Assemble attended the inaugural Buildings=Dataconference hosted by Case last month. The conference was great for stimulating discussions regarding data in design and construction processes and for thinking about how to build products that deliver intelligence to the AEC market. One of the re-occurring themes we heard at the conference, was the need for the right information, at the right time, delivered to the right people. So we thought we would focus this week’s blog on the requirements for building data-based products that deliver the right information for designing and building buildings.
- Logging Data
More than one presentation at the conference discussed how data can generate or drive behavior change, which is critical for improving project outcomes. This concept is quite personal to many of us who log our activity, sleep and caloric intake frequently in a day, to help understand our progress towards health and fitness goals. Yet in AEC, we often don’t have the information to make informed decisions throughout the design and construction process to ensure on time and on budget delivery. At Assemble, we are helping customers collect data to understand the types of changes occurring during design to have insight to manage quality, staffing and model development. If you aren’t collecting any data about the process how do you really know what your progress is? The data collected, is part of the feedback loop to inform decision making and improve project outcomes. - Tracking Data
To change behavior, with the goal of improving project quality, cost or time, intelligent information has to be readily available to the team, while the work is in progress. Many of the presentations at the conference reviewed web-based applications for dissemination of reports, and for delivering information to many different roles within an organization throughout the design and construction process. Reports that demonstrate progress were reiterated as the most useful for projects teams to understand if they were meeting requirements and to assess if the project was on target to meet goals. Providing quick, actionable information based on the data input is required for delivering the right information to our customers. - Data Adaptability
A core concept to providing project insight to design and construction teams is creating a data infrastructure that is adaptable, extensible and accessible. As projects develop, the data that is captured in the process changes. Data collection and reporting during design (quality, budget trending), differs from the data captured during precon (clash and constructability), construction (open issues, production), and occupancy (behavioral, environmental), yet all of these data sets inform the design, delivery and satisfaction of future built work. Providing customers with an adaptable, extensible, accessible environment to log, store, query and easily report their project data will provide the information necessary to change behavior and improve industry performance metrics.
At Assemble, we are working towards the collective vision of predicting design and construction outcomes, rather than simply responding, by providing our customers with a robust data management platform to improve their work by gaining access to the right information for whatever stage of the project. Thanks to the team at Case for constructing a forum to discuss data in the AEC industry.
For more information on the Buildings=Data Conference, check out the Case blog article.
Comments are closed.