FEMA FIM is used to organize vast amounts of information on the Interstate 35W bridge.

Thornton Tomasetti, New York City, is consolidating more than 50,000 paper documents on the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis into a fo-rensics information modeling program dubbed forensic information modeling, or FIM, says principal Gary Panariello. The firm is doing so on behalf of a consortium of law firms representing the victims of the collapse.

Using documents made available by the National Transportation Safety Board, the team created an interactive computer graphic model of the bridge that enables engineers to catalog and access available information on every component of the truss bridge. The information includes shop drawings, photos, videos, and maintenance records, says Elisabeth Malsch, project director.

The firm is not able to comment on progress so far, but the end result, due in August, will include a 20- to 30-second computer animation that will simulate the collapse.

Building on BIM

While FIM focuses on forensics, other modeling will focus on bridge design, construction and maintenance. At the International Bridge Conference in Pittsburgh, held on June 2-4, Bentley Systems Inc., Exton, Pa., touted its gallery of software as “bridge information modeling,” or BrIM. The firm is working on interoperability among various software programs—much of which was acquired through mergers—for specific bridge types or needs. It formed a 100-person BrIM team this spring.

“The right data in the right hands may have prevented some of these [bridge-collapse] tragedies,” said Gabe Norona, Bentley senior vice president and head of the BrIM group. He noted that “40% of engineering time is wasted searching for information.”

Stewart Chen, associate professor at the State University of New York, Buffalo, told IBC session participants that the need to build bridges “better, faster and cheaper” could be facilitated by BrIM. With 3D modeling and single-source point of information throughout the building process, a team could avoid the constant replication of documents that often leads to errors. “It could eliminate the contractor’s complaint about inconsistent information,” said Chen.