TALLINN, Estonia — The Estonian Transport Board has completed a key analysis that will form the foundation for automated cost management and the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) data in future road construction projects.
The effort, part of the “Road Funding for Highways – Start” project, mapped and harmonized the processes for cost estimation, reporting, control, and analysis, along with related procurement activities.
According to a press statement released last week by the Estonian transport board, the analysis created a comprehensive vision for a new workflow and information system designed to automatically process information related to commissioned constructions.
Less Manual Work, Higher Quality
The new approach is centered on the “once-only principle” (OOP), where a contractor’s project manager enters data once—regardless of the initial collection method—and that single dataset is used for all checks, reports, and analyses. Officials say this will significantly reduce manual work and increase the reliability and speed of data processing.
Remo Kuningas, Head of the Information Technology Development Unit at the Estonian Transport Board, underscored the readiness of the planned system.
“The analysis described a system that is ready to receive BIM data and process it efficiently and automatically with minimal additional development needs,” Kuningas said.
He added that implementing the system will lead to major efficiency gains.
“The same data point will move from a single entry to the financial report in the future — there will be less manual work, and the quality and pace will increase,” Kuningas stated.
Broad Impact and Next Steps
The system’s target users extend beyond Transport Board specialists to include designers, owner supervision, contractor project managers, the ministry, and accounting personnel. It will provide systematic solutions for reporting work results and offer necessary statistical overviews and cost data.
The project’s next phase will focus on creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of the system. This will rapidly introduce the new process into daily operations, allowing officials to assess its impact on the efficiency of procurement, budgeting, and supervision. The knowledge gained will then be used to plan future developments effectively.
The “Road Fund Highway – Start” initiative is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and aims to fully digitalize road construction cost management, introduce automated processing of BIM data, and enforce the single data entry principle throughout the entire road works lifecycle.
The Estonian Transport Board’s work on automated cost management is built upon the broader national push for digital construction and the adoption of global standards, particularly as they relate to Building Information Modeling (BIM) for infrastructure (often called RoadBIM).
Key Standardization Frameworks
The core standards and principles guiding BIM implementation in Estonia, including for road construction, are:
ISO 19650: Estonia is aligning its processes with the international ISO 19650 standard. This is the global framework for the collaborative management of information across the entire life cycle of a constructed asset. Adopting this standard ensures international compatibility and a quality-assured approach to information management.
IFC (Industry Foundation Classes): The standard format for data exchange in BIM projects is IFC (EN ISO 16739-1). This is critical because it allows information to be exchanged between different software applications (like ArchiCAD, Revit, or Tekla) without losing data, ensuring a “software-independent” approach. The transport sector is moving towards using the infrastructure-specific versions of this standard, such as IFC 4.3.
ÜBN (Üldised BIM Nõuded – General BIM Requirements): While not a mandatory national requirement for all projects, public sector clients, like the Estonian Transport Board, typically mandate compliance with the national ÜBN BIM requirements. These guidelines outline the specifications for the Level of Development (LOD) and the required data content for BIM elements.
CCI-EE Classification System: The transition to automated, life-cycle cost management requires a unified classification system. The CCI-EE (Construction Classification International) system is being developed and promoted, particularly by public sector bodies like the Transport Board, to ensure that information (materials, work types, elements) is consistently classified and linked throughout the entire project from design to financial reporting. This is essential for the “once-only principle” mentioned in the article.
Focus on Infrastructure (RoadBIM)
The Estonian Transport Board (formerly the Estonian Road Administration) has made the use of BIM a strategic goal since starting pilot projects around 2017. Their initiative to harmonize cost processes is specifically about:
Machine-Readable Data: Ensuring that the digital models contain information in a machine-readable format, which is necessary for automated processing, quantity take-offs, and financial analysis.
Life-Cycle Management: Applying the BIM methodology across the entire life cycle of a road asset, from planning and design to construction, maintenance, and eventually decommissioning.
Digital Integration: The work is part of Estonia’s broader “e-construction” platform goal, which aims to integrate construction data with other national registers, such as the Land Cadastre and the Building Register, essentially creating a 3D Digital Twin of the built environment.
The new system described in the article will leverage these standards to ensure that BIM data—the geometry and its associated information—flows seamlessly and automatically into the financial and management reports.
