In construction planning, especially in linear projects (roads and railways), earthworks are a complex process that involves many variables affecting the final result.
To facilitate these tasks and help in early decision making, we have launched the Terraplan project.
Planning the removal and placement of earth, especially in difficult-to-access areas is a task that site managers spend a lot of time on.
They have to find the balance between material removal, paving, type of terrain, environmental conditions, accessibility, social constraints... A puzzle that Terraplan tries to provide an efficient response to by facilitating the planning of operations and machinery for the teams involved. This way, they can focus more on the analysis of performance and execution of the work.
"With Terraplan we can optimize the deadlines and costs of the work and minimize the environmental and social impact of earthworks," explains Íñigo del Rey, head of business applications at Sacyr Ingeniería e Infraestructuras.
"It's a project that the planning, topography and machinery departments have been working on for a year and a half, after an initial analysis with the company's earth production experts. Through different artificial intelligence algorithms, we created a web tool that will be accessible by the production teams to plan and track their work and machinery," he explains.
The use of Terraplan will have an impact on all types of works, but especially on our road and rail concessions, which will optimize deadlines and costs.
"We are currently testing it internally; we expect it to be operational in three months. It is a proprietary software based on the knowledge of Sacyr's experts that uses AI with optimization algorithms. It is fed with data from layout programs, especially Istram, which is generally used in topography to carry out site measurements," explains Íñigo del Rey.
The software is similar to DamTetris, a program created in-house at Sacyr to sequence concrete placement in large dam projects that optimized planning and resources.
Thanks to Terraplan, we will be able to submit more optimized bids for tenders, with a reduction in the uncertainty inherent in economic proposals.
