2020 Property and Construction Honours — Person of the Year

Selected entry: Qian Yiping (Roy Qian)

Reasons for selection: A New Zealand expert of Chinese heritage leads the international application of digital technology in building services design.

Auckland, home to a third of New Zealand’s population, is still building its first urban underground railway, the City Rail Link. At just 3.5 kilometres long, with only 4 stations, it is hardly remarkable in the history of urban underground railway development internationally, despite being New Zealand’s largest and most complex transport project ever.

Yet an international professional award for its digital building services design has brought Auckland’s City Rail Link considerable attention in the international construction industry.

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Auckland’s City Rail Link stood out among 260 construction design projects from 35 countries to win an international honour at the Autodesk AEC Excellence Awards. for 2020.

The award is regarded as the world’s highest honour for the application of digital technology in architecture, engineering and construction, and is also known as the Oscars of digital technology in construction.

A key highlight of Auckland’s City Rail Link award entry was the digital design technology used for its mechanical and electrical systems.

Leading the application of digital technology to the railway’s mechanical and electrical design, as well as the development of digital application software for the entire project, is an expert of Chinese heritage, Qian Yiping (Roy Qian). A New Zealand building services designer born in Shanghai, China, he graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Roy came to New Zealand in 1995. Studying while working, he completed university courses in business information systems and lighting design. He has devoted himself to applying his specialist technical knowledge to building services design and has become an expert in the field.

More than a decade ago, Roy began researching how computer technology could be integrated with architectural design and construction project management. From computerised management of architectural drawing symbols to the development of design assistance software and the further integration of modern digital technology into building services design, Roy has continually broadened and deepened his exploration of how computers can be better used in architectural design.

Last year, Roy was invited to join Auckland’s City Rail Link project, taking charge of digital design technology for its mechanical and electrical systems and the development of digital application software for the project as a whole.

For this project, Roy wrote ten thousand lines of C# code and released more than 30 software updates. Ultimately, the interactive design and modelling software he developed for mechanical and electrical equipment in Auckland’s urban railway tunnels became an internationally leading innovative solution. The software ingeniously uses calculation parameters for railway tracks and tunnel boring machines, performing complex calculations that allow designers to work interactively with ease, rapidly generate three-dimensional models automatically, and continue refining and optimising them. The resulting digital models can be used to produce construction drawings and create virtual reality environments, allowing train drivers to simulate driving through the tunnels and assess risks such as lighting and visibility under adverse conditions, improving safety.

Through his hard work, Roy has thus overcome an industry-wide bottleneck in digital building services design. One recommendation praised him in these terms: “Your world-leading innovative work is inspiring. Your software tools have saved thousands of hours of labour on Auckland’s City Rail Link project and have become tools everyone can rely on.” The company’s leader went further, hailing the achievement as “a legend”.