Augmented Reality: Bringing BIM to Life

Since the term was first coined in 1990 at Boeing, augmented reality (AR) had remained a research or mostly military application. Over the last 10 years, though, the automotive industry has become a leader in the development of AR for factory planning exercises, with more powerful laptops that allow users to view changes live in the context of their immediate surroundings. It is only in the last few years, however, with the explosion of the use of mobile devices and a similar growth in information-rich building information modeling (BIM), that AR has reached the construction site. AR permits viewing the design, construction or operational information where it’s needed: on location. AR differs from virtual reality in that it enhances rather than replaces the real world. What is augmented on a construction project? Mostly the visual environment—seeing the future (what is not yet built), seeing what’s hidden (buried) and seeing what cannot be seen (alignments, kinematic envelopes). Also, additional data associated with the assets can be accessed where it is linked to the graphic elements. This article presents a case study of the Bechtel team on the Reading Station Area Redevelopment Project (RSAR), a part of the Crossrail project (Europe’s biggest engineering project), whiich is deploying AR to give live access to the BIM information in the field