Exchange

Seamless sharing of BIM models between various teams, both internal and external is critical to ensure succesful collaboration. Employing a Project Information Management system will add great value for all BIM projects.

Worksharing - Internal

At any given point of time, multiple team members will be accessing the same BIM Model in one office. Developing the BIM Models enable the team to share the workload based on the scope of work is critical.

Each BIM Modeling software has a different methodology built-in to carry out the work sharing activity (Ex. Worksets tool in Autodesk Revit). It is important to understand the work sharing concept thoroughly to avoid loss of information and abortive file re-organization at later stages.

File Sharing - External

Sharing of project information seamlessly with external team members is very important to succeed openly promotes better collaboration. BIM Model files are significantly heavier in comparison to traditional 2 dimensional drawings. Sharing large data sets between multiple stakeholders requires the team to develop a project specific file sharing protocol.

Some of the key aspects to consider while preparing for file sharing are;

Defining the right tool for the project. (Self hosted FTP or other cloud based tools)

Permission levels for all project stake-holders to provide access to the right information based on the scope of work.

Preparing secured username and password set-up for the external team members.

Protocols to frequency of sharing and to manage the quality of the shared information.

Project Information Management (PIM)

Apart from managing the communication of BIM files internally and externally, a typical project requires the team to control other types of data like documents, transmittals, RFIs etc depending on the project phase.

Cloud based project information management tools provide the features requires to maintain the project information online and also to seamlessly manage the files and security. A matured PIM system should have the feature to visualize, review and comment on the BIM Models directly on the browser.

Some of widely used PIM services currently available are;

Autodesk 360

Buzzsaw

New forma

Find few more from different vendors.