INSIGHT | SUSTAINABILITY
100% Strategic Planning:
Defining criteria and exploring alternative approches toward desired outcomes.
Intelligent Design:
Optimising design and operations to maximise asset utilisation.
Efficient Construction:
Maximising eco-friendly materials and process, efficient deliveries, and minimising waste generation.
Smart Operation:
Harnessing renewable energy, intelligent management, and maintenance
0% PLANNING DESIGN
Project phase and embodied carbon reduction potential.
CONSTRUCTION OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE END OF LIFE
later times, when reaching for the document - or its digital equivalent. Perhaps, in the latter, word search is the short-cut. There is a list of References, and the journal-style publication is plus Appendices. Usefully, there is a glossary - highly beneficial as a
ready reckoner in the BIM, information and environmental sustainability worlds that are abundant with acronyms. In brief, the guideline is presented as 42-page long
journal paper with front and back covers. It is very well and helpfully, and practically, illustrated - primarily graphics and tables, though, as is much of the way with BIM. Portraying ways of managing information, in different models and networks, dominates this area. The guideline has nine sections, as follows:
1. Introduction 2. Intersection of BIM and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) 3. A BIM approach for sustainability during the strategic phase
CONCLUSION The guideline says that leveraging BIM allows for the early sustainability investigations to help design decisions without needing to wait for finalised tunnel geometry and associated information. It emphasizes the use of BIM to integrate sustainability considerations throughout a tunnel’s lifecycle by: identifying how BIM and digital tools empower decisions; facilitating a holistic circular approach with digital solutions available throughout the entire lifecycle; establishing a robust framework to integrate sustainability goals with BIM applications; and, enhancing decision-making, stakeholder collaboration, and data- driven environmental impact assessments. The full report was published previously in a special issue entitled ‘ITA-AITES Reports’ in Tunneling and Underground Space Technology (TUST), from Elsevier, on an open access basis under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY - http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/). It is available in full there, at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2025.106711, as well as the ITA-AITES website.
MOVING FROM FEDERATED TO UNIFIED MODELS
Section 9 discusses information integration, and upfront emphasises as with any shift - in anything - first you need buy-in, then have it actually done. Whatever it is. Dealing with sustainability, which many can perceive to have a fuzziness about its outlines and then how to get to grips with it, those are important makes. And, of course, is an aim of the guideline - while also dealing with BIM - which has a different seat, one that can seems blurred too, in the minds of engineers and others. Or, in the works of the guideline: “We briefly outline some fundamental strategic choices concerning the application of digital technologies that should be made at the very beginning of a tunnelling project. The goal is twofold: first, to ensure optimal support for the implementation any sustain- ability measures as part of BIM, and second, to achieve sustainability in the application of the digital technologies themselves.” Then, Appendix C - Taxonomy and data management roadmap - takes the discussion further, related to the
federated model approach and how such can move, or transition, in a step-by-step process, to be more integrated and come to adopt unified features: to be more of a unified model. Four points, or steps, are discussed:
● Communication protocols: moving away from general purpose to domain-specific on one or multiple taxonomies; ● Model management: moving away from separate models to a single distributed model; ● Interfaces: moving from technology-based Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) e.g., AutoCAD to BIM Collab, towards those that are taxonomy-based; and;
● Roles within a project and/or organisation: from BIM manager to (sub)domain manager.
All that considered, briefly, in the guideline, back in Section 9, and to round off the main body of the report, WG22 discusses how efforts and systems aiming at somewhat greater integration have implications in risk management - ones that are positive, it is argued.
4. …during the design phase 5. …the construction phase 6. …Operating & Maintenance (O&M) phase 7. Data management systems (Incl IoT, AI) 8. Risk management in tunnelling information modelling
9. Information integration and taxonomies
The three appendices are as follows: A) Sustainability LCA protocols B) Resolution of the use case in section 9 C) Taxonomy and data management roadmap
42 | June 2026
Embodied Carbon Reduction Potential
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