Construction Collaboration: How Sharing the Constructible Process Drives Teamwork

In an era where connectivity drives results, shared building information models (BIMS) foster collaboration and reduce costly errors, enabling your firm to deliver quality structures to  satisfied customers on time and under budget.

Modern structures are complicated, and so are the processes for designing, building and maintaining them. The building lifecycle involves a broad range of interrelated processes, expertise and technical skills.

Successfully constructing any building calls for skilled execution throughout the project lifecycle, from design all the way through to building maintenance. That’s the only way your team can deliver results that exceed customer expectations, on-time and within budget.

That level of effectiveness keeps construction firms in business. Anything less costs money, damages reputations, and can even bankrupt your company.

These skill requirements make architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) a demanding, high-risk field. As industry professionals know, communication is critical to coping with challenges and mitigating uncertainties.

From Communication to Collaboration

There’s a way to raise your game by taking traditional project communication to the next level – collaboration. Collaborative project teams start planning their approach together from day one of the building project.

We’re living in the era of connectivity, so advanced collaboration calls for sharing project data. The constructible process, driven by a shared, dependable 3D building information model (BIM), enables seamless stakeholder collaboration from building conception to completion.

Structural Designer and Architect Collaboration

Structural designers are among the most crucial links in the construction project chain. They’re often an architect’s first sounding board on a conceptual design’s soundness and feasibility.

That initial interaction, with its revisions and reconciliations, is usually the first point of project stakeholder collaboration on a major construction project. Professionals with multiple perspectives work together to arrive at a practical, satisfactory design.

Having architects and structural designers work out these analyses and computations separately and manually leads to confusion and delay. On the other hand, working from a shared 3D model makes calculations and revisions easier for all parties to visualize and assess.

Better modelling fosters quicker and more informed, collaborative decision making. When teams replace figures laid out in spreadsheets with a 3D structural model, they find it easier to create a final, feasible design together.

Positive Ripple Effects Throughout Constructible Process

Once the architect and structural designer have worked out their constructible process, the structural engineer shares the plan with fabricators and contractors. Having a 3D building information model from which to work clarifies expectations and makes everyone’s job easier.

Fewer Requests for Information (RFIs) come back from the field to the structural engineer. This saves everyone’s time and ensures efficient fabrication, installation and construction.

Introducing the 3D BIM during a project’s design phase has other positive ripple effects throughout the constructible process. For example, presentations using the 3D model help customers evaluate options while taking form, functions, costs, and environmental considerations into account.

When project stakeholders collaborate using a 3D BIM, late changes become less challenging to incorporate. Having a model that’s easy to understand and update eliminates confusion for detailers, staff on the factory floor, and onsite contractors and trades.

A constructible 3D BIM also helps stakeholders generate project documentation, drawings and  material lists. Creating these documents from a single source of truth saves time and tracks changes in one place, further boosting project team collaboration and efficiency.

Unleashing the Power of Knowledge

There’s an old saying that “knowledge is power.” In the past, some firms believed that hoarding knowledge empowered them with a competitive advantage.

Today’s constructible process emphasizes transparent project information sharing to unleash the power of collaboration. When structural designers provide collaborative access to a shared 3D model, all downstream stakeholders, including fabricators, contractors, trades and facilities managers, can deliver better results, faster, and at lower costs.

This enhanced collaboration, in turn, saves structural designers time and effort. It can allow them to focus on more creative and conceptual tasks such as improving processes, safety and sustainability.

Structural designers often find themselves juggling time, cost and quality to deliver sophisticated construction projects. Collaboration based on a comprehensive 3D building information model is a tried-and-true approach to constructing quality structures for satisfied customers on schedule and under budget.

BuildingPoint Can Help

Regardless of your trade discipline, BuildingPoint is committed to a BIM process that all stakeholders can use at any phase of the design, build and operate lifecycle of any structure.

Why not contact BuildingPoint today to discuss how the Trimble solutions we offer can help your business deliver construction projects more accurately, efficiently and profitably?