Håvard SNCF, France’s national railway, has chosen to extend its use of FusionLive to support a Building Information Modeling (BIM) strategy on the country’s largest construction project, EOLE (East-West Express), a project to extend the RER E west of Paris.
As the commitment to digitize the French construction industry gains momentum, SNCF is making BIM mandatory on its projects and chose to implement FusionLive BIM functionality, an integration between the cloud-based document management solution (DMS) and the collaboration platform Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync) on EOLE.
The €3.8bn EOLE scheme comprises multiple sub-projects, including additional train stations, a central building to coordinate transportation, bridges and new and refurbished railways – making the transition to a BIM-compliant DMS essential. With BIM functionality deployed, the team will be able to drive further efficiencies, while enhancing profitability and information sharing.
The system expansion also sees SNCF build on its eleven-year relationship with Opidis, with FusionLive already instrumental in enabling its 300 partner companies to work collaboratively, granting access to 1,500 active users a day.
Xavier Gruz, head of the EOLE project said “After evaluating the market, we extended the use of FusionLive to support our expanding BIM strategy. It was the only solution on the market that met our needs, allowing us to benefit from the combined experience of a strong cloud document management solution in FusionLive, and a specific BIM solution with Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync). As a result, we’ll be able to receive BIM 3D models from all our vendors, saving significant time and money.”
Philip Woodrow, CEO of Opidis said: “We’re delighted the SNCF team has extended their relationship with us, maximizing the new capabilities available through the FusionLive and Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync) integration. As BIM models uploaded to FusionLive are automatically available in the Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync) portal, users can visualize, review, merge and resolve issues – simplifying access and collaboration, and removing the need to manually upload the model to multiple information silos.”
Håvard Brekke Bell, CEO of Catenda said: “We are excited about SNCF’s position on open BIM and believe they will have a great impact and change the European construction industry for the better. At the same time, it is inspiring to be able to work together with SNCF and Opidis on such a large project, something that will benefit all users of Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync).”
Catenda Team 
