Earlier this month, the leading Nemetschek AEC technology brand, ALLPLAN, held its annual “Build the Future” event to showcase how leading engineering firms around the world were applying its technology solutions to deliver high-performance infrastructure projects including bridges, tunnels, highways, and rail. We heard from firms located in Poland, Turkey, Switzerland, as well as Germany, where ALLPLAN’s headquarters are located. The highlights of some of these presentations are captured in this article.
BPK Mosty is a civil engineering design firm located in Wrocław, Poland, that specializes in road and railway bridges. It was established in 1992, and over the course of its 33 years so far, it has designed some of the most iconic railway bridges in Poland, including the bridge on the Vistula River in the city of Góra Kalwaria, which is one of the largest railway bridges in Poland with a total length of 670 meters (Figure 2).
The firm started using ALLPLAN in early 2020 with the design of two reinforced concrete structures developed for the National Polish Water Management Authority. Since then, the number of projects implemented with ALLPLAN has ramped up. The year 2023 marked a turning point in the firm’s design work using ALLPLAN with a project for Solidarity Transport Hub Poland, which required the entire project documentation to be produced using BIM (Figure 3).
Currently, ALLPLAN is used daily by most of the design teams for their work, which involves preparing documentation for both the detailed design and construction phases, as well as for railway and road structures. A notable example that has been comprehensively documented is a railway viaduct commissioned by PKP PLK S.A., the Polish Railway Lines (Figure 4). ALLPLAN allowed the structure to be divided into several independent segments, and the additional use of ALLPLAN Share allowed multiple people to work on the project simultaneously. The technology also made it possible to avoid collisions with the more than a dozen sector projects that were part of the development. In addition to the detailed design documentation, including 3D reinforcement drawings, detailed visualizations using exchange files from ALLPLAN were also created.
Another recent project on which ALLPLAN has been extensively used is the High-Speed Rail program in Poland, for which BPK Mosty has designed dozens of engineering structures of various scales and purposes, from small railway culverts, to medium-length viaducts and bridges, to railway overpasses covering several kilometers. The use of ALLPLAN for parametric modeling, as well as the use of its visual scripting functionality called PythonParts (see https://pythonparts.allplan.com/2025/), enabled structural elements to be designed rapidly to meet specified functional requirements as well as quickly modified to accommodate the many changes that inevitably arose during the design process (Figure 5). PythonParts was especially critical in optimizing the creation of repetitive elements that are common to large-scale infrastructure projects.
Regarded as one of Turkey's leading construction companies, Makyol specializes in transportation and infrastructure projects including roads and highways, airports, railways, bridges, dams, tunnels, and metro lines (Figure 6). It is also active in the areas of commercial real estate and housing developments. The company was founded in 1965 and is known for working closely with both Turkish and international firms on large-scale joint ventures. One of these ventures is the Sibiu - Făgăraș Motorway in Romania, a major infrastructure project aimed at improving east-west connectivity across central Romania, on which Makyol is working in partnership with Yapı Merkezi, another Turkish construction company. Maykol’s presentation at the event was focused on how it was using ALLPLAN for its work on this project.
The Sibiu - Făgăraș Motorway project involves the construction of a highway of about 75 kilometers and is located in a region that is home to several rivers, streams, and underground water sources, necessitating numerous intersection structures and bridges along the route, along with many overpasses, retaining walls, culvert structures, and maintenance and service areas (Figure 7). With a total schedule of four years for designing and constructing such a complex project, time management and coordination were very important, which is where the use of a robust BIM like ALLPLAN was invaluable. ALLPLAN supported the optimization of design and construction processes, enhancing efficiency and on-site control.
The first designs of the project were developed using traditional 2D methods, but the switch to 3D was made after it was foreseen that many of the structures, especially the geometrically complex overpasses and arch bridges, may have serious communication problems in the field. With the detailed design, including reinforcement details, available in 3D, installation teams working in the field would be able to clearly see not only the general form of a structure, but also the placement of all the reinforcements (Figure 8). Production and implementation are expected to become much easier without the need to interpret complex points on site. In addition, Cut & Bend lists created on ALLPLAN will be sent directly to reinforcement manufacturers, ensuring that ready, accurate and error-free products are delivered to the site. This method will help to almost completely eliminate problems such as reinforcement incompatibility, missing or incorrect bending, etc., which are frequently experienced in the field. In summary, Maykol is using ALLPLAN software not only in the design phase, but as a supportive tool in the implementation and production phase.
Hans H. Moser AG is a mid-size Swiss civil engineering firm, based in Zürich, that has been planning and implementing projects in the fields of sewer, utility line, and road and railway construction since 1976 (Figure 9). The firm also specializes in sports and recreational facilities and in environmental planning for urban drainage issues. It has established an ongoing “BIMovation” policy to develop expertise in BIM modeling of buildings and infrastructure, and it plans to offer this competency as a service to other firms in the future in addition to using it in-house on its projects.
At the ALLPLAN event, the firm showcased its work on the Wallisellenstrasse redevelopment project, which involves a comprehensive redevelopment of an 11,000 m² area in Zürich including road construction, barrier-free public transport upgrades to improve accessibility, and complex groundwater construction for utility installations (Figure 10). Construction on the project began in November 2024 and it is scheduled to be completed later this year.
The BIM methodology was applied to this project from the very beginning, making it the first major BIM project of the city of Zürich in the field of road renovation and works pipeline construction. In addition to design, BIM models were used in tendering, providing support for the contractor. Using the BIM2Field application, the 3D data was used to accurately stake out components during the construction phase. Hans H. Moser also made extensive use of ALLPLAN Bimplus as the CDE (common data environment) for the project, providing a single source of truth for communication and coordination between all stakeholders, both in the planning as well as the execution phase (Figure 11).
As always, I appreciated the opportunity to “armchair travel” to different parts of the world and see the building and infrastructure projects that are being built with ALLPLAN’s solutions. It was especially gratifying to see the growing implementation of BIM in the infrastructure domain, where the technology adoption has been relatively slower compared to BIM for buildings.
Here is the event link to see the ALLPLAN Infrastructure Digital Conference 2025 in its entirety: https://www.allplan.com/btf-infrastructure-digital-conference-2025
Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.
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