How to contain the project data explosion
The benefits of BIM are significant: early coordination and clash detection, a shortened project schedule and better visualisation, to name a few. However, as teams begin to build out these models with additional relevant data, a new hurdle emerges: how to distribute these gigantic files that average more than 50MB in size?
As these files increasingly serve as the primary design record shared by the various parties on a project, they need to be repeatedly shared, revised and shared again, by multiple companies and many people. This results in a surge of data that traditional tools for information exchange, such as email and FTP, find hard to cope with.
Yadav remarks: “Most approvals involve multiple parties modifying documents. We had large attachments and, with email, people would soon lose track of changes. There was no record of what had happened and why, and this would occasionally lead to issues with consultants.”
New tools to meet the challenge
There is clearly a gap between the tools needed to manage today’s project information and the capabilities of traditional tools most often used today. As our industry is primarily project based, it seems logical that our tools for communicating should also be.
This explains why the uptake of online project collaboration solutions has increased so rapidly – including by many of India’s leading construction and engineering firms – over recent years. These web-based systems allow the entire project team to access, distribute, track and store their documents and correspondence using a single platform.
When using a collaboration system, project members can securely log in and retrieve their files and mails using a Google-style search engine. Documents of any size, even the largest of BIM files, can be transmitted online to other project members, complete with the audit trail of any revisions and decisions.
Particularly on larger developments, this can have a significant impact on project delivery. Shankar Narayannan, head of Project Controls at L&T, used an online collaboration system on New Delhi Airport T3, the world’s second largest airport terminal.
He says: “Due to our timeline [the new terminal needed to be completed in time for the Commonwealth Games] we had very strict review cycles and so the distribution of documents between parties had to be fast. We had a wide team of stakeholders, often about 1,200 engineers engaged on the project, and so distributing the right files to these people was a complex task.
“Our online collaboration platform became an indispensible element of the project. So much time was saved searching for information; the powerful keyword search capabilities meant people could instantly bring up what they needed. Every document and mail distribution was searchable and accessible from remote locations. The time saved in locating documents was very important on this project.”
He adds: “Previously, when reviewing and corresponding using email, we’d get bounce-backs and there would be no record of what was sent and received. When information is sent on a collaboration platform, we know it has reached the recipient and will be responded to.”
As the proliferation of data in construction continues to grow, so too will the need for more advanced systems and processes to manage BIM and multi-company communication. Online collaboration systems represent just one technology that is rising to this challenge and helping the industry manage the data flow.
What’s clear is that, for clients and contractors looking for efficiency gains and a competitive advantage, effective information management is a great place to start.
