How BIM Helps Optimize Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) Projects

Building information modeling plays a critical role in optimizing different construction processes in industries digitally. BIM has been evolving continuously to contribute to various types of construction projects along a wide spectrum of technological practices.

BIM as a construction visualization platform is underpinned by an important and expansive ecosystem of uniquely skilled software packages and associated data environments. This digital framework becomes increasingly broad in depth and capability for various project types, matching changing construction patterns and needs.

Not just the vertical construction and building projects, but core horizontal infrastructure projects, too, are being vastly supported by BIM in facilitating urban planning and development on a high scale.

BIM, as a digital construction tool, is serving core underground infrastructure, allowing project planners to collaborate and visualize land surfaces and navigation, profoundly supporting horizontal directional drilling (HDD) projects.

What does horizontal directional drilling mean?

Horizontal Directional Drilling, which is also known as HDD, is one of the most lucrative infrastructure development technologies employed in the process of installing underground pipelines. Horizontal Directional Drilling is a trenchless technique of installing directionally positioned underground pipelines, cables, or conduits without harming the surface. This technology is fast taking over the conventional methods and is a part of mainstream urban planning processes across the globe.

The process of horizontal directional drilling typically involves lateral drilling. Here, engineers focus on creating a small-diameter pilot hole with a guided drill head, followed by enlarging it with reamers and putting the product pipe through the expanded borehole. This process involves a cohesive project team comprising construction engineers, drill operators, steering hands, mud engineers, and support crew. With digital construction and BIM engineering playing an increasingly significant role in HDD projects, BIM engineers and project managers are integrally associated with the execution team.

How does the HDD process work?

The horizontal directional drilling process is built on three main steps connected through a cohesively appointed workflow and designed to establish a standardized format for industry-wide application across different project types.

Step 1: Pilot Bore

A small-diameter hole is created along the applied path through a surface launched drill system to electronically guide direction for maintaining depth and alignment in the process.

Step 2: Reaming

Reaming, also generally referred to as enlarging, involves the widening of the pilot hole by further drilling the cavity through larger reamer heads to create space for the product pipe pullback.

Step 3: Installation

In the three stage process, pipe installation or pullback is the final step in which the pipe is connected to the reamer, which is pulled back and placed in the borehole.

The pilot hole is widened by pulling larger reamer heads back through the bore until it's big enough for the product pipe.

Understanding common HDD terms

Here are some of the common terms one comes across when referring to horizontal directional drilling processes:

• Steering Tool: The steering tool is an instrument located near the drill head that provides real-time guidance for direction, location, and depth, along with other process-critical data.
• Drill String: A drill string is essentially a transmitting string or column tool on the drilling rig that transmits drilling fluid.
• Drill Pipe: A drill pipe in most cases is a hollow steel pipe that is used for transmitting rotational force, thrust, and drilling fluid from the rig to the cutting tool.
• Drill Head: A drill head is the front-end point of the drilling equipment on which cutting or steering components are mounted for driving and guiding the bore.
• Pilot Hole: Pilot hole can be referred to as a small-diameter hole that is created for initial directional alignment before the full-scale drilling takes place.
• Drill Rod: It is an individual threaded section of pipe that is put sequentially along the length to extend the drill string in the process of drilling.
• Drill Stem: It is the complete assembly of connected drill rods, drill pipe, and downhole tools forming the full drilling string used as complete equipment for trenchless installation.
• Drill Bit: The drill bit is the cutting element that is placed at the tip of the drill head that is used for breaking and excavating soil or rock during drilling.

Common development attributes of HDD projects

Mentioned below are the key process features and characteristic attributes of horizontal directional drilling projects:

Trenchless Technology

Trenchless technology allows project teams to adopt the process of drilling that avoids open-cut excavation and reduces the impact on surface infrastructure and ecosystems.

Precision Steering

Uses precision-led steering and tracking systems to follow underground path for ensuring measurement and directional accuracy in horizontal drilling.

Pipe Installation

It starts with drilling a pilot bore followed by enlarging or backreaming it before placing a welded pipe and fitting the segment together inside the drill hole.

Understanding the complexity of HDD projects

Horizontal directional drilling projects operate in discrete environments. As HDD projects include dealing with underground spaces and have to face subsurface constraints and drilling obstacles, they require specialized knowledge and pro-domain approach to get through the environmental and procedural challenges faced in the process.

Different types of complexities project teams may face while working on HDD projects can be identified as:

• Issues related to subsurface geology and soil conditions.
• Precise alignment, depth, and curvature control are required in the process.
• The underground utility lines and natural obstacles that are clashing with the drilling route.
• Environmental restrictions and legal boundations specific to each site condition.
• The need for coordination with different stakeholders across functions

2D drawings with limited data integration and visual processing capabilities mostly fail to deliver for HDD projects. This is where BIM stands out, as it provides advanced visualization and process collaboration, along with clash detection and coordination, streamlined operations, detailed documentation, and seamless project maintenance, accessed and controlled centrally across the project lifecycle.

Major application areas of horizontal directional drilling

Besides utility piping works, horizontal directional drilling technology is used in various processes from different application segments and functional areas.

Obstacle Crossings

Includes HDD solutions to overcome obstacles like rivers, railways, highways, sensitive environments, and urban areas, and build routes for clear and smooth navigation.

Underground Utilities

Building utility networks for underway supply channels for water, sewer, gas, oil, telecommunications, and power cables.

Environmental Solutions

Horizontal directional drilling is used in environmental protection projects that aim at minimizing soil disturbance and protecting groundwater, among other environmental applications.

Key benefits of BIM in horizontal directional drilling projects

As a pioneering construction design and visualization tool, BIM allows process managers and stakeholders to achieve high-end value through infrastructure development projects going over and above any traditional methods and approaches.

Here are some of the most notable benefits offered by BIM and allied technologies in HDD projects:

Improved Planning and Design Accuracy

BIM facilitates extraction of data from various sources such as ground-penetrating radar and geotechnical investigations. BIM offers a complete end-to-end system framework to establish a comprehensive subsurface 3D model that can be applied to underground infrastructure projects. Engineers get comprehensive insights into selecting optimum drill paths with detailed models suggesting path measurements and directions. This allows them to avoid any natural obstacles and existing utility installations, which are difficult to identify and assess in traditional 2D modeling solutions.

Advanced Clash Detection

Clash detection is one of the value-defining factors that has a far-reaching role in improving quality and lowering the cost of operations in a subsurface drilling project. BIM clash detection allows engineers to automatically detect and fix conflicts between the drilling route plan and existing underground elements or obstacles early in the design phase. With these clashes being resolved on virtual platforms before actual execution takes off on the ground, it helps optimize workflows, save costs, and increase efficiency throughout the project lifecycle.

Better Risk Management and Safety

BIM engineers work on advanced scanning and visualization technologies to help project teams with precise information about the underground conditions of the project site. This helps the team to prepare for possible safety concerns and work on solutions against any existing or probable risks, simulating potential scenarios. This provides a complete insight into adopting and building safety measures and aids in planning against operational threats and procedural contingencies, ensuring environmental compliance in the process and inducing safety for all at the work site.

Streamlined Collaboration and Communication

BIM allows teams to closely collaborate on various tasks and functions across trades, centrally working within a shared data environment. With this different project professionals and stakeholders, including engineers, contractors, managers, and owners, get to seamlessly connect and work towards achieving common project objectives. BIM allows project participants to share assessment notes, project drawings, review markups, and construction documents to seamlessly communicate and enhance coordination in the process.

Cost and Time Efficiency

BIM aids in cost and time efficiency by reducing design errors. By allowing team members to work on consolidated project plans and 4D/5D integrated schedules and optimizing material quantity takeoffs and resource allocation, BIM allows project managers to optimize process efficiency at scale. This helps HDD processes to operate optimally with higher turnaround time and reduced functional lags, thereby increasing output translated through higher cost and time efficiency.

Contractual and Commercial Advantages

BIM processes allow HDD project teams to follow a streamlined project management system that allows them to plan and execute projects with higher functional authority and control over defining practices and deliverables and handling disputes and claims. Project teams for horizontal directional drilling can effectively define scope, clarify roles and responsibilities, standardize project delivery processes, and communicate project details across the execution channel. This results in less ambiguity and conflict in the process, leading to improved contract clarity, transparent service interface, and smooth exchanges across the process.

Quality Control and Execution Accuracy

Through BIM-driven tolerances and quality checks, HDD project teams can achieve a higher level of quality control and accuracy in the process. By being able to monitor, measure, and validate tolerance limits for alignment, depth, and curvature, BIM models can help QA teams to implement a stringent multi-layered quality check process measured through a standardized range of qualitative references and compliance metrics. This results in higher installation accuracy, reduced non-conformance, and overall quality enhancement in the process of horizontal directional drilling for underground pipelines.

Lifecycle Management and Maintenance

Anything related to underground utilities requires close and continuous digital monitoring in order to assess the consistency and precision of their functions. BIM provides a comprehensive system by which teams are able to obtain detailed data inputs and process insights into the project during operation and maintenance phases. BIM models can detect any operational inconsistencies or process anomalies as they arise, aiming at smooth functioning, risk aversion, and sustainable maintenance throughout the project lifecycle.

Knowledge Capturing and Future Readiness

BIM models capture process data from different sources and establish relationships between various data points and value markers to build project knowledge base. These program-integrated data records and procedural insights derived digitally through model inputs allow teams to explore and adopt futuristic possibilities and aim for continuous improvement. This allows HDD project managers to work towards insight-driven and learning-based maintenance and upgradation goals aligned with evolved technology practices for future readiness.

To Conclude

Horizontal directional drilling for underground piping infrastructure projects requires an integrated functional approach and specialized knowledge base to be executed successfully. BIM, with its high-end data-rich models and a function-wide process interface built on a strong ecosystem of visualization and coordination tools, proves to be highly competent and resourceful for HDD projects. From providing higher control with project planning and risk management to offering enhanced value through seamless communication and quality compliance, BIM provides a comprehensive, value-critical solution base for HDD projects to achieve optimum outcomes.

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