Infrastructure, transport and technology consultancy firm, RITES Ltd, has won a BE Award for its detailed engineering study for the Kashmir Railway project in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The award category was "Civil: Rail Design."

An affiliate of Indian Railways, RITES Ltd, an ISO 9001-2000 company, has developed the $2.5-billion Kashmir railway project to connect the state to the rest of India. Among the project route''s many design and construction challenges is a 142-kilometer stretch of rugged, mountainous terrain that will require the construction of 118 bridges and 65 tunnels.

RITES used 3D visualisation developed by the $400-million Bentley Systems and its MXRAIL to develop alternative routes and establish their feasibility. "Our use of Bentley MXRAIL enabled an integrated approach to this complex project, with a single database seamlessly managing various stages of project development," says A Jha, chief project manager, track and survey, RITES.

Jha adds, "It facilitated collaborative work across disciplines, including track design, geology, and geo-technology as well as bridge and tunnel designs, and helped us quickly develop and examine alternative proposals before recommending the best alternative for adoption. In one instance, the software was able to triangulate a model containing more than eight million points and more than 13.5 million triangles in one go."

The design process started with digitisation of topography and elevation details from available maps. A tentative alignment was designed with alternatives to freeze the corridor for detailed study. Aerial photography, followed by photogrammetric study, was conducted for the frozen corridor, and the data generated from this process was used for the detailed design of alignment.

A multidisciplinary consulting firm, RITES is internationally recognised as a leading consultant with operational experience in more than 55 countries in Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.