Transforming water infrastructure with 3D printing
2 July 2025
Case Studies
SMP Alliance’s collaborative effort reaps massive benefits
2 July 2025
SMP Alliance won the Digital Collaboration of the Year category, sponsored by Bluebeam, at the Digital Construction Awards 2025.
The Smart Motorways Programme Alliance operates on Project 13 principles and comprises National Highways as the client, Fluor responsible for production management, Jacobs and WSP handling digitally-enabled design, and Balfour Beatty, Costain and the BAM Nuttall-Morgan Sindall JV as on-site assembly partners. Collectively, they work with more than 100 suppliers, ranging from SMEs to global players.
Sponsored by
Their challenges included:
- facilitating secure, collaborative sharing and information management;
- integrating the UK BIM Framework across the seven alliance partners and the many varied programmes;
- overcoming different legacy systems/corporate policies and levels of digital maturity;
- fostering a culture of unprecedented integrated collaboration, communication and transparency that promotes data-led insights and decision-making for greater productivity/efficiencies, along with enhanced quality and unified governance; and
- encouraging innovation and programmatic approaches for successful delivery while driving safer, more efficient, greener solutions that simultaneously maximise road user benefits.
What the judges said
“This is a fantastic example of how digital collaboration is being used to integrate quite a complex collaboration model. There are major tangible gains which is excellent, and demonstrates how such a partnership could be replicated on other large-scale infrastructure projects.”
These challenges were addressed by digital engineering, information management and systems specialists drawn from the alliance partners, operating as one team.
They developed the Alliance Information Management System, a business management platform where processes are centrally referenced, including a common coding standard for documents, geometrical and alphanumerical data.
This foundation, along with standardised shared resources and enterprise technology, facilitated seamless collaboration/data management across all partners, in turn improving delivery for thousands of deliverables and standardised asset data that meets client requirements and facilitates a smoother handover.
Embedded digital engineering specialists manage technology implementation, encouraging resource sharing, tool usage and design automation, which accelerates delivery while managing risk. They’ve leveraged cloud collaboration, design automation and enterprise technology to enhance efficiency and innovation, including automated design systems, adaptable SaaS solutions, and bring-your-own-licence agreements for software.
Other finalists
40 Charter Street, Canary Wharf | KPF/Canary Wharf Group/Aecom/Revizto/Dome Group/Disperse
Heathrow’s When & Where Map | Costain/Heathrow
Old Newton School Project | GS1 UK/Natural Building Systems/Circuland/OrcaScan
Operational Delivery of a Golden Thread | Bouygues UK/Westminster City Council
Scottish Water’s Digital Leadership Hub | Scottish Water/Caledonia Water Alliance/RSE/ESD/George Leslie/Morrison Water Services/WGM Engineering/Galliford Try
Effective communication was key, achieved through an information execution plan and a technology stack, which guided the implementation of current and new technology while ensuring standards compliance. The Alliance M365 Collaboration Environment underpins this strategy, providing a secure, neutral/agnostic platform for information/data sharing.
As of January 2025, SMP Alliance had realised £97.43m assured efficiencies (with a forecast of £144.14m) on programmes totalling £1.2bn. Digital solutions helped reduce pre-construction times by up to 60%.
The Digital Construction Awards are organised by Digital Construction Week, the Chartered Institute of Building, Construction Management and DC+. To find out more about the Awards and enquire about sponsorship or entering next year’s event, visit digitalconstructionawards.co.uk.
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