7 reasons why a connected workflow will make a huge difference for your BIM project!

It’s no secret that construction projects require constant coordination, from the design phase up until their delivery. The real secret though is how teams execute this coordination. This is often what sets apart the good from the best.

If you’re reading this, chances are that you’re looking to enhance your BIM workflow. You’re at the right place! Let’s explore together how a connected workflow will save you time and money in 7 essential points:

1) Connect with stakeholders from all fields

You love using all your favorite BIM software? Awesome! But here’s the thing: we often get so passionate about our favorite tools that we forget some of the most important stakeholders in our project: the clients, the data experts, the business developers, etc.

These users usually face a dilemma: they need to collaborate with us on the project, but they don’t have access to BIM software and/or don’t have the knowledge required to navigate through them.

But nobody must be a tech guru to communicate about the issues of a project! And that’s exactly why BIMcollab Nexus is such a powerful tool for communication. It’s a user-friendly platform that any stakeholder can use without any wizardry.

With a connected workflow, nobody is left out. No need for long emails. No need to ‘look up what was that problem about and circle back’. Actually, no need to turn in circles, full stop. All the history related to any problem is right there at your fingertips. Inspect, comment, solve, close.

2) Centralize all data and be constantly ready

Let’s imagine a scenario that you may already be familiar with. The meeting starts in an hour, and you still need to prepare all the issues that must be discussed! I don’t mean to cause any panic here but well, time is ticking, and there are two possible options:

Option 1:
You could sort through your emails, search that question received from the MEP team about Building C. And then, check the solution proposed by the architecture team. Can’t find it in your emails? Oh, it must have been in a chat!

By the way, do you remember the PDF received from the structural team? Yes, that one too. It might take a while to centralize everything in the general tracking spreadsheet. Especially if you want to cross-check all the redundant issues. (There are always so many!)

Not quite there yet? Sorry, the meeting has already started.

Option 2:
In a better world, BIMcollab Nexus centralizes your issues in one place and takes all the tedious work out of the equation so that you focus on what really matters! In one click, you can filter all the issues in Building C, ahead of the meeting. And why not automatically generate a report about all the urgent issues? Two minutes. Done.

I’m not sure about you but I could totally use 58 minutes to catch up on some other work. All ready!

3) Solve issues through a complete workflow

Do you remember that meeting yesterday? There must have been a fair share of issues to solve! These could take ages without a BCF Manager inside your modeling software. You could instantly connect to BIMcollab Nexus through a simple plugin! Yes, right from your favorite BIM tool.

At that point, you could just filter all your open issues. Double-click to be redirected to any of them inside the 3D model. Inspect. Solve. Comment about the changes. Done.

Now comes the role of the team leader or the BIM Manager who will be able to check the changes and approve them on his/her end. And this is what’s impeccable in BIMcollab’s ecosystem. Every single step of creating issues has been thought through from the detection phase all the way until solving them and classifying them as closed.

For example, if implemented, the team leader can be the only one who has the right to close issues. This replicates the real need for revisions and checks, that are usually regulated and hierarchized within a company. The team members can solve the issue and redirect them for a final check to their team leader. And it happens all within BIMcollab!

The circularity of the ecosystem is then apparent: no matter which BIM tools you use, it helps you centralize all the issues and communicate better with your team members from different disciplines or firms. You can now spend your time on real results!

4) Track the progress of your project

It is said that: ‘You can’t control what you can’t measure!’. This saying feels especially accurate in the context of a construction project where so many different parameters are always at play! Different phases. Different disciplines. Different issues!

But then again, a dilemma appears here. If you need to spend precious hours to gather and organize data, that could be a real roadblock to quick progress on the project. However, when these metrics are automatically generated, that’s a whole different story!

In that case, you would only have to inspect the statistics and act on them. Not to forget that BIMcollab’s automated graphs are always updated in real-time to follow the real progress of the project. And you could even analyze the progress on different projects, all at the same time!

5) Keep issues confidential

Once you track all the issues, you will probably quickly realize how numerous they are. The need to categorize them better is then quite apparent.

Of course, it’s possible to achieve this with various filters related to all the parameters in your project. That’s already quite powerful, but there’s more! For example, what about keeping the issues of the architectural team only visible to the architects? The same thing could apply for any other team, whether it’s an internal division or an external collaborator. This helps keep the issues confidential within each team, but also it doubles down as a great practical way to organize the never-ending list of issues. After all, why see the issues when you don’t have to play an active role?

6) Customize your BIM workflow with controlled information

When you complete an achievement, don’t you secretly want to replicate it? Well, the BIM requirements that you set up for your past project were quite an achievement! Then why not standardize them and share them with your colleagues?

In fact, there are so many little details that make all the difference in a BIM workflow. Notably, creating project templates. Standardizing the parameters across your projects. But even more importantly, making sure that all the information that you need is readily available!

Let’s imagine a team member who’s quickly creating an issue about a clash that they discovered. They take a quick capture, write a brief description, and save it. That sounds great up until you realize that the issue hasn’t been linked to a certain zone of the project and you’re not even sure how urgent it is.

This is where mandatory fields would have been helpful. For example, the BIM Manager could set an obligation to fill the zone to which an issue belongs, as well as a date limit to find a solution. Since this set of information would be required, no one would be able to create an issue without it!

We could even go farther than that by implementing custom fields with values that are specific to each project. If the parameters that you have are not enough, you could simply set up your own! And when you couple this possibility with the obligation of having it filled, there’s no limit to the quality of the information that you can gather.

Needless to say, the above setups are almost impossible to implement manually. But you can certainly get them all through BIMcollab Nexus! In fact, they are the backbone of a great centralized issue management workflow! It allows the automatic generation of accurate stats and metrics because all the information needed is available, controlled and answers the custom needs of each project.

7) Integrate with the major CDE’s on the market

When we say connected workflow, there’s still one small piece of the puzzle that’s missing: access to your latest models! With BIMcollab’s ecosystem, it’s possible to get that link in more ways than one.

For example, if you already use Autodesk Docs or Trimble Connect to store your models, you could instantly access them through an integrated model viewer in BIMcollab Nexus. No model management needed in addition to the setup that you already have! So, in a way you get the best of both worlds because there’s one major plus: you could start managing your issues right there and then!

Within the integrated viewer for Autodesk Docs and Trimble Connect, you could check your BIMcollab issues, create new ones and change all the parameters as you normally would!

In conclusion, the defining factors are quite simple! Would you implement a BIM process that makes you win precious hours? That helps you automate your boring tasks? That allows you to communicate much better with all your team members? And, to top it all, that gets you better results?

If the answers are yes, our BIMcollab team would be thrilled to tell you more about it. You could book a free 1-to-1 meeting with us. We would then help you in a personalized way. We’re looking forward to meeting you!