Software developers are using the cloud to dramatically expand the collaborative potential of building information modeling (BIM) when it comes to project management tasks by enabling stakeholders to contribute or participate in the work process, irrespective of their physical location or working hours.
Autodesk’s BIM 360 Team provides stakeholders with a cloud-based project management workspace that can be accessed by all team members, thus enhancing BIM’s ability to expedite collaboration on complex, multidisciplinary undertakings.
They achieve this by means of now-ubiquitous mobile smart devices, regardless of whether they’re in the office, at a client’s location or at the point of construction.
By situating the project management system in the cloud, stakeholders who are located in disparate real-world locations can also jointly participate in real-time design review sessions.
Given the broad-based access and collaborative usage at the heart of cloud-based BIM project management, BIM 360 Team supports a broad variety of over 50 design file formats, including AutoCAD (DWG, CAD), DXF, Revit (RVT), IFC and Navisworks (NWD, NWF).
According to Autodesk, the cloud-based workstation can also be accessed via any type of connected smart device, simply by using the mobile app version of BIM 360 Team.
While ubiquitous, universal access to project management data, irrespective of working hours, is the key advantage of cloud-based BIM platforms. It’s also of key importance to possess a sufficient level of flexibility and security.
To this end, BIM 360 Team gives project administrators the ability to manage and control the user roles and permissions of participants directly, varying them depending upon their responsibilities and mandates for the jobs.
Other developers are seeking to bring the benefits of cloud-based BIM platforms to project management, including 3D Repo, which has added virtual reality functionality to its software offering, and BIM object AB with the launch of BIM supply.
Canadian engineering services firm Stantec used cloud-based BIM project management to improve collaboration and coordination for the development of Brentwood Mall’s residential towers in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Stantec was the architect of record chosen by client Shape Properties and was commissioned to do the parkade for the project alongside the bases for more than 10 residential high-rises.
The client wanted a high level of coordination given the scale and complexity of the project, so Aubrey Tucker, Stantec regional team lead, decided to turn to BIM 360 Team to satisfy this request.
“When we suggested this to the client, they were excited because it was going to be time saved,” said Tucker. “For the first time, they were a part of this process. Now we’re always live and we’re always looking at the latest and greatest.”
“It’s quick, not like before when we had to ask IT to help us,” said Felix Stan, BIM manager at Stantec. “[The client] can right away add comments … we can access our model in real time, and if we ask them to update their models or synch to central, we see the update right away.”
BIM 360 Team is part of the BIM 360 construction management package, which Autodesk is promoting as a full suite of cloud-connected tools that can be used at any time or location during the lifecycle of a building project. It sits alongside a slew of other software applications that fall under the BIM 360 penumbra, including BIM 360 Docs, BIM 360 Field, BIM 360 Glue, BIM 360 Layout and BIM 360 Plan.
Using the software is as simple as downloading the BIM 360 Team app onto an iPad and connecting to the cloud-based workstation. Autodesk is currently providing users with only paid pricing for the product, but it's only $10 a month per user. You can try it free for 30 days to see if it will will for your team.