Saving Time with Synchrony

For a BIM manager, no matter how hard you try, there are just too many things that can waste your time. One of the major time wasters is managing documents and moving them around. And how about creating custom reports every time someone on the project asks for something kind of similar to another report but still a little different? And everyone knows about how much time it takes to review documents for clashes.

There’s an old way to do things, which is heavily manual-tasked. There’s also a new way to do things that relies on automation to condense the hours required for manual tasks from hours to mere minutes. A recent webinar by Michael Reuter, “How a BIM Implementation Specialist Saves Time,” looked at four big time wasters and how to streamline processes to save time.

Comparing Documents and Adding Hyperlinks

With the old way, you open a document in Bluebeam eXtreme, add hyperlinks, compare the documents for revisions, slipsheet the new drawing, save as the individual sheets, then upload the sheets to BIM 360 Field.

Using the new way, you drag and drop your document to BIM 360, compare 2D vs. 3D models and sheets, automatically create hyperlinks, versions, name, number and title. Done.

Clash Management

With the old way, using Navisworks, you can literally encounter hundreds of clashes. The viewpoints are inconsistent, and it’s hard for you and your engineers to know where all those clashes are located.

Using the new way, you create viewpoints consistently. Slice the model by level or floorplan or building segment. Then do your clash coordination on a slice by slice basis. This way everything is reviewed the same way. In his webinar, Michael suggested orienting the model pointing north and using a column gridline to give a bird’s-eye view of where the issues are located. Everyone’s on the same page.

Reports

With the old way, you created a report with Excel, Bluebeam or just using a PDF. The data is not organized in this manual process. It’s difficult and time-consuming to update, and you end up spending a lot of time managing reports instead of managing your project.

Using the new way, do your up front field work and get everything into the BIM 360 system, including photos where appropriate. When it’s time to develop a report, you can schedule it to generate automatically in BIM 360. You can easily organize reports a variety of ways that will accommodate the variety of requests you receive. The report processing is quick, condensing 10 hours of work into 10 minutes. Higher quality of reports faster.

Duplication of Data Entry

With the old way, you receive files from the architect and download them into the correct directories on the server. Then you repeat the same process for Sharepoint. Then you repeat the same process in BIM 360. Maybe you even repeat it again.

With the new way, you use 360 Sync to move the files where they need to go. First you choose a single source of truth (the server or Sharepoint, for instance). Then enter the destination links into 360 Sync. It does the rest by pushing the data out where it needs to go. No time wasted.

As a BIM manager, you have plenty of things that occupy your time. Get rid of the time wasters from the “old way” and get back to managing your project. Whether it’s handling documents, creating reports or dealing with clashes manually, it’s time to employ automation to save time. Contact Applied Software today and talk to an industry expert about how BIM 360 and 360 Sync can give you back hours of your week.