Enhancing Design Coordination in AEC Projects with BIM Collaborate Pro

Enhancing Design Coordination in AEC Projects with BIM Collaborate Pro

by | Dec 16, 2024 | Autodesk, BIM, Collaboration

In the world of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC), the importance of seamless coordination across various design functions and disciplines cannot be overstated. Properly aligned workflows can transform project outcomes, significantly improving efficiency and minimizing the need for multiple design iterations. With advanced tools like BIM Collaborate Pro, an Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) product, design coordination has entered a new era, enabling projects to be managed with greater precision, security, and traceability. The following video explores how BIM Collaborate Pro facilitates this coordination process, ensuring that every discipline can collaborate seamlessly while enhancing project quality. Watch it now to see how advanced design coordination can transform AEC project workflows.

The Impact of Defined Review Processes

A well-structured review process through design coordination is key to achieving large efficiency gains. Establishing this process at both the company and project levels is critical for effective collaboration, ensuring that every discipline adheres to project standards and procedures from the beginning. This approach enables various teams, each contributing their specialized expertise, to work cohesively within a shared framework. As a result, it reduces rework and streamlines the journey toward the final design.

Project-Level Coordination: Efficient Sharing and Collaboration

Large-scale construction projects often involve multiple companies, each contributing specialized data for their respective design disciplines. Effective project-level coordination facilitates this collaboration by enabling secure data sharing among these companies. This involves creating a robust environment where each discipline can exchange information with stakeholders while also managing their internal data-sharing needs.

Using BIM Collaborate Pro, companies can create a shared coordination space specifically for this purpose. The shared coordination space acts as a controlled environment where design data can be securely shared and managed, enhancing both security and traceability. Additionally, the platform’s clash detection features enable teams to identify and resolve potential issues early on, ensuring a smoother path to project completion.

Edit Coordination Space Folders screenshot
Setting up coordination space folders in Autodesk Construction Cloud

Company-Level Coordination: Leveraging Internal Collaboration

Within each company, design disciplines need a collaborative framework to refine their designs and optimize quality before sharing with other project stakeholders. BIM Collaborate Pro allows companies to set up dedicated coordination spaces, where teams can run internal clash checks and coordinate data among internal disciplines, such as architectural, structural, and MEP. By using live connections for data sharing, these internal teams can ensure that each design aspect aligns well before it is integrated at the project level.

Managing Coordination Spaces screenshot
Managing coordination spaces in Autodesk Construction Cloud

The Role of Project Templates and Permissions

Setting up a project within ACC often starts with the use of project templates. These templates store critical project parameters, standards, and member permissions, allowing for consistent setup across projects. By defining permissions at a folder level, project administrators can control access based on team roles, ensuring that collaborators only interact with the data they need. This security-first approach is crucial for maintaining control over sensitive project information.

Creating a project template in Autodesk Construction Cloud
Creating a project template in Autodesk Construction Cloud

“The refined standard project management folder structure and templates intuitively caused project participants to explore the use of all available modules, reducing management by email and spreadsheets.”

– Ann Blanchard, Senior Project Manager, Arcadis

Flexibility and Adaptability in Coordination Spaces

Every construction project evolves, and the BIM Collaborate Pro coordination spaces are designed to adapt to these changes. For example, new coordination spaces can be added, and existing ones can be adjusted by modifying content folders, enabling clash detection, or even renaming the spaces as project needs shift. This flexibility ensures that the coordination setup remains relevant and useful throughout the project lifecycle.

Enhancing Interdisciplinary Collaboration with Defined Workflows

Design collaboration workflows within the Autodesk Construction Cloud streamline data sharing across companies. Here’s how it works. Once a design team—say the structural team—creates a data package, it is shared along a project timeline. The MEP team, working within the same environment, can then explore this structural data. If they find it necessary for their designs, they “consume” the data, bringing it into their own data structures to inform their design decisions. This shared workflow not only enhances coordination, but also maintains a record of interactions, ensuring traceable and reliable data exchanges.

Issue Tracking and Resolution with BIM Collaborate Pro

Effective issue management is vital in collaborative projects. When clashes or concerns arise, they can be tracked and resolved within Autodesk Construction Cloud. For example, if a clash is detected between structural and MEP data, an issue is raised and assigned to the relevant team, with responsible members and response timelines prepopulated via templates. This structured approach enables team members to address issues promptly, redesign as needed, and re-share updated models, keeping all stakeholders informed throughout the resolution process.

Issues management screenshot
Manage issues in Autodesk Construction Cloud

Driving Efficiency with Advanced Coordination Tools

BIM Collaborate Pro, paired with the AEC Collection, empowers design and construction teams to elevate operational efficiency through advanced workflows. By enabling coordinated, flexible, and secure project environments, these tools help teams work more effectively, reduce rework, and ultimately deliver better project outcomes.

Incorporating design coordination with BIM Collaborate Pro into your projects can streamline your team’s workflows, minimize costly errors, and enable more efficient project delivery. With coordination at both company and project levels, teams are set up for success from day one.

The Best Way to Get BIM Collaborate Pro

If you’re new to Autodesk or want to get this software today, our team at Robotech can help. We offer comprehensive entry-level basics training, and we sell Autodesk software directly to companies across the country. We are a gold partner of Autodesk, and we’ll ensure your team is fully set up and comfortable with the software before we consider the job “done”.
We have a few Autodesk packages that we offer, and we can provide a free trial for you to test it before you buy. Within a few minutes, you’ll see how helpful this software is in maintaining your healthcare compliance accreditation.

Schedule a call to get started today.

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Issue Resolution and Clash Avoidance with Autodesk BIM Collaborate

Issue Resolution and Clash Avoidance with Autodesk BIM Collaborate

by | Sep 16, 2022 | Architecture, Autodesk, BIM, Collaboration

ACC Blog - Round Trip Issues BIM Collaborate

Construction management is a highly complex and multi-dimensional collaborative effort. To execute on projects effectively, several people and moving parts all need to click and stay in sync. Issues need to be resolved quickly, questions must be answered in a timely manner, and there should be trust and accountability across the entire team.

Accomplishing all that, however, is easier said than done.

Design and construction teams struggle to find a seamless way to identify issues and circulate them to the appropriate stakeholders. Often, teams rely on spreadsheets, static reports, or third-party management solutions to gather information and make decisions.

Unfortunately, these tools and sources are unreliable and inaccessible to the wider team. They cause confusion and are ultimately ineffective for detecting clashes and resolving issues. Not to mention, the manual tasks involved with static documents and spreadsheets are tedious, time consuming, and can cause issues to slip through the cracks.

The result? Issues that could’ve been avoided bubble up to the surface later on in the form of rework — and unnecessary costs. Clashes alone account for 5% of construction spend and 52% of the $280 billion of annual rework costs are caused by poor project data and communication globally.

To address this, many companies turn to third-party point solutions to address specific problems. However, these programs usually require further training and implementation, as well as additional costs.

To make matters more complicated, the different parties involved (e.g., design firms, GCs, and subcontractors) all use different systems and platforms. The JBKnowledge 2020 ConTech report found that 63% of construction pros are using three to six more apps  — which makes integration and communication harder and limits project data usage.

All this to say that managing project issues in construction can be a headache.

What if you could address issues at the same time and at the same place, to streamline resolution?

The combination of Autodesk BIM Collaborate (part of the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform), Navisworks, and Revit makes all that possible.

Thanks to the tight integration between these solutions, issues can be created, managed, or resolved directly in the tools you work in daily, and are connected using a common data environment (CDE).

By surfacing and resolving issues in a CDE, you create a lasting history of decisions made for downstream stakeholders for future reference. It also allows multidisciplinary teams with different tools to manage and communicate about issues using a common solution.

All in all, this paves the way for a roundtrip workflow, which helps teams close the loop with any clashes or issues that arise.

Issues created in either Autodesk BIM Collaborate or Navisworks can be assigned and contextualized in either of those tools and resolved in Revit. That resolution then makes its way back to Autodesk BIM Collaborate for reporting and future project forecasting.

Let’s take a look at just one of the ways all these solutions work together.

 

 

Autodesk BIM Collaborate

Autodesk BIM Collaborate’s browser-based model coordination and design collaboration tool comes with automatic clash detection and grouping tools that help identify issues early on. The software’s UI is intuitive and easy on the eyes, so all discipline types (designers, GCs, and specialty contractors) can use the solution.

Team members can self-check their work as they go, and if issues come up, they can flag it with a location pin and add details such as the root cause, description, important dates, and clash screenshot. From there, they can assign the issue to the appropriate stakeholder.

Because multiple stakeholders can take part in identifying and assigning issue tasks, the coordination process is faster and much more streamlined. Issues and their associated models are stored in a common data environment for multi-team, product, and construction phase access to action on.

 

 

Navisworks Coordination Issues Add-In (Navisworks 2021-2022)

This Navisworks add-in connects models, views, and issues through a CDE, so BIM/VDC managers can easily create, track, assign, and resolve issues directly in their desktop application.

If a Navisworks user is unsure about an issue, they can simply comment directly within the platform. Similar to Autodesk BIM Collaborate, users can add issues and include details like type, location, assignee, description, and due date. They can then pair that issue with an image snapshot of the clash identified. Thanks to this add-in, stakeholders using the software can better contextualize the issue, resolve it, or assign it to someone else.

Navisworks also has an updated Coordination Space and Append capabilities. With the upgraded issues add-in, users now have the ability to append additional models from a Model Coordination space to their already opened set of models. This increases the efficiency of coordination meetings by allowing users to immediately update your .nwf files as new model files arrive from project design teams.

Plus, this free add-in seamlessly connects with Autodesk BIM Collaborate and Revit, so there’s no need for third-party integrations. You’ll reduce manual work and miscommunication, and resolve issues more quickly.

See for yourself by downloading and installing this add-in from the Autodesk App Store. Once installed, start Navisworks and navigate to the Coordination tab.

Revit Issues Add-in (Revit 2020 or later)

Using the very same common data environment and issues layer, architects and engineers working in Revit can scan through all the details we covered above and any additional information from the comments/history, to resolve the issue directly in the model.

This type of connectivity displays the same information to the entire project team, thus enabling stakeholders to literally stay on the same (digital) page. Stakeholders benefit from having more transparency and greater levels of accountability which result in less rework from issues slipping through the cracks.

Instead of waiting until the next coordination meeting to resolve an issue, users can continuously collaborate on models, speeding up time-to-site and reducing the expensive design iterations that occur from poor and sporadic communication.

You access this add-in from the Autodesk Desktop App or your Autodesk account. Get more info on how to use it from the Autodesk Knowledge Network.

 

 

Bringing It All Together

Autodesk BIM Collaborate, along with the Navisworks and Revit add-ins, take issue management to a whole new level.

These tightly integrated tools don’t just let you track or manage issues, they create an environment to collaborate and resolve them.

Issue resolution is tracked in Autodesk BIM Collaborate with a dashboard of outstanding issues and resolution overtime, paving the way for better management and prediction for future projects.

Plus, the entire project team can work together to resolve issues and collaborate with a “clash avoidance” mindset (as opposed to a “clash detection” mindset). This speeds up the time-to-site and reduces costly rework.

With a roundtrip workflow, issues are created in either Autodesk Construction Cloud or Navisworks, and actionable in Autodesk BIM Collaborate, Revit, or Navisworks, bringing the best of each environment to your next project.

Interested in experiencing Autodesk BIM Collaborate for yourself? Request a trial today.

5 Ways Digitalization Fosters a Collaborative Culture in Architecture

5 Ways Digitalization Fosters a Collaborative Culture in Architecture

by | Jan 21, 2022 | Architecture, BIM, Collaboration

collaborative architecture cannondesign team

The CannonDesign team collaborates using VR and other visualization tools. Courtesy of CannonDesign.

In 2017, CannonDesign broke ground by hiring Hilda Espinal as its first chief technology officer—a surprisingly uncommon position for large architecture and engineering firms.

With her background in architecture, information technology, and project management, Espinal helps the firm use technology to develop better design and stronger partnerships. This approach, she believes, leads to higher productivity, competitiveness, and profits for everyone involved in a project, from the designers to the builders to the building occupants. Firms might once have kept information close in the name of differentiation, but Espinal is seeing more of a collaborative spirit in the industry: an open-sharing environment that helps everyone start the race from farther down the track.

Though Building Information Modeling (BIM) is at the core of this shift, Espinal says a culture of sharing has spurred other practices, such as bringing subject-matter experts in-house for planning and design. Here, Espinal offers five lessons that illustrate ways digitalization is transforming the culture of collaboration for architects, engineers, contractors, and occupants and owners.

collaborative architecture kaiser permanente radiation oncology center in anaheim, california

CannonDesign’s in-house medical experts collaborated with the firm’s designers on the Kaiser Permanente Radiation Oncology Center project in Anaheim, CA. Courtesy of CannonDesign.

1. Sharing Information Facilitates Progress

Project delivery is not a linear process, but it’s often presented that way, Espinal says. In reality, many aspects of it are often cyclical, and therefore, the opportunities to share information are rich. “I’m a licensed architect, and while our expertise is crucial to a project, it is limited,” she explains. “Imagine how much better it would be if we had the additional insight of a contractor—early on—to help further educate us on constructability realities and help each other avoid design-to-build pitfalls. Because when we operate in silos, we are simply not equipped to foresee.”

When computer modeling first became part of design, it required such a massive investment of technology, time, education, and content building that firms were reluctant to share information, Espinal says. Now, the technology has evolved to a point where nearly everybody in developed economies can access it. Espinal hopes that best practices for using modeling and visualization software will be established for each industry sector; adopting a common approach could get people at all stages of a project on the same page much quicker.

“Information is power—when it’s shared, not when it’s kept to yourself,” she says. “That’s when we start to evolve and improve upon each other’s knowledge. Being able to free resources up, it’s ultimately going to benefit the actual product, whether it’s a building or a city.”

3. Collaboration Must Begin Within

In the next five years, Espinal says she’d like to see more digital collaboration happening within design, engineering, and construction firms, which will lead to better information sharing with other collaborators. On a strategic level, firms can start by having conversations about what they’re comfortable sharing and what they aren’t, so it’s all very intentional.

 

UC San Diego Health’s Jacobs Medical Center. Courtesy of CannonDesign.

“Knowledge sharing and knowledge capture really need to grow at the micro level and within our own firms, where we should make a more concerted effort toward digitizing our knowledge,” she says. “You need to not just have it all in your head; you need to record it somewhere and make it accessible and shareable. That’s the very first step.”

Because CannonDesign’s portfolio includes major health-care projects—such as UC San Diego Health’s Jacobs Medical Center and the Kaiser Permanente Radiation Oncology Center in Anaheim, CA—the firm has taken the uncommon step of hiring staff medical professionals that are integrated in project design from the get-go. Its practice, therefore, includes early advisory services all the way through post-occupancy engagement and facility-optimization solutions.

4. Visualization Software Is Here to Stay

There are many ways to approach client collaboration. When CannonDesign created the new student center for Toronto’s York University, for example, it engaged 11,000 students in every aspect of the process, working to ensure that inclusivity and wellness were at the forefront of the design. Designers are trained in a vocabulary of drawings. They can present building sections and elevations and convey what they represent to project stakeholders. But immersive visualization platforms—virtual reality, augmented reality, and the like—improve dialogue with clients and project partners, Espinal says.

“With the advent of technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality, we can say, ‘Here, please try on these goggles,’ and you can walk in this space and ask, ‘Does that ceiling feel too low? Does the width of this hallway feel right?’” she explains. “Now, clients can really experience design. It gives them a much louder voice to say, ‘Hey, this works; this doesn’t’—they become a further part of the design process.”

collaborative architecture York University student center Toronto cannondesign

York University’s new student center in Toronto. Courtesy of CannonDesign.

5. Information Sharing Is an Ecological Responsibility

Climate change puts increasing pressure on designers to create sustainable, resilient spaces—reusing materials, reducing waste, and orienting buildings to maximize daylight or other conditions. Because climate change poses threats to the built environment, it may not be ecologically responsible for individual firms to spend time and resources developing their own sustainability solutions when the greater community could benefit from those ideas.

“If you’re committed to being sustainably sensitive, you start to think about glazing versus opaque surfaces or about the orientation of a building, modeling it and testing options,” Espinal says. “After a few times of trying it, it becomes part of the intel.” She says designers have a responsibility to share this insight: “Ultimately, being responsible to the environment is just something we need to do and certainly not an area to be competing about. We have one earth to share and need not keep knowledge gained and best practices to ourselves.”

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