BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3 - (Page 45)

GEOSPATIAL BE Award Winner Facility Facelift Standardizing documentation saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor costs F or Sandia Corporation, a subsidiary of Lockheed-Martin Corp., operating and maintaining Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is akin to running a small town. The facility, which employs more than 7,000 people, encompasses about 1,000 buildings and structures spread across 9,000 acres, including PROJECT Power Through Integration OVERVIEW Organization Sandia National Laboratories BE Awards Category Geospatial Distributed Enterprise Project Objective Overhaul software tools and workﬂow processes to gain efﬁciencies and improve document accuracy associated utilities and infrastructure such as gas, electric, water, sewer, roads, sidewalks, parting, fences, and security boundaries. Sandia National Laboratories operates the facility for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Founded in 1949, the original mission was to provide engineering design for all nonnuclear components in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. That work continues today, but its focus has broadened to include energy and national security projects. Sandia National Laboratories employs nine to 12 architectural/ engineering ﬁrms to develop design changes on a project basis. It maintains close to 400,000 facilities record documents. Keeping these facilities records updated to reﬂect the ongoing work done by multiple parties proved a difﬁcult task. In 2003, Sandia National Laboratories used an assortment of software products from different vendors to create CAD, geospatial, and building design documents. Working in a mixed environment, however, added to the difﬁculty of maintaining current and accurate as-built drawings. For example, due to software limitations and internal workﬂow, asbuilt utility data was not reﬂected in the Sandia National Laboratories facilities geospatial information system (FGIS) until 180 days after project completion. Consequently, many projects would be under construction for 18 months and then would not appear in the FGIS for another six months. Dig and outage permits were often issued based on outdated, inaccurate information, which put a greater burden on line spotters and system engineers to ﬁnd the undocumented utilities, explained Mark Cofﬁng, CADD technical lead. Software limitations also allowed only one copy of any document to be checked out of the document management system. The number of buildings and ongoing projects meant that uncontrolled copies of documents were being used to develop project work packages. This, too, made it difﬁcult to track facilities changes and to ensure that records were updated once projects were completed. In addition, smaller projects often were completed but had to be kept open until documents being used on other projects were updated and returned to the document management system. On the same page With the goal of improving the accuracy of its documentation, as well as gaining efﬁciencies and saving money, Sandia National v Sandia National Laboratories standardized its geospatial tools, CAD drawings, and workﬂow processes Volume 4, Issue 3 | BE MAGAZINE 45

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3

Contents Rising to the Challenge News BE Newsletter Highlights More ITS Sightings Racing Concrete Canoes Lights, Camera, Action! Making the Cut People’s Choice Awards 2007 Executive Keynotes Building Clear Vision of a Dream Concrete Results Reaching New Heights Building News From Bentley Golden KIWI Awards 2007 Civil A Coordination of National Highway Proportions Training Troops Beautifying Highways, One Sign at a Time Civil News From Bentley Geospatial Facility Facelift Planning for Uncertainty Geospatial News From Bentley MicroStation at the Heart of LiDAR Surveying Solutions Plant Making the Grade Data Deja Vu Data Clouds Provide Clear Visual of Underground Saving Precious-Metal Mining Time Plant News From Bentley Advertisers Index Special/Academic The Art of Visualization Training Is Key To Delivering State-of-the-Art Solutions Bridging the Information/Infrastructure Gap

BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3

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