6 Features in Autodesk Build You Shouldn’t Be Without

In January 2023, Autodesk announced its release of dozens of feature additions and enhancements to products on the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform. One of those products was Autodesk® Build, with developments to the cost, data and project management features.

If you’re in the construction industry, following are 6 features in Autodesk Build you shouldn’t be without:

1.     Asset Tracking – Asset Tracking in Build allows teams to track and manage the lifecycle of all the project’s assets and equipment. With Assets, teams can track an asset from specification to acceptance. Through Tracking, trades and team members can understand the project’s staging and timing of tasks from an installed asset perspective. The Assets tool’s progress tracking features enable intuitive visual markups. Users can track asset installations with color coding on 2D sheets, while the office team remains aware of project progress. Field teams can even use productivity forecasting to adjust and improve their work. In addition, everyone can stay informed on which parts of the project are nearing completion and which are lagging behind.

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2.     Bridge for Submittals – In the Bridge tool of Build, users can share closed submittals across projects or accounts. The ‘Publish Closed Submittals to Files’ feature broadens the spectrum of information that can be shared during construction by team members. This gives them better visibility into the data and helps increase their ownership of it.

3.     Data Connector – Build has a Data Connector that allows project administrators and those with executive overview access to extract data from projects. The extraction can automatically sync with Power BI. Then users can analyze the data using the company’s business intelligence tools and dashboards. The Assets data schema and associated Power BI template align to help companies make better informed business decisions.

4.     Notifications – You can personalize Autodesk Build notifications to keep you updated on your projects. Whether you are the creator, manager, reviewer, co-reviewer, or watcher in the RFI workflow, a feature called “New Project Frequency Defaults” enables project members to customize their email notifications. Notifications occur when an RFI is:

·        Submitted

·        Changed to open

·        Answered or rejected

·        Closed

·        Re-opened

·        Voided

·        Commented on

·        Changed for ball-in-court status

5.     Payment Approvals – If your company would like to have the option for an automatic workflow for payment applications, the Cost Payment Applications feature in Build will help. You can set up custom approval workflows where you choose whether to have the system automatically start the approval workflow or manually trigger an item to proceed. The manual trigger allows someone to review and fix issues with a payment application before it makes its way through the established payment workflow.

6.     Report Templates – In the Report tool under the Templates tab, users can sort and filter for the criteria “Updated by.” This enables users to see which user last updated a report template and also gives more context about the history of the template.

Learn more about Autodesk Build and Autodesk Construction Cloud in the free Applied Software, Graitec Group eBook: The Importance of a Common Data Environment.