UTILIZED SOFTWARE 

Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, iTwin, MicroStation, OpenRoads Designer, OpenBridge Modeler, ProjectWise, SYNCHRO

LOCATION 

USA

ORGANIZATION/COMPANY 

WSP USA

Austin's I-35 Capital Express Central corridor carries more than 220,000 vehicles a day through eight of the most congested miles in Texas, and WSP USA took on its $1.3 billion rebuild in a tightly constrained urban setting — severe flood exposure, difficult environmental-justice tradeoffs, and legacy 2D CAD workflows that surfaced design conflicts far too late. So the team replaced disconnected, file-based delivery with a connected digital twin. Corridor and structures models were authored in OpenRoads Designer and OpenBridge Modeler, coordinated through ProjectWise as the common data environment, and federated daily in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud for automated clash detection, while SYNCHRO 4D tied those models to the construction schedule so phasing, detours, and staging could be simulated and validated before anything moved on the ground. AI-assisted workflows normalized design data across disciplines and automated much of QA/QC, saving roughly 10,000 work hours — 8,000 in design development, 2,000 in review. The more durable value, though, shows up in the corridor itself. Upgraded stormwater systems will remove 60,000 pounds of suspended solids every year, protecting water quality in the Colorado River basin. Air toxics are projected to fall 76% and fatal and injury crashes by 29%. Twenty to twenty-six miles of new shared-use paths reopen the corridor to people rather than vehicles alone. And because the digital models let the team evaluate lower-impact alternatives early, residential displacements dropped from 291 to 111, with a $9.4 million transit fund and $100 million for aesthetic treatments and noise barriers further softening the footprint on surrounding neighborhoods. What makes this story matter is that digital delivery was never an efficiency exercise. It was how the team found a design that moves more people while displacing fewer of them, cleans more water, and is built to last — with completion targeted for 2035.