Solibri Office for BIM Coordinators

Set your rules to meet every standard: BIM Quality Assurance that evolves as the model does

Uncover the transformative power of Solibri Office in BIM coordination, providing unparalleled reliability and trust to project teams worldwide.

Set your rules to meet every standard:  BIM Quality Assurance that evolves as the model does

Building trust

Coordination and model validation are challenging tasks for BIM Coordinators. Even though among their prime goals is the mitigation of risk -- both at the planning stage and when breaking ground on site -- the tasks carry their own risk, particularly when the time comes to bring multiple models into one reliable version of the truth. A version the whole team can trust.

In this blog, I outline why, and how Solibri Office enables you to deliver that reliability and trust; putting an end to uncertainty by making it easy to identify issues at the outset, coordinate and communicate validated data, and simplify/automate rules-based model checking (your rules, your way).

Weeding out the risk

At the outset of a new project, excitement affects the whole team. So does a degree of anxiety, regardless of how experienced the team may be. The thing is, they’ve usually seen it all before. They’ve seen projects run smoothly, on time and on budget, but they’ve also seen how relatively small oversights at the planning stage can have unexpected consequences and disproportionately big impacts as the project evolves.

Accepting that at some point in a building project the need for re-work (or re-thinking) will arise, is almost part of the construction industry culture. As adept as skilful site teams might be at fixing the issues, additional costs will be incurred, progress delayed, and owners less than impressed, no matter where the problem originated.

Errors can start life in the model all too often.
If they’re not spotted early enough, they linger.
They put down roots, they grow, and they may sprout
at the point where remedies start to cost money and consume time.

If you’re a BIM Coordinator, your responsibilities are huge: Ensuring delivery, quality assurance, adherence to multiple standards, and enabling and monitoring accurate BIM information flows, not least via a reliable 3D model.

Although architects design the model, it’s for the BIM Coordinator to envision and implement the right framework for the collaborative workflows that ensures it correctly fulfils its function -- throughout the lifecycle of the project, from conception through to handover, and beyond.

The most likely source of errors germinating in the model in the first place is lack of communication arising from approaches to collaboration across the team – architects, engineers, designers, contractors, and even project owners.

The more robust and seamless the collaboration,
the greater your ability to find issues early on;
removing errors by their roots to weed out project risk.
This is the ability you’ll gain with Solibri Office.

 

Is Solibri Office right for you?

Choosing the right tool for the job can be a challenge in itself, always with that goal of ensuring diligent risk mitigation to ensure that whatever needs to be done to avoid re-work on site, has been done; not an altogether easy task as the model evolves with multiple input from multiple project participants.

Combining models from different disciplines into one federated model (also known as a ‘combined model’) is where clash detection comes into its own. It’s in this area that the nature of the project is likely to dictate how sophisticated you need the software to be.

Some software focuses on hard clashes; physical collisions. In infrastructure, or mega, projects hard clash detection is acceptable at conception given the sheer size of the project and the length of time it is going to take. Finite detail at an early stage is simply not needed.

In buildings, however, with far greater potential for any manner of clashes, finite detail is a must – soft clashes must be understood early on, since space or size variations in the interests of on-site adjustments must be allowed for. In this scenario I recommend that your choice of software is easy. Solibri Office is the gatekeeper for quality.

 

BIM coordination made easy

There’s a lot to explore with Solibri Office, and a range of efficiencies that you’ll be amazed have been taking you so much effort to achieve without it. Here are some key benefits for BIM Coordinators:

  • Identify issues early | Simplify and automate rules-based model checking
    You can set up rules for clash detection elements that are traditionally difficult to identify. Rules can relate to any number of parameters such as size, type, value, plaster or brick walls, structural walls and wall framing elements (such as studs) and plenty more.  You can also save checks and take-offs which can be viewed on Solibri’s free viewer software, Solibri Anywhere.

  • Communicate to collaborate
    Not only can Solibri Office import building models from all major BIM software products by using the standardised IFC interface, but it integrates with the most commonly-used collaboration applications such as Teams, SharePoint, Autodesk Construction Cloud, BIM360 and others. This enables you to ensure that you’re always using the latest model from every discipline.

  • The evolving model – be always up to date: BCF Live Connector
    One of the particularly advantageous features of Solibri, for BIM Coordinators, is the BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) Connector. It links Solibri with cloud-based issue management systems (such as BIM Track and BIMCollab) so that you can synchronise issues between the two through a live connection. You can do this at any time, as issues arise. You can use any issue management system, as long as it’s compatible with the BCF API standard. Solibri’s BCF Live Connector enables a seamless workflow for frequent updates giving you the ability to address issues either in the server or in Revit. It also provides a full audit trail.

As far as automation goes, once you set the rules you can save them and use them on project after project. Commonly required BIM guidelines can be turned into rules since they will apply to all BIM-related projects. This means that as soon as you are in possession of the model, within a few clicks the heavy lifting can begin. You’ll spot anomalies, errors and non-compliance issues almost immediately; saving a significant amount of time and ensuring that errors don’t live on to any later stage in the project.

The team here at Symetri can help you achieve your goals with confidence and greater speed than you may be used to. We offer a number of training modules on Solibri and are always here to help. Feel free to get in touch to explore a little further.

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