What are the advantages of producing a digital As-built record?
At the end of a construction project, all the companies that have contributed to it must submit the As-built record to the project owner. These files should contain all the information about the building and its equipment that the client will need to manage, maintain, renovate, modify or demolish the building.
The traditionally paper-based construction sector is seeing a number of processes being modernised, including As-built records, as part of its digital transition. The challenge is innovation and progress, with the aim of becoming more efficient in the management of construction projects. This is becoming a necessity, especially to avoid having to search for key information in paper files for hours on end.
Digital technology, while needing to be organised, can be more reliable and time-efficient. Although its use tends to increase initial expenditure due to modelling costs, digital As-built records also have the advantage of reducing costs in the long run. This is especially important when we know that maintenance accounts for around 75% of the total cost of a construction project.
How to ensure a reliable and complete As-built record?
Building a robust digital As-built record can be a daunting task if the owner or contractor does not have the powerful and effective tools to do so.
Several challenges can be encountered.
- Not everyone has access to the software and knowledge of others involved in a BIM project, making collaboration difficult.
- Each participant in a BIM project has his or her own skills and knowledge, which are not always easy to share.
- Failure to share the same data from different software can result in incorrect and not always up-to-date data in real time.
To address these challenges, Onfly and BIMData.io have joined forces to ensure the production of reliable and complete As-built record deliverables. For more information on this partnership, which facilitates the exchange of models and access to BIM data, please see our press release.
Interoperability facilitated by openBIM
Interoperability between design and maintenance software is one of the keys to the digital transition of the construction world. It is essential to ensure better collaboration between all parties and data uniqueness and continuity. The IFC format meets these challenges, allowing documents to be read by all, and ensuring flexibility in the choice of the preferred technology.
BIMData.io is becoming increasingly important in IFC management. BIMData.io guarantees an integrated viewer capable of loading several tens of thousands of objects. This open source and open BIM solution centralises information and thus facilitates access for all collaborators.
To meet this need for interoperability, BIMData.io has created a connection with Onfly, a centralised BIM library solution that manages, centralises and harmonises BIM data in order to speed up design and increase team productivity.
Join Stanislas Limouzi, CEO at BIMData.io and Rui Wang, Business Development Manager Southeast Asia for Onfly at BIM&CO, on the 22nd of February for a webinar on this topic, entitled “How do you guarantee a BIM access for all ?“.
Guaranteeing continuity of information
After the As-built record has been handed over to the project manager, the building management phase begins. The BIM As-built record is a goldmine of data and information, the continuity of which is essential to ensure good maintenance – provided of course that the data is entered in the right place at the right time.
Maintainers also need to process information that is different between implementation and maintenance. This data processing is facilitated by solutions such as BIMData.io or Onfly.
BIMData.io allows its users to connect with their model via the IFC. Once this is done, Onfly allows users to access and enrich their BIM objects. Objects put into a CAD or BIM modelling software from Onfly can be recognised directly in BIMData.io to enrich new information or facilitate the transmission of additional information that is not in the IFC.
Onfly also helps solve problems with product data or requirements that are lost in software transfers, identification, documentation, re-keying, and product data extraction.
