In previous blogs, we explored the new features and intelligent commands from the latest Bricsys’ Version 23 of our CAD-based solutions for designer, drafters and modelers. Here, we review the Bricsys 24/7 session from the Digital Summit, looking at our Common Data Environment (CDE) for construction, presented by Cathi Hayes (Vice President, Go-to-Market) and Tim Davis (Product Owner, Bricsys 24/7). The session delved into how architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) companies can overcome these challenges with Bricsys 24/7, a platform designed to remove repetition through automation for design-to-construction projects.
Read on for an overview of what they had to say at the Digital Summit.
Meeting Common Challenges with CDE for Construction Projects
For most AEC professionals, all construction projects encounter well-known challenges set in the original objectives:
- Completion on time
- Finishing within budget
- Effective communicating across contractors
- Full data transparency for multiple stakeholders
Faced with these challenges in civil and infrastructure construction projects, it’s even more important that constructors have full sight of dynamic and multiple project workflows. To do this, Cathi and Tim highlight how the challenges prevalent across the entire AEC industry benefit from implementing a CDE.
Powerful, yet simple CDE for construction
The good news is that construction projects now have all the tools they need to streamline documentation processes. Most cost overruns and delays in the AEC sector can be traced back to a few root causes explained by Cathi. Bricsys 24/7 is a cloud-based CDE that aims to address these causes and help project stakeholders deliver projects on time and within budget.
At Bricsys, our vision for a powerful CDE is to provide an easy-to-use tool that helps tackle a project’s complexity with a simple and intuitive platform, ensuring your next project is set up to succeed. As Tim summarizes:
Our vision for Bricsys 24/7 is a CDE platform for construction information viewing, markup, and cloud exchange — without complication.
Every project is different, which is why Bricsys 24/7 is designed with flexibility in mind. Depending on scope and user access, the CDE can serve as a simple document management and hosting platform, a project information management system, or a common data environment for all contract documents and workflows.
How does an Interoperable CDE Reduce Documentation Chaos?
The biggest problems arise when stakeholders rely on different systems and file types to manage the scope of the project, leaving project managers to figure out how to patch everything together and hope that nothing has been overlooked. Cathi, who started her career as an architect, explains how this leads to major project inefficiencies and inconsistent information among stakeholders — in other words, it can be chaos.
In a digitalized world, relying on paper copies, faxes and locally stored files is a recipe for disaster. That’s why Bricsys 24/7 was designed as a cloud-based platform that can be accessed from anywhere at any time. Just like with other information storage systems, 24/7 reigns in the chaos using easy-to-access, secure technology.
What’s New in Bricsys 24/7’s CDE?
Those who already use Bricsys 24/7 will be happy about the changes in the newest release, including an even more intuitive UI and UX. On the user interface side, this includes new app features, better access to folder structures, and other user-experience improvements are aimed at reducing clutter.
Finally, back-end improvements in the newest version of Bricsys 24/7 mean better performance, more stability and fewer clicks for workflows. As Cathi puts it:
We focused on making the solution feel more familiar and intuitive to use.
In the on-demand CDE demonstration session, Tim walks us through how users can make managing bids, RFPs, and RFIs a breeze. In the CDE, users can track different vendors and applicants easier in one central location and give access at the right level with a permissions-based roles. This lets you streamline the flow of information, while preserving transparency at the administrative level for audit trails. These permissions can extend to people outside of your organization, such as bidders, and can be as granular as allowing downloading or printing privileges. No more lost emails or concerns about file sizes.
However, what makes Bricsys 24/7’s CDE so powerful is its capability to develop customized automated workflows in a visual way. In addition to standard features such as automatic notifications, workflows can trigger more sophisticated actions like feeding back RFI responses and clarifications to all bidders.
Beyond bid and proposal management, the latest version of Bricsys 24/7 includes new features for construction administration. Best of all is the introduction of Simple Tasks, which lets you quickly assign tasks with just a few bits of information. As shown in the CDE demo, other vital functions, such as RFI management, are easier than ever to use.
Of course, the key to keeping projects on time and within budget is good data management and document control. Bricsys has always considered document control to be the backbone capability of Bricsys 24/7, and the latest version includes a new UI that lets users painlessly manage folder structures, maintain repositories, and generate reports.
These are just a few of the new features of Bricsys 24/7. Our demo walks through additional ways that our CDE makes information management a breeze, from advanced searching and drawing file support to secure mobile device integration for iOS and Android. In the words of Tim:
Managing a project effectively means managing information and assignments effectively as well.
Bricsys 24/7 Super-charges High-Value Construction Workflow
In short, Bricsys 24/7 is designed to make data seamlessly accessible to all stakeholders using a single easy-to-use platform. It can be used as a simple, centralized data repository or a full-fledged CDE available to the entire project team. And Bricsys 24/7 offers the flexibility to adapt to the existing structure of your construction project.
By reigning in the chaos with a CDE purpose built for construction, Bricsys 24/7 can help reduce project risk and keep projects on track. At the same time, the cloud-based CDE platform is simple to use, easy to access, and offers users intuitive tools to manage information for multiple stakeholders.
Ready to learn more about a CDE built for construction projects? Watch the full Digital Summit session for more information and a step-by-step guide on the latest features of Bricsys 24/7.
Bricsys Digital Summit now on-demand
The Bricsys Digital Summit 2022 is now on-demand. Catch up on all the latest innovative tools in BricsCAD V23 and advances in cloud-connectivity within Bricsys 24/7. See product experts, live demos and break-out sessions. And find out how you can Build Better with Bricsys.
