In continuation to the post, How do we share information in BIM?, we are going to explain in this post the operation of the Common Data Environment (ECD, for its acronym in Spanish) or Common Data Environment (CDE), a common digital space where everyone can access and incorporate or modify information appropriately.
In the CDE you must generate a folder structure with all the information organized following the principles of the UNE-EN ISO 19650 standard, which we explained here.
These information organization principles establish that, for the management of shared and published work information, the flows indicated in the following figure must be established.
Structure of the CDE
In the BIM work methodology, the information is diverse and varied. It will be necessary to standardize and follow a rigorous order, otherwise it will be difficult to manage the information. Therefore, it is important that the CDE is clearly structured and subdivided into different areas or folders according to information status:
- Work in progress/Work in progress: in the Work in progress state, it is the space where the author or development team generates the models, therefore, this space is used for the information that a team is developing.
It contains working documents, by discipline, not validated or verified in the entire project, such as schemes, concepts in development and partial models, that is, it is used to contain unapproved information.
In ongoing work, information containers - the term used by ISO 19650-1 to refer to a set of persistent and retrievable information, that is: subdirectory, file (model, document, etc.) or subset (chapter or section, layer, etc.) – they must not be visible or accessible by other work teams.
The fact that it is a work folder does not imply that there is no certain order within it. Remember that we will work as a team, and we must be structured, so that we make the work of other colleagues easier.
- Shared/Shared: The purpose of shared state is to enable collaborative development of the information model. In this area of the CDE, the teams share information with each other and therefore contains data approved by the BIM coordinator of each discipline and suitable for use by other teams to coordinate it with your information.
The information shared must be visible and accessible everywhereyes, but not editable.
- Published/Published- Published status is used for information that has been authorized for a certain use. In general, it corresponds to a certain project milestone or delivery. In this phase, a verification and authorization of the models occurs. Next, a feed is produced by the client on information verified and authorized by the BIM Project Manager of your organization.
- Filed/Archived or Filled: used for disused or replaced material, as well as for the host the model As built.
Some flows also use it to maintain a copy or photo finished of a phase that is already published.
If you are interested in knowing more about the author of this post, Eugenia Alvarez Blanch, you can visit his LinkedIn profile here.
