The bridge opened three months early. And every subsequent MDA project adopted David’s MicroStation Requirements template as a mandatory contract attachment. MicroStation is a powerful, flexible platform—but without explicit, testable requirements (seed files, coordinate systems, units, levels, cells, design history, and performance budgets), teams will drift into misalignment. The story shows how requirements prevent rework, enable automation, and turn a collection of .DGN files into a trusted digital twin.
Six months into the design phase, H&A’s lead civil engineer, , called a meeting. She slid a printed PDF across the table to the MicroStation Application Manager, David Tran . microstation software requirements
No one had documented MicroStation-specific requirements before the project started. The structural team had used a seed file from a previous bridge project with a different Geographic Coordinate System (GCS) – a custom Lambert projection instead of the mandated State Plane NAD83(2011). They also had their Working Units set to ft (decimal feet), while civil used ft-in (architectural). MicroStation had tried to align them, but cumulative rounding errors over 2 km of bridge had drifted the models apart. The bridge opened three months early
David realized they needed a formal —not just a general BIM execution plan. He locked himself in a conference room with three senior CAD technicians and the IT infrastructure lead. Over two days, they reverse-engineered the project’s true needs. The story shows how requirements prevent rework, enable