This case study outlines the critical role of reality capture and 3D models in enhancing the Architecture, Engineering, Construction (AEC), and asset management workflows within the complex and dynamic environment of airports. Airports, having evolved into sophisticated business-focused service providers, face constant pressure to operate efficiently, manage aging infrastructure, and rapidly expand while ensuring safety and security. Traditional data management approaches often lead to siloed information and inefficient exchanges. Cintoo addresses these pain points by providing an open, browser-based platform for managing, sharing, and collaborating on massive 3D laser scan data and BIM/CAD models, thereby enabling informed decision-making, reducing costs, improving safety, and supporting the development of a comprehensive digital twin.
Airport Characteristics & Pain Points
Airports are highly complex and performance-driven assets, demanding meticulous maintenance, responsive operations, and routine safety checks. They have transformed from simple municipal infrastructure into sophisticated, business-focused service providers requiring significant investment and optimized asset management. Asset management aims to attain business goals and objectives by optimizing the cost, performance, and risk of assets over their lifecycle.
Airport Project Workflow & Stakeholders
Airport projects involve a diverse range of stakeholders across multiple phases, including:
Conceptual Design: Airport Owner / Architect Design Office
Detailed Design: Airport Owner / General Contractor, Detail Design Offices
Construction: Airport Owner / General Contractor, Subcontractors
Operation & Maintenance: Airport Owner / Operation Company, Maintenance Service / Asset & Facilities
Renovation & Demolition: Airport Owner / General Contractor
Airports face several significant challenges:
- Complex, Fragmented Environments & Systems: Airports combine public and industrial built environments, managed by multiple operators or contractors running different integrated and siloed IT systems. This includes diverse areas like passenger check-in, security, retail, and lounges, baggage handling systems, airport infrastructure equipment, airline maintenance facilities, and runways, aprons, taxiways, bridges, cargo facilities, fire and rescue.
- Emerging Common Data Environment: Asset information management tools and practices are not maturing at the same rate as rapid expansion and upgrades. Data often remains siloed in different proprietary systems, with different owners and users, leading to inefficient information exchange.
- Age and Complexity of Infrastructure: Many airports began construction in the 1940s, making projects more difficult and costly than standard construction projects. Construction and renovation are a long-term (if not ongoing) process.
- Busy, 24/7 Operations: Regular, heavy traffic (pedestrian, aviation, road, rail) as well as many different industrial environments makes the planning and execution of construction, maintenance and refurbishment projects time-consuming and complex to manage. This constant activity also leads to extensive wear and tear on the airport’s As Built environment.
- Data Security and Sovereignty: As strategic national infrastructure assets, the data security of the airport’s 1D, 2D and 3D data is essential.
Reality Capture and Digital Twin Workflows in Airports
The Challenge: Bridging the "Real" and "Virtual" Gap
The As-Built environment of an airport is constantly changing due to age, weather, traffic, and frequent construction/maintenance. This necessitates constant tracking to efficiently plan and update the built environment.
Reality Capture for Enhanced Decision-Making
Laser scanning and other reality capture technologies produce high precision 3D data to record the As-Built condition of airport infrastructure and facilities both indoor and outdoor. This data can enhance decision-making for airport management, traffic, asset and facility management with context from the scans.
It's not just a side technology for construction but a long-term data asset for both owner-operators and general contractors.
Laser scanning combined with BIM modeling and an integration into GIS and IoT, combined with a platform for 3D scan data management, are some of the tools needed to provide long-term 3D solutions as part of an airport’s overall digital twin.
Common Airport Workflows Leveraging Laser Scanning
Typical laser scanning scenarios include:
Large Terminal Buildings: Mobile Mapping Systems (e.g., NavVis/SLAM) for fast capture (lower precision ~+8mm), and Terrestrial scans for detailed, surveyor-grade data (<5mm precision) in technical areas.
Fit-out and Refurbishment Projects: Scanning allows remote review and inspection, making BIM modeling faster, more accurate and less prone to error when based off a scan-to-BIM process.
Technical Area Inspection: Terrestrial scanners are used for "high precision (<5 mm) inspection and quality workflows on machinery and equipment" and for planning equipment replacement.
Aircraft Maintenance: Airlines like KLM and Lufthansa use drones and laser scanners for maintenance reviews of aircraft or to replace equipment (example: aircraft cabin upgrades).
Runway/Taxiway Inspection: Scanning to review As Built state, damage to tarmac and compare the current conditions with the condition from previous scan surveys.
Digital Twins for the Built Environment
A digital twin is a realistic digital representation of assets, processes or systems in the built or natural environment.
- Reality capture is the crucial ‘Element 0’ of a digital twin to ensure it is an accurate interpretation of the built environment.
- Digital twins are built from different elements or layers of 1D, 2D and 3D information which can be live (IoT sensors) or static (3D scans, models, documents).
- Airports combine BIM (Architecture, Construction, Building Management) and Industry 4.0 (Airport Management) workflows to prototype, run what-if scenarios, simulate, remotely operate, manage assets, run predictive maintenance.
Cintoo's Interoperable 3D Platform
Cintoo is a web-based, open platform that facilitates the management and collaboration of laser scan data from any tripod-mounted scanner, mobile scanner or drone scanner. Cintoo transforms scan data into a high-fidelity 3D mesh, making streaming and navigation easy.
Cintoo serves as a reference source of truth for visualization & analysis of as-built conditions in the airport, unifying reality capture data, documentation, live sensor data, 3D BIM/CAD models, 2D drawings, GIS layers, and more to provide a holistic, visual source of truth. Cintoo supports engineering, retrofits, scan-to-BIM, as-built vs. as-designed comparisons, progress monitoring, asset management, predictive maintenance, and remote/in-field operations.
Bridging the Gap for Large Data
Historically, point clouds were gigantic, making them extremely difficult to collaborate on, share the data, or even open, requiring powerful desktop PCs. Cintoo addresses this by converting 3D Point Cloud data into a 3D Mesh through a simple web browser, compressing the point cloud data by 10-20 times while maintaining the same precision as the laser scanner.
This makes very large point cloud data and BIM / CAD models accessible to a much larger user group than ever before.
Collaborative Workflows for All Airport Stakeholders
Cintoo is accessible to unlimited users, including:
- BIM/VDC Managers, Surveyors, Engineering Teams, Architects, General Contractors, Facilities Managers, Airport Owner Operators, GIS Managers, Asset Managers.
- Unlimited users and permission management means any number of airport stakeholders from different companies can be invited to a point cloud project to collaborate on these huge datasets, all securely as well.
Airport Use Cases Enabled by Cintoo
Renovation/Refurbishing/Brownfield:
- Comparing 3D models to existing conditions (scan vs. BIM/CAD).
- Checking duct routing, pipe tie-ins, and new pumps in existing conditions.
- Identifying clashes (e.g., "New Pipe Clashing Existing Pipe").
New Construction/Greenfield:
- Reviewing beam penetrations and clearances.
- Performing Comparison Scan vs Model: Tolerance 5cm and MEP Construction Ongoing Review.
BIM-CAD Module
This module allows users to compare the scan data to the 3D or 2D model to review differences, find errors and validate designs.
- Supports various 3D and 2D BIM & CAD model formats (RVT, NWD, NWC, 3D DWG, JT, IFC, etc.).
- Enables creation of issues in Cintoo and pushing them to an Autodesk Construction Cloud project.
Compliance, IT Security & Architecture
Cintoo is certified SOC2 Type 2 and ISO 27001, undergoing penetration testing campaigns every 6 months. It adheres to OWASP recommendations and ISO 27001 best practices.
Airport Asset Management Integration
Cintoo is a crucial component in the airport's digital twin, connecting very high precision 3D scan data to the data in the airport’s digital twin platform using APIs.
Its AI engine can automatically detect objects, equipment & machines (e.g., pumps, valves, electric metering), with a machine learning engine trained on large datasets.
Unlimited asset tags can be created, linking to other digital platforms via API.
ROI & Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with Cintoo
Return on Investment (ROI)
Cintoo enables remote inspection, significantly reducing costs associated with physical inspections, maintenance, and surveys:
- Reduced Operational Disruptions: Minimizes the need to shut down public areas, machinery or equipment, or shutting down airport infrastructure (runways, cargo facilities), which otherwise cause costly pedestrian traffic bottlenecks, flight or passenger delays.
- Improved Planning & Efficiency: On-site inspections are better planned and more efficiently timed and executed by reviewing the scan data in advance.
- Reduced Errors & Rework: Collaborative review by a much larger number of people and teams reduces errors. Scan vs 3D model comparison is a cost-reduction mechanism by enabling model errors to be quickly identified and resolved in advance of work being performed.
- Enhanced Worker Health & Safety: Planning hazardous work in advance using scan data can be significantly reduced.
- Environmental Benefits: Reduction in carbon emissions for example (on-site inspection and transport of teams traveling on-site vs remote inspection using Cintoo).
- Easy Scalability: No added complexity, data restrictions or supplementary cost adding new users, scans, models or other data.
Customer Use Cases
Major airport owners/operators and contractors:
- Aéroports de Montréal (ADM): Client since 2021, used Cintoo for the P4 Car Park project to compare scans vs. designed 3D models and GC's As-Built models for quality control and precise measurements (e.g., plumbing pipe diameters).
- Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA): Client since 2019, managing 10,000 scans for Toronto Pearson International Airport.
- Avinor (Norway): New customer for 2024, operating 44 airports.
- Melbourne Tullamarine Airport (via Arup): Arup, the General Contractor for the Southern Precinct Program and Third Runway, used Cintoo for scan-to-BIM to build the 3D model of the new terminal from As-Built conditions. The airport now uses this data for asset management and maintenance.
- Denver International Airport (DEN) (via Hensel Phelps): Hensel Phelps, the General Contractor for the Great Hall Phase 1 renovation, used Cintoo for QA/QC between design and As-Built conditions during construction and for scan-to-BIM to build the As-Built 3D model.
- Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) Terminal A (via Tutor Perini/Parsons JV): The construction team adopted a "just-in-time laser-scanning protocol" and used Cintoo as a "main tool to distribute, share and collaborate with the reality data and models for QA/QC and As-Built," aligning with the Port Authority's objectives for efficiency and flexibility.
It's crucial for airport maintenance and operations to embrace the digital transformation. Enhance and scale operational infrastructure airport with reality capture and 3D models for optimized asset management, improved safety, and reduced costs. Discover how Cintoo streamlines operations and decision-making with a live demo.
