CC1611

VIEWPOINT
CORRELATING INFORMATION
With reference to the survey, Paul
explained that it is the skills required to
handle the flow of information that are
lacking and need to be enhanced. Thanks
to BIM, all model information should be
available from a single source, and that
includes financials as much as any other
type of construction information. Keeping
control of the costs related to a project on
a day-to-day basis is just as important as
monitoring resources, materials and the
management of the construction process,
keeping a track of day to day costs and
making sure that appropriate fees are
being charged.
To do this, project members need to be
able to correlate the flow of information
between all processes, keeping them
within teams and providing access to
models, simulations, schedules and
reports - and to support the flow with full
audit trails.
"There is no need to change working
processes to achieve this," said Paul. "In
fact all of this is being done already, and
the provision of new technology is
helping companies to achieve it, but the
emphasis has been on training people to
use the equipment to bolster the
company's creative processes, rather
than administration."
"What Newforma proposes," he
continued "is to facilitate the flow of
information between different processes -
but with a light touch. This can be done
without setting up new databases, or
changing working processes, but by
improving relationships between the
different sources of information, and
leveraging the strengths of the processes
already in place."
Companies can still use software like
SharePoint and Outlook, but Newforma
can provide an indexing layer on top of all
of these, enhancing the flow of information
within organisations, catering for
distributed sources, using the excellent
resources of Revit for deliverables,
providing extra tabs within Outlook, and
keeping track of documents and drawings
without replacing the authoring system.
Instead of spending hours a day looking
for information, administration tasks are
simplified, becoming more of a natural
step, and providing an auditable process
of what you really want to achieve.
A case in point. Some 10 years into the
life of the building, should a failure occur, a
properly audited and archived system
would be able to provide a consistent view
of all information from all sources, to
support any contentious issue or
agreement.
A GROWING PROBLEM
Whilst Paul explained that enhancing
access to information being held in silos in
either single or multiple projects is
achievable and desirable, sharing
information between them could still raise
problems. Companies using extranets will
have geared up their processes to suit
their needs, which may differ from future
partners. It is probably too much to expect
all companies to work on the same
baselines, and they will already have
problems sharing data between silos.
Companies, naturally, will have based
their requirements on what they thought
they wanted to achieve, without
considering what will be both desirable
and achievable in the future. They will not
have foreseen the dramatic rise in mobile
technology - now in widespread use on
the building site. Not only has this resulted
in a considerable rise in the amount of
information being made available in real
time, but it has also widened the decision
making force. And, of course, you can't
make valid decisions on the ground
without access to all appropriate and up
to date information.
NEWFORMA
Newforma has been in the information
gathering field for 13 years, providing
document information management for
the design and construction industries.
The company is headquartered in
Manchester, New Hampshire and
operates on a global basis - with new
offices recently opened in Germany.
The ethos of the company is to provide
hybrid platform technology (on-premise
and cloud) that embraces the adoption
of lean strategies, while putting
Information Management at the core of
BIM strategies.
The company provides solutions to
break down information silos, and to
enable continuous workflow and
collaboration processes - and, of course,
to more effectively handle the increasing
amount of information being collected on
each project.
www.newforma.com
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