UTILIZED SOFTWARE 

OpenRail, ProjectWise, OpenCities Planner

LOCATION 

Czech Republic

ORGANIZATION/COMPANY 

SUDOP PRAHA

SUDOP PRAHA a.s. set out to design a 67-kilometer high-speed rail corridor through Central Bohemia — a greenfield route crossing sensitive landscape and water zones, including the Sázavka valley. The early design carried a surplus of 15 million cubic meters of excavated material, a figure that translates directly into truck movements, emissions, and disturbed terrain, while multiple design firms worked without a unified digital collaboration standard and public scrutiny of the route ran high. In response, the team deployed a connected digital workflow built on ProjectWise, OpenRail, and iModels, optimizing route and vertical alignment to engineer the earthworks surplus out of the design rather than haul it away. Engineering and GIS data were fused in OpenCities Planner to create a public-facing 3D environment where communities could see the corridor, and where noise analysis and mitigation were modeled to safeguard acoustic health in surrounding municipalities. An internal generative AI chatbot accelerated information sharing across partner firms, while SYNCHRO drove construction sequencing and Deliverable Management controlled handovers.

The results reached both the ground and the balance sheet. Mitigating the 15 million cubic meter surplus cut CZK 10 billion to 20 billion from a project estimated at CZK 74 billion to 78 billion, and the team saved 12 to 20 percent of work hours across 140,000 total project hours — effort and emissions avoided before construction begins, with completion targeted for January 2031.

Beyond one corridor, the line supports the energy transition by shifting long-distance journeys from fossil-fueled road vehicles to electric rail and releasing regional freight capacity. As one of the first full-scale Czech high-speed rail projects designed in BIM, it leaves behind a reusable OpenRail standard — a reference model carrying these sustainability gains into every rail development that follows.