How NCTIR Enabled Global Collaboration and BIM Delivery Across 300+ Design Projects

The Challenge

The 2016 Kaikoura earthquake damaged 400 kilometres of roading and 190 kilometres of rail, forcing the closure of both State Highway 1 and the Main North Line between Picton and Christchurch. This left Kaikoura and the surrounding rural communities isolated and created immense social and economic pressure to restore the network as quickly as possible.

The scale and urgency of the recovery effort required thousands of professionals from multiple organisations and countries to work together across more than 300 design projects. With design and construction happening simultaneously, NCTIR needed a way to support fast, reliable collaboration across offices, field teams, home locations and international contributors — all while maintaining quality control and secure access to project data.

The Solutions

12d Synergy was implemented as the Common Data Environment for the design side of the alliance, providing a single source of truth for project files, documents, models and emails. It gave teams across New Zealand and overseas secure access to a centralised data environment, even in remote and low-connectivity conditions.

By supporting standard folder structures, file naming conventions, version control and quality assurance workflows, 12d Synergy helped NCTIR manage large volumes of data across hundreds of sub-projects. The platform also supported a wide range of software applications and enabled remote teams to work continuously across time zones, helping extend design delivery hours and keep the project moving at speed.

The Result

• 350 design professionals from 30 organisations collaborated in one controlled environment.
• 300+ design projects were managed within a centralised Common Data Environment.
• 1,600 jobs and 785 12d Model projects were supported through 12d Synergy.
• 1.36 million files and 2.55 million file changes were managed in the system.
• 5.7 TB of project data was stored and controlled in one location.
• Road and rail links were reopened just over a year after the earthquake.

NCTIR brought together a global design community to help reconnect

NCTIR alliance was created to retore critical transport links following one of New Zealand’s most significant recent natural disasters. Formed by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and KiwiRail, the alliance brought together expertise from across the industry to rebuild a damaged road and rail corridor under extraordinary time pressure.

The program required collaboration at scale. Teams were working from the Christchurch design office, the Kaikoura site office, field locations, home organisations and overseas offices. This included specialists from Australia, Asia, and Europe, enabling design work to continue across extended hours and making global collaboration a practical necessity rather than a nice-to-have.

Strengthening quality assurance and CAD control at scale

12d Synergy also played a key role in maintaining document control and quality assurance across the program. Standard folder structures and naming conventions helped create consistency across hundreds of smaller projects, while features such as audit trail, version history, rollback and check-in/check-out were used daily to support controlled delivery.

This was particularly valuable in CAD workflows. NCTIR managed more than 6,000 AutoCAD drawings through 12d Synergy, alongside ongoing design changes and drawing register management. Nathan Watts, CAD Manager at NCTIR, noted that “The Rollback feature has been priceless for us. Without it, we could be losing a day or even a week’s worth of work trying to go back to a previous design or drawing.”