BIM 360 Ops - COVID Office Response

BIM 360 Ops - COVID Office Response There can be several strategies of what new office work may look like. For example, higher barriers in open offices, more sanitary stations in offices, perhaps even more flexible work from home arrangements. But how are we able to keep track of all of these new resources and processes? While there are certainly a multitude of solutions available, my focus for this is to leverage Autodesk BIM 360 Ops for the management of space and assets. What is BIM 360 Ops? Autodesk BIM 360 Ops is a virtual record environment (VRE), that allows the storage of assets, the management of scheduled tasks, and much more. As a completely web-based platform Ops provides the agility of a small platform with a large bang for its dollar. For more information about BIM 360 Ops please see the links at the bottom of this article. How do we meet the user’s needs? To best determine what the user’s needs and concerns are about the workplace prior to thinking about any type of solution. Below are example questions to start to understand the complexities of a new working environment. By understanding the concerns of our colleagues we are able to tailor our technology response. Employee Workplace Readiness Survey Sample Questions: How comfortable do you feel about returning to work in the office? Very Comfortable Somewhat Comfortable Neither Comfortable nor Uncomfortable Somewhat Uncomfortable Very Uncomfortable Which of the following are concerns you have about returning to work in the office? Getting exposed to the coronavirus at the office Leaving family members at home who need assistance Organizing childcare Decreased productivity Decreased flexibility to work from home Potentially spreading coronavirus to my coworkers Not being able to return to the office due to health reasons Getting exposed to the coronavirus while commuting to work Other Which of the following would make you feel more comfortable returning to work in the office? Hand sanitizer stations Installing partitions between desks Implementing a “clean desk policy” so desks can be cleaned more easily Government guidance saying it is ok to return to work Availability of a vaccine Availability of antibody testing Limiting outside visitors to the office Requiring employees to install a contact tracing app to notify you if you have been in close contact with a colleague that is diagnosed with coronavirus Limiting the number of employees in the building Boxed lunches instead of buffet-style lunches Staggering hours/shifts Staggering lunchtimes Nightly deeps cleans/sanitation Wearing masks in the office Having secured care/support for children of other family members Closing any communal spaces (ie. gyms, game rooms) Temperature checks before entering the building Nothing would make me feel more comfortable returning to the office Other Do You Need a Model to start using BIM 360 Ops? The short answer is no, there is no need to have a Revit model of a facility to implement BIM 360 Ops. While a model certainly does assist in the visual layer of the facility, it is quite possible to simply create a facility in a portfolio by uploading spreadsheets or manually entering the data. To facilitate the aggregation of this information, I have built an Airtable base template that can be copied for collecting Location and Asset information. Please reach out if there are any questions about how to use the base. BIM 360 Ops Data Aggregation Base Template If a model of your office or facility does exist; however, it is highly recommended to utilize the geometric and data mapping that is available. The Ops team has developed a very lightweight plugin to Revit to assist with the upload of geometry and model data. Please see the Autodesk University links at the end of this article to understand more about how this process can be leveraged. The use cases below leverage the scenario of having and utilizing a model for the most part. Use Case(s) While there are many use cases for the technology provided within BIM 360 Ops, we will take a brief examination of three of these options. Scenario 1: Quick Ticketing Quick tickets can be set up to allow employees and/or managers to notify the facilities management staff that there is an issue. These quick tickets can be fully customized to meet your occupant’s and manager’s needs. As we can see from the image above, we have created a quick ticket to “send the cleaners” to a space that initiates an automated checklist for environmental services. Additionally, a quick ticket could be created to prevent the possible contraction of COVID-19 within a space by noting where a potential exposure has occurred. Another option for quick tickets could be to allow occupants to notify management of low sanitation supplies. Scenario 2: Automated Scheduling and Task Assignment One of the larger concerns with returning to an office environment is that of cleanliness. Ops provides the functionality to schedule a variety of task-based workflows. This provides an easy to use and mobile interface for environmental services departments to share and collaborate on. Scenario 3: Facility Mapping If Revit models of a facility are available leveraging the BIM 360 Ops mapping capability is an expedient way to visualize where priority or in progress tickets have been created. Final Tip To make it easier for occupants to access the application, Barcodes and/or QR codes can be leveraged around the facility to access the occupant dashboard to report or create new tickets. Additionally, barcodes and/or QR codes can be linked to the digital assets that have been created in BIM 360 Ops. The coronavirus pandemic has closed many businesses and restricted most to working from home or other secluded environments. As we are now on the verge of beginning to return to our workplaces, employers are confronted with an array of issues that will test their abilities to keep their employees, clients, and other stakeholders safe as they return. Organizations need to take a thoughtful approach to restarting at their place of work. “Place” is a deliberately broad phrase; a “place” could be

Open Data for Interoperability

Open Data for Interoperability Software interoperability is made possible by the implementation of universally acceptable standard information exchanges. There are assortments of singular file formats that people bring into play, and there are a lot of dissimilar techniques those practitioners and consultants will make use of when generating or creating a building. The main objective of Open Data is to facilitate the distributions of digital ways of working in the built asset industry. Unfortunately, it is not an easy task of getting everyone to use the same page, even within the same organization. Thus, the firms end up utilizing a bunch of tools and workflows in the design process, and, in doing so, most of the work results in spending a lot of time when they are moving between those tools and inherently stakeholders. In the case of other not-so-common firms, the main design toolkit encompasses nine to 10 software platforms, whereas the overall available tools number over 100. With numbers like these within one firm, it’s not surprising that interoperability is of such interest in the AEC industry. Interoperability also offers a way to help design and construction avoid becoming entrapped in outdated, proprietary systems. It is believed that to get the full benefits of digitization, you have to be able to work across not only vendor or package providers but also across all stages of the lifecycle of a building. It’s essential for everyone to work toward sharing data more effectively at all times. There are multiple challenges standing in the way of open BIM Data and interoperability.  One of the biggest obstacles is a lack of understanding in the market about what Open Data really means. The biggest challenge is about engagement; people understanding the benefits of digital ways of working and engaging in this process. The challenge we have is harnessing the resources to capture best practices in an open environment. The best way to make files interoperable is to have a referee between software vendors, and that is exactly what buildingSMART International and the open BIM initiative are doing. The most important approach for adjudicating this business is the documentation of software. Qualifications are thus imperative for communicating between software because it promises a user the ability to translate data in a polygonal exchange as most of the big software vendors have the ability to read and write. For more information about the buildingSMART International Open BIM initiative visit the link here: Open BIM Please also connect with us on our social media platforms below to stay up to date with our announcements. 1-800-356-8933 info@ENGworksGlobal.com Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube Linkedin Back to the Blog Related Posts Elevate Your Workflow – Computer Mouse Devices Elevate Your Workflow – Computer Mouse Devices • August 30, 2022 Visualizing BIM Content Quality and its Impacts Visualizing BIM Content Quality and its Impacts • May 26, 2022 Are You Losing Trust in Fabrication Content? Are You Losing Trust in Fabrication Content? • May 10, 2022