. BIM and other innovated technologies can be jointly applied

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: 295168157@qq.com (B. Liu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hspr.2023.07.001
Received 15 June 2023; Received in revised form 3 July 2023; Accepted 6 July 2023
2949-8678/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al., The design and application of BIM + refined management and control platform for the
Jingxiong railway bridge, High-speed Railway, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hspr.2023.07.001i
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al.
to railway projects to standardize and optimize the engineering con­
struction and the information management process. The “BIM+ ”
model is a cross-border application of engineering technology and
management science.
2. Current situation analysis
Railway engineering scientists currently use BIM technology to
improve construction efficiency, reduce construction costs, optimize
resource allocation during the whole life cycle, and so on. However, the
single BIM technology has certain limitations and cannot fully satisfy
the needs of railway construction. Therefore, researchers try to combine
BIM with other technology and generate “BIM+ ” related models and
platform through that, and has gotten significant results. Railway en­
gineering construction is a comprehensive project with many specialties
and a wide range of professions. It is impossible to use only a technical
means and solve all problems. Therefore, engineers need to combine
various technologies with each other, and use the advanced nature and
advantages of each technology jointly to assist railway construction
comprehensively.
3. Architecture of BIM+ fine control system
The railway engineering construction projects involves many par­
ticipants, this requires a complete platform architecture. Because the
expertise span involves multiple domains, the logical and physical ar­
chitecture of the platform should be designed separately. The logical
architecture clearly manages the logical components of the platform
modules and their logical relationships, and the physical architecture
clearly manages the physical components and hierarchical relationships
of the platform. The overall structure is the combination of three cloud
services, covering more than ten functional modules, as Fig. 1 Platform
overall architecture.
3.1. Logic architecture
There are five layers in the platform from top to bottom: application
layer, model layer, service layer, interface layer and data layer.
Application layer: This layer is located at the top of the five-layer
architecture, its main function is to input and output the platform data.
Fig. 1. Platform overall architecture.
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The modules and functions are divided according to different project
construction management goal, such as the electronic sand table dis­
play, real-time video browsing, progress management, design man­
agement, data query, etc.
Model layer: supports various data models under the application
layer, and provides three-dimensional data support for the specific
functions of the application layer. It also lightweight and optimize the
model, tiered storage, and precise invocation to reduce CPU load,
memory load and network load.
Service layer: provides services for the application layer and the
model layer, which can be divided into model services, authorization
services, basic model processing services, and basic analysis services.
The model service mainly supports the model layer, including model
hierarchical storage, query support, model extraction, model update
and comparison, and model multi-version management. Permission
services include data reading control and modification control. Basic
analysis services include general performance analysis of data. These
services support both the model layer and the application layer.
Interface layer: It is divided into structured data interface, un­
structured data interface and data synchronization interface. It provides
a unified data interface for various services in the service layer, and
performs data analysis, extraction, and integration to facilitate the in­
teraction between services and databases.
Data layer: it stores all data files, including original data, processed
metadata, fusion data, and data models, etc., it processes and stores the
data transmitted by the interface layer, model layer and application
layer.
3.2. Physical architecture
There are mainly three parts in the physical architecture: client,
server, and database. The client and server jointly support the display
and human-computer interaction functions of four logical layers (ap­
plication layer, model layer, service layer and interface layer). The
main job for client is displaying and receiving data. The main job for
server is receiving, processing data, and building a data model. The
main job of database is storing and managing data and models.
Client: The platform client is the HoloLens console. It provides users
with human-computer interaction functions, data model display, pro­
cess simulation and data reception. Its functions cover the core business
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al.
Fig. 2. Technique architecture.
of the application layer, model layer, service layer and interface layer.
The HoloLens console is presented in a browser on the PC host, and can
be operated after connecting to the HoloLens device via USB or WiFi.
Through human-computer interaction technology, users can control the
client program through voice, gestures, and walking, and accomplish
the display functions such as zooming, rotating, and moving of the
overall scene. Users can watch the construction process display and key
process simulation, and get relevant information display at the same
time. Users can also watch the emergency evacuation route and strategy
information display and assist in optimizing the building design artifi­
cially.
Server: The server supports both client and database. It provides the
displayed model to the client and temporarily store the input data. It
receives user input data at the application layer and multi-source data
at the interface layer, and perform cleaning, supplementation, and
other processing. It analyzes and calculates the processed data, which is
convenient for classification, storage, and modeling. When the client
needs to display the data model, it calls the model from its own cache or
database. The other model related functions such as scaling and dis­
playing are also supported by its background calculation.
Data terminal: Data terminal stores all data and models of the
project. The main body is the core data processed by the data layer and
the interface layer. For security reasons, data is stored on the hard disk
portion of the server instead of the cloud. Due to the characteristics of
many participants and wide distribution of majors in the Xiong’an
Grand Bridge project, a distributed server is used, and the server al­
gorithm is used for unified management.
3.3. Key technologies and innovations
Lightweight fusion of large-scale models: The platform realizes the
standardization and unification of BIM, GIS and large-scale aerial
photography data and the tiling of 3D models. The data of different
standards is split and reorganized to form unified visual data, which
provides accurate and comprehensive strong support for the application
layer of the platform. The tiling technology can reduce the weight of
large-scale image data, elevation data and BIM models. Usually, a tile is
uniquely identified by the level, abscissa and ordinate, and the pixel
width and height of the representation are fixed. As the level increases,
the number of tiles at each level increases exponentially, the geographic
area covered is reduced but the pixel width and height keep unchanged,
which makes the model information clearer.
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3.4. Dynamic update of multi-source data
The platform unifies the data source analysis process into five steps.
In the first step, BIM data is extracted from the modeling software,
given a unique label definition and enters the attribute database. In the
second step, the data is streamed and enters the BIM flow data data­
base. In the third step, a GIS model file is generated and BIM services
are published. In the fourth step, the GIS file enters the GIS database,
and the GIS service is further released. In the fifth step, the GIS and BIM
model are certified, uniformly released to the client browser by the GIS
+BIM application server. The process ensures that model version
control is accurate when data is dynamically updated, and business data
can also be inherited through unique identifiers.
3.5. Automatic calibration of multi-phase images
The drone regularly inspects construction site to form oblique photo­
graphic image database. Through the inverse calculation of the three-di­
mensional inverse algorithm, the inverse operation of the automatic image
modeling key algorithm, the newly collected images are automatically
registered and updated by the nesting of the viewport, which can be ar­
ranged and aligned by date. The automatic multi-phase imaging tech­
nology of inspection images completely solves the traditional problem,
that the image cannot be timely limited and accurately sorted by manual
positioning and registration, especially in similar sections without obvious
features of the ground objects. This algorithm reduces the workload, cuts
the calculation cost, and improves the construction efficiency.
4. Application of "BIM+ " refined management and control
platform in Jingxiong Bridge
The intelligent "BIM+ " refined management and control platform
relies on railway construction specifications and related construction
knowledge. It completes human-computer interaction through artificial
intelligence and applied in Jingxiong Bridge construction.
The platform aims at refined management, in-depth applications,
and BIM informatization services in the Bridge construction. It is a
trinity, combined application and research, strengthened the interac­
tion between practice and theory. It researches advanced techniques
and develops functional applications. It seeks innovation while sa­
tisfying construction management. The major techniques and their re­
lationship are shown in the Fig. 2.
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al.
4.1. Project overview
Xiongan New Area not only undertakes the national strategy of
coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, but also
shoulders the important task of building a model of high-quality
cities in the future. Several high-tech pilot projects have been car­
ried out on the Jingxiong Bridge, and various cutting-edge concepts
have been implemented here, including "BIM+ " technology, colla­
borative construction cloud management, smart city, digital twin,
etc.
The Jingxiong Bridge is an important part of the Xiong'an High-
speed Railway Station. Xiongan High-speed Railway Station is an
important part of the construction of Xiongan New Area. The
Jingxiong Bridge started construction in 2018 and has been fully
completed and put into use by the end of 2020. The construction of
the high-speed rail station integrates cutting-edge technologies from
multiple disciplines. Its internal structural column adopts fair-faced
concrete technology and its roof is equipped with photovoltaic
power generation panels. The "BIM+ ", railway management plat­
form, smart construction site platform, BIM lofting machine and
electronic sand table are applied to its whole life cycle and have
achieved smart construction [6].
4.2. "BIM+ " service
The refined management and control platform with core "BIM+ "
technology has been applied to the whole process of the Xiong'an Grand
Bridge construction under various simulation and display requirements.
Using technical means such as digital sand table, data visualization
display, digital twin, environmental simulation, real-time data collec­
tion and data interface, it provides advanced functions such as com­
prehensive display, construction management, digitization, simulation,
process method management, safety inspection, BIM application assis­
tance, multi-platform collaboration, etc. The platform interface is
shown in Fig. 3 as below.
Fig. 3. “BIM+ ” platform interface.
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4.3. Technical route
The "BIM+ " refined management and control platform is based on
the.NET framework for software architecture, called Microsoft.NET or
Mono.NET runtime library, and conducts modeling under the server's
operating system and working environment. In order to ensure that the
system is sufficient to support massive data collection, computation,
and modeling requirements, the algorithms for data collection, storage,
and computation are optimized to occupy less CPU and memory. 3D
virtual reality engine is used to display, interact, and publish data
models, integrate, and innovate existing models and algorithms, and
improve development efficiency and economic benefits.
The platform adopts the development and deployment of multi-layer
distributed application systems, and realizes data storage through the
equipment layer, including relational data and non-relational data. The
data layer includes construction organization, inspection batch, project
image, construction progress, terrain data, BIM model, oblique photo­
graphy and other data. The service layer is responsible for authorization
and authentication, interface services, geographic information services,
and BIM graphics engine services. The application layer implements
functions such as comprehensive display, progress tracking, group opti­
mization, and work order distribution. Fig. 4 shows the platform struc­
ture, including layers, networks and their relationship.
4.4. Function realization
The "BIM+ " refined management and control platform adopts the
mode of private cloud and public terminal on a macro level. Its data is
stored in the private cloud platform, and the client can use the data. It
integrates the Internet of Things, the Internet, BIM, GIS models, field
data, network shared data, and so on, for full life cycle management
and control. The platform takes the "BIM+ " data model as the core, and
integrates the engineering model, electronic sand table, and progress
management model to form a BIM management platform. The whole
system adopts B/S structure, with construction progress as the main
line, data information as the basis, cost control as the core, and realizes
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al. High-speed Railway xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Browser Local Area Network

HTTP TCP/IP

Construction
Construction Construction Comprehensive
organization
deduction schedule display
optimization
Application Analysis Engineering Security
Standards Layer
Process control
simulation
Inspection lot
image
and system,
regulations System management and maintenance
operation
laws and
maintenance
Service Geographic BIM graphics
layer Authorization Interface system
information engine

Construction Remote sensing Engineering Construction

organization image image schedule
Data layer
Inspection lot Terrain BIM model Tilt model

Load balancing
Web server Files MySQL database
Device
Layer Resource connection pool
Host Internet access Storage device Monitor

Fig. 4. Platform structure.

Fig. 5. Data visualization module.

the real-time, multi-region and multi-node management of the en­
terprise.
Comprehensive display: The comprehensive display of BIM unit
construction enables users to observe the entire scene from a relatively
high position. It has the functions of zooming in, zooming out, panning,
and rotating the scene to operate the scene. It can provide different
projection modes, from different angles and distances. It monitors the
entire area to display different models of the terrain, which is
convenient for the analysis of the terrain and the understanding of the
overall or local terrain situation, providing sky background and en­
vironmental effects, and enhancing the realism of the scene. It analyzes
the data needs of investors and builders from the perspective of big
data, sort out and count the data of the construction process, and
analyze the overall construction of railway construction from the basic
information of the line, investment progress, construction process,
safety, quality, and other dimensions through informatization control.

5
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al.
Fig. 6. BIM model.
Fig. 7. Group optimization module.
The data visualization and analysis is shown in Fig. 5.
Progress Tracking: By linking the BIM model with the construction
schedule, quality and safety, spatial information, time sequence, quality
information, and safety information, an integrated visual model is
generated, which can intuitively and accurately reflect the entire con­
struction process information, and provide some important construc­
tion links. The key parts of the new construction process, the layout of
the construction site and other construction guidance measures are
used for simulation and analysis to improve the feasibility of the plan
and the predictability and traceability of the implementation results. In
the BIM construction unit model, the actual progress is compared with
the planned progress, and displayed on the three-dimensional dynamic
model, which can carry out intuitive progress deviation analysis and
construction progress lag warning.
In the process of project construction, rationally formulate con­
struction plans, accurately grasp the construction progress, optimize the
use of construction resources and scientific site layout, and manage and
control the construction progress, quality, and safety of the entire
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High-speed Railway xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
project in a unified manner, which can effectively curtail the con­
struction period, reduce costs, and improve quality. The BIM model and
their properties are shown in Fig. 6.
Group optimization: The platform integrates BIM-based railway
construction organization optimization decision-making design. Its
functions mainly include WBS decomposition and automatic connection
method of engineering entity structure, location-based planning algo­
rithm, progress tracking method based on Internet of Things, and image
progress display combined with BIM model and Gantt chart. The
method lays a solid foundation for the refined management of railway
construction. Designers can use BIM technology to optimize the allo­
cation of construction resources, and then combine modern BIM tech­
nology with traditional engineering methods with the help of network
planning technology. This will give full play to their respective ad­
vantages, effectively solve the problem of optimization. This can allo­
cate construction resource more effectively, and further reduce waste
and construction costs. Fig. 7 shows the major interface of group op­
timization module.
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al.
Fig. 8. Order handling module.
Fig. 9. Analysis simulation module.
Closed-loop handling of work orders: The organizational structure of
the refined management system on work orders consists of three parts:
construction unit division, work order division and work order execu­
tion. The railway engineering construction tasks are combined with the
principle of WBS decomposition to realize the whole into parts. Then
the whole construction task will be divided into work orders and exe­
cuted by the shelf team. In order to ensure that the division and ex­
ecution of work orders can run smoothly, we need to control not only
the work order, but also the management at the key points of the work
order formation process. A complete, reasonable, scientific, and effec­
tive work order not only describes the work tasks, but also manages the
safety, quality, progress, and cost of the construction project.
Additionally, it can provide data for the assessment of work teams,
professional engineers, etc. Fig. 8 shows the user interface of order
handling module.
Construction plan simulation: The platform can establish terrain models,
site layout models, structures models, structural models, and
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High-speed Railway xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
electromechanical professional models for key construction units. The fi­
neness of the model is a BIM model of LOD350 and above. The establish­
ment, transmission, delivery, and interpretation of the model unit should
include the geometric modeling and geometric accuracy of the model unit,
the information depth of the model unit, the addition of basic information,
and the information attributes contained in the model unit. Values should
be measured in metric units. The optimization of construction plan based on
process method simulation is to use BIM technology to simulate specific
construction process design, predict possible results accordingly, and adjust
the selection of construction process methods to optimize the overall con­
struction efficiency. This paper takes the installation of the steel structure of
the station building as an example to describe the simulation of the process
method based on BIM. The typical nodes of the steel structure are simulated,
and the stress is checked at the same time, to ensure the safety and quality
of the complex engineering construction.
Analysis simulation: Through flight roaming and driving roaming,
three-dimensional real-life tours and real-life tours at any location are
J. Zhang, J. Li, B. Liu et al.
realized inside and outside key projects, different weather and lighting
conditions are also simulated. Users can locate the monitoring point in
the 3D sphere, and view the monitoring video of the corresponding
camera and related engineering image data. Character roaming dyna­
mically previews the 3D scene from the first perspective. Designers can
make component query, when the mouse clicks on a component, the
basic information, engineering image, construction process, refined
model, etc. of the modified component/structure will be queried. The
simulation and property module is shown in Fig. 9.
5. Conclusion
The "BIM+ " refined management and control platform is developed
based on system engineering, cybernetics, and information theory. It
adopts information integration technology and matrix management
structure, and uses professional, scientific, and other management
methods to monitor the progress, cost, and quality of project im­
plementation, contract, resources, safety, and other construction pro­
cess. It realizes dynamic implementation, quantitative management,
and effective control. This platform ensures that all units and industry
participants involved in the whole life cycle of the railway project can
work together efficiently and friendly, share and access information
safely and correctly, and finally manage the project construction ef­
fectively. The platform follows the in-depth requirements in railway
management, further refine the field to achieve the universal
High-speed Railway xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
development of the "BIM+ " refined management and control platform,
and promote the effective improvement of the construction manage­
ment level.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by China State Railway Group Co.,Ltd.
Science and technology research and development plan
(K2021G025).
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