Two years later and... yes, a bit. As I think is still the case when it comes to BIM for civil work, the guidelines are vague. I actually think there's good reasons for the guidelines to be vague and it's something that can help and hinder project teams (that could be an entirely separate dialog). Anywho, I'm working on a large civil project that's now in preliminary design (i.e. from 30% to 60%) whose contract has a BIM component to it. There are multiple sources of model generation (i.e. InRoads Corridor Modeler, InRoads Storm and Sanitary Database, Revit, and MicroStation), but all of which will find their way into DGN files to be reviewed comprehensively.
To address what I hear as your main question, "What's the best tools?" I think the simplest answer is "The tool that works best for your project team." In our case, this means mupltiple tools (listed above). I'd also be interested in hearing more about what you've learned about this over the last few years.