What advantages do Smart Properties bring to different project stakeholders?

What advantages do Smart Properties bring to different project stakeholders?

Nowadays, sharing BIM information is vital for construction projects’ success. Team members in different job roles rely heavily on the analysis and use of the information from BIM models. But, as a large number of models is exchanged regularly between disciplines, the quality of other’s data and models can’t be guaranteed. Inevitably, construction teams will experience variation in data quality.

BIMcollab Zoom easily solves this problem: Smart Properties put you in control of information quality. Smart Properties allow you to customize, classify and restructure existing information directly in the model validation tool Zoom, without having to ask others to change their models.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how different project stakeholders can tailor the existing data to their needs, and efficiently use Smart Properties to improve their workflows.

BIM Manager

As a BIM manager responsible for implementing BIM throughout your organization, you need tools to ensure that the required BIM standards are applied. Smart Properties understand your role, and can help you:

  • Standardize information delivery – Data variations such as different disciplines using different nomenclature standards, or properties found under different element attributes, happen on every project. With Smart Properties, standardizing this process does not need to be repeated every time. Data only has to be structured once on a company level and can be easily applied to every project.
  • Easily share your BIM standards – After you have created standardized information delivery requirements with Smart Properties, next you can create precise model checking rules that match your organization, project or local regulatory needs. Finally, you can share your requirements on every project, because importing and exporting Smart Properties and checking rules is very easy with BIMcollab Zoom.

BIM Coordinators

As a project BIM coordinator, you oversee the design of BIM models, are responsible for bringing together the data, and link information across disciplines. You repeat this process whenever the new, updated models are available.

You need a way to efficiently standardize the differences between delivered model information, and adjust the available data to your needs. Here is what you can do with Smart Properties:

  • Group the data your way – Properties across models can be located in different places for different elements. For example, Area value can be found under Base Quantities for some, and under Dimensions for other elements. With Smart Properties, you can easily map data from various locations to one new property, without asking the authors to change their models.
  • Create custom properties – Smart Properties present an opportunity to fill in missing gaps right on the spot while reviewing the models. For example, you can easily create missing properties, and group multiple existing properties to a new, custom-defined property.
  • Drive Smart views, Clash rules and Lists – With data adjusted to your needs, you can set up Smart views, Clash rules or Lists according to the updated properties. This way you ensure your checking rules are based on the correct properties and values.
  • Implement BIM/ISO/regulatory requirements – The list of required properties and values that needs to be delivered in the right format can be quite long. Adding these manually, row by row, can be quite time-consuming. With the CSV import option, Smart Properties significantly shorten the needed time, making sure the pre-structured requirements can be easily imported and applied to any project.
  • Create project templates – Created Smart Properties can be applied not just to multiple models within a project, but can be easily imported into any new project. The data needs to be structured only once, and not for every federated model again.

Clients

You are in the role of project decision-maker, but you are not necessarily the most BIM savvy member, and the inconsistency of BIM information across models can be challenging to comprehend. As a non-BIM user, you probably won’t be diving deep into model validation, but with Zoom, your BIM team can deliver the information you need in a way that is easy to understand.

Smart properties offer a way to translate technical data into meaningful information by:

  • Creating special ‘collections’ – With Smart Properties, you can conveniently sort values based on your needs, by creating ‘collections’ based on certain conditions and values. This allows you to restructure information so that it is presented in a more comprehensible manner. For example, a clear overview of spatial uses and room ratios is important to all clients, especially on complex projects like schools, hospitals, airports etc. With Smart Properties, you can standardize room naming across models, and group different room and area functions under one value. This way you have a series of simplified spatial categories, for which you can easily collect and compare the information.

Cost Estimators & Subcontractors

As cost estimators and subcontractors, you are constantly faced with the challenge of working with BIM models from different authors who create BIM data differently. You need an easy way to re-organize and extract data based on your specific needs, without having to go back to each author for changes.

Here is how Smart Properties can help you get the validated quality data you need:

  • Translate to a common language – Different disciplines use different naming conventions, abbreviations, and sometimes even different languages. With Smart Properties, you can efficiently map multiple values under one common property value, and blend these differences across the models. For example, different terms used for concrete across the models like beton, betonnen, C30/37, CONC, etc., all get sorted under one value, Concrete.
  • Merge different values – Sometimes all the information you need is in the model, but assigned under different properties which can’t be easily merged to extract the correct quantities. Smart Properties let you combine values into one new value, which makes data extraction easier and more reliable with Lists. For example, different room surfaces previously counted separately, like Wall surface, Floor surface, and Ceiling Surface all become one new value, Surface.

Team Leads & Modelers

As team leads and modelers of a specific discipline on a project, you are responsible for the work carried out by your team, and for delivering high-quality models. That is why it is important for you to have an easy way of checking and smoothing out models before sharing.

Smart Properties will make your life easier by helping you:

  • Pre-check your model – Pre-set Smart Properties can be further checked with Smart Views, ensuring the necessary information is present. This allows team leaders to pre-check their models, and ensure the set information delivery requirements are met.
  • Catch mistakes before they are published – Validate if all necessary information is there and correctly added, and if not, easily re-assign an issue back to your modelers.
  • Save time with revisions – When the modelers can’t immediately go back and make all the necessary changes in the model and re-export, they can quickly edit the information directly in Zoom. This way the missing information doesn’t cause a bottleneck, and the model can be ready for sharing at the needed moment, leaving additional time to improve the native models.

Final thoughts

From taking the quality of information into your hands, enriching the data to your needs, standardizing information delivery, to delivering a cleaner, more understandable information overview; it is clear Smart Properties help various project stakeholders increase the information value and get the validated quality data.

Luckily, BIMcollab offers a 30-day free trial of Zoom, so you can experience taking ownership of information quality on your project as well. Sign up for the 30- day trial, and let us guide you towards high-quality models!