How BIM Collaborate Pro Boosted Our Success During a Global Pandemic

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Hello, everybody. Welcome to how BIM Collaborate Pro boosted our success during a global pandemic. It's a long title, but it's basically what happened to our company during this COVID pandemic. Hopefully, next year, we can finally meet all of you in the life event. Still, congratulations to all AU staff that has made it, once again, an enormous effort to make all of us feel connected and keeping up with design and construction industries latest technologies and workflows.

ARTURO FLORES: Hola, are beautiful people. Nice to see you again. If you joined us last year in our industry talk, IPD, a lean and BIM approach with BIM 360, you might already know a little bit about is. If you don't, that's OK. You can always go back and watch it on demand. You won't regret it. It got great reviews though, just saying. Anyway, let's focus on the present. This is us. We have new pictures. But we're a little bit older and wiser, but still us.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: We look good. In case you couldn't join us last time, well, nice to meet you. We are Arturo and Daniela, your favorite Mexican BIM team and VDC enthusiasts. We still owe you some tacos and tequila shots from last year.

ARTURO FLORES: Yeah, we don't joke around with tacos. So a little bit about us, we're both architects with a great passion for new technologies and methodologies. That's basically the essence of AU, right? But you might be wondering why we're here. What should we tell them about ourselves, Dani?

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Hi, guys. I'm Daniela. I currently work as one of Hermosillo's VDC managers in Mexico City. We both been working on our company's digital transformation for a few years now. I have a lean construction background. So I try to make all of our workflows as lean as possible. Together with our team, I'm working on a company's document and design management tools implementation to obtain the best out of our current design and construction workflows and data.

OK, enough about me. I'll hand it over to my colleague and friend, Arturo.

ARTURO FLORES: Thanks, Dani. Hello, everybody. I'm Arturo. I also work as a VDC manager at Hermosillo, helping the northern offices achieve their goals. I have a design and sustainability background. And along with my teammates, I am working on our companies design automation, generative design, and AR deployments, to optimize our clients resources as much as possible. Nice to meet you.

But let's get to the good stuff. What's our class description? We're going to talk about how Revit Cloud Worksharing helped us achieve the best possible collaboration workflow for our architects, with a standardized workflow that's easy to understand and effective for fast track projects.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: That sounds good. But let's make it a little bit fun. We'll tell you the story of what we went through along with our company and how we got to the point where right now.

ARTURO FLORES: Great, I'm up for that challenge. So, Dani, what are we going to learn from this class?

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: That's a great question. In order to come up with an efficient workflow for our teams, we first had to understand Collaborate Pro, take the best practices to adapt them to a workflows. Once we identify our teams workflow, we'll enhance this process through the implementation of Revit Cloud Worksharing on Autodesk Docs. What [INAUDIBLE], Arturo?

ARTURO FLORES: Let's see, what happens when your workflow involves different traits? Well, with Calab Pro, outside members can collaborate by syncing, publishing and linking models. And last but not least, design project managers can review and communicate through markups and issues.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: We love representing our country and the company we work at. Hermosillo is design and construction.

ARTURO FLORES: For sure. We're a general contractor with over half a century of experience. And our goal is to bring our clients visions to life.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: As a company, we have experience with different types of projects and contracts, such as complex design build, IPD, and fast track projects. This requires a lot of coordination between our teams. That's the main reason we've been using BIM 360 for four years now. And now, we've started with Revit Cloud Worksharing.

ARTURO FLORES: Exactly. That's why we're always on the look for the best tools in the market. But it isn't always easy. I bet that if I ask you, why not to innovate or think outside the box, you would come up with a ton of reasons and excuses. They might be valid. But why don't we ask ourselves, what would happen if we did invest on innovation? The AEC industry is worth around $10 trillion.

As you may know, we are not the most productive industry, which is obvious in how we've increased our productivity only by 1% over the last 20 years. There's a big opportunity of about $1.6 trillion to add value to our industry, with the potential to boost our productivity up to 60% in some of the related activities.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: So that's a lot of reasons. But how do we start to innovate? In Hermosillo, we have a mindset that we call forward thinking, which means that innovation is at the backbone of our company, aligned with our internal guidelines to fulfill our projects and budget, time and quality.

ARTURO FLORES: Yes, this framework encompasses lean construction, BIM and sustainability methodologies into a unified system.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, but enough self promo moments. Let's start telling our story.

ARTURO FLORES: Yes, let's start by saying this class is boats.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: What do you mean?

ARTURO FLORES: Yeah, boats. But it's not what you think. I mean that this is based on a true story.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Oh, that's right. It's our story. We'll divide this story into three chapters. First, the calm before the storm.

ARTURO FLORES: In the second chapter, we'll find out about the plot twist. Sometimes things go wrong.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: And lastly, we'll tell you about our life saver. This is what helped us go through the storm.

ARTURO FLORES: Now let's get to know the cast of our story. First, there's us, Hermosilla, always with the main character energy.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Then our client as the cool sidekick, kind of like Robin.

ARTURO FLORES: We also have the villain. But I guess by now, you've figured out that COVID wasn't the good guy.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: And finally, Autodesk Collaboration Pro, or our hero that arrived to save the day. So are you ready? Let's start with chapter 1, The calm before the storm. Oh the good old days.

ARTURO FLORES: Once upon a time, it was a happy and sunny day in the world. Back in 2019, someone knocked at our door. And we eagerly ran to meet our unexpected visitor. But who was it?

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Hmm, we opened the door. And there was our psychic, the client. He was asking for help in a new project. Some facts about them, they were an office furniture manufacturer that required a new building. This was going to be our second project collaborating. And after a few meetings, we started working on the late 2019.

ARTURO FLORES: Now let's talk about our not-so-secret mission. We were assigned onto design, build project of an industrial manufacturing building located in the North of Mexico. Some features included tilt up walls, steel structure, and requires traits, with a special challenge of being a fast tracked project.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: It had a total construction area of 180,000 square feet, which needed to be completed into 136 days, which is around like 7 and 1/2 months.

ARTURO FLORES: But what the heck is fast track? It refers to an industry jargon for a project delivery strategy, which means that the construction starts before the design is complete, with the purpose of shortening the time to complete the project. It is also referred to as phase design and construction.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, since the project was time sensitive, we started working on our BIM execution plan to plan and document how we were going to develop the deliverables. This is a crucial step if are using models. And it must be able to answer every possible question of your BIM strategy.

ARTURO FLORES: And because the project involves several disciplines, we begin working with a federated model. This is a concept that refers to a combined BIM model that has compiled several models into one, kind of like throwing all the models into a blender and mixing it up. Don't mind the gross looking smoothie.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Yeah, not that tasty. Now that we talk about how everything was going great and how we were living our best life, there's a plot twist in our story. This is where the second and not so fun chapter starts.

ARTURO FLORES: Yeah, and so it began. 2020, we got a few hints that it wasn't going to be the best year. But the bar went really low, really fast.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Yes, so the COVID pandemic started. In the case of Mexico, mandatory quarantine was established from one date to another. And that's basically when the chaos started. As we VDC managers, we work with for design and construction teams. And all of them have the same issues, as soon as the original home office strategy began.

ARTURO FLORES: It was a big change. And you know how much boomers love change. We had to hit the brakes and quickly adjust to a new normal. With no physical red lines, no chitchat across desks, and had to work without good internet connections. We said hello to home offices, endless Zoom calls, and sweatpants.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Yeah, and while doing home office, we had to come up with an efficient solution for our design workflows. We were used to working on local models connected to a local server in our office. But when we started working remotely, we implemented different solutions, such as remote desktops, VPNS, and so on. Did that work? Yes, but only for some time until failures and connection issues started to occur more frequently.

ARTURO FLORES: We kind of started turning into turtles. Fun fact, turtles can reach walking speeds of up to 0.3 miles per hour. Trust me, I just googled it. OK, maybe we weren't as slow as our turtle friends, but we can guarantee that we weren't getting any faster.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, it's time to move on to a more positive chapter of the story. This is where we got saved by our hero.

ARTURO FLORES: Yeah, we need a little bit of help. And we got it from our hero. But who saved the day?

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Well, let's meet BIM Collaborate Pro. You might have heard their alter ego, Design Collaboration. But they're the same person, just different costumes. To be honest, it was our first time exploring this module. And we fell completely in love with Revit Cloud Worksharing, workflow, and central models thinking process.

ARTURO FLORES: We wanted an improved version of Worksharing. While using our DIY system, we struggled with lost connections and slow information transfer. This is why we decided to move on from it and started doing remote the right way, by using on cloud Worksharing, which allowed us to directory sync with a cloud to have more ideal information transferring.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, but if you want your collaboration workflow to run smoothly, you'll need this must-haves checklist.

ARTURO FLORES: First, if you're working alone in a model, you'll need either a Revit or an AEC collection license. If you're working in a model with a team, you'll need a BIM Collaborate Pro license.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Then, you'll need access to an Autodesk Docs project, which you know is the main repository of the project. It can either be your own company's or the general contractor's one.

ARTURO FLORES: Now, something very important, you need to establish the Revit version everyone will use. Once you start working on one specific version on a project, you can't go back and change to a different one.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, once you have access to the project, you should identify each team's folders and granted permissions.

ARTURO FLORES: And don't forget to document all of this in your BIM execution plan and share it with all of the project members.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, so you can use a variety of workflows. But given the fact that this was a fast track project and the timeline was very, very tight for the scope, we had to make our collaboration workflow as optimized as possible. The workflow we implemented is known as live linking with teams. With this, our internal and external teams were able to develop, edit, link, and update models in real time.

ARTURO FLORES: Additionally, with this workflow, the reviewers could complete their tasks with the latest versions of the design development documents on the platform to complete their milestones and deliver ISC drawings to on site teams. Anyway, we could keep talking about the theory. But let's get dirty. We'll give you a behind the scenes tour to show you how everything looks in real life with a quick demo.

First, we'll start with a project set up.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Yes, now let's get to business. As a project administrator, we're going to create the project the same way we did on BIM 360's account admin. First, you'll need a project name and a project number. Your company's account will ask you for the vault. Docs already has every type of project. So the selection is very easy. In this case, we'll select a Manufacturing Building.

In case you have a project template, you can use it. In this example, we're not going to use one so we can see how to create folders and add customized permissions. Next, we have the project's location. Choose the seed of your project, as well as, the time zone. Then we have project details, such as start and end dates. In this case, we're setting out 7 and 1/2 months timeline. Finally, you can have the project's value.

Once you fill in all the required data, your project is now created. And now, can continue to add members and roles.

ARTURO FLORES: Now let's add members and assign roles. After you create the project, you'll be able to add the project members, assign them a company, a role, and access level. In this example, we're adding people from our company. But in your case, you can add any other company and member. It is important to mention that your BIM 360 directory is also available on Docs. So that's why it's auto filling in right there.

You can either assign the same company to all your members, as well as, the same role. In this case, we're going to do it individually on the next step. Finally, assign their access level as project members. And make sure you properly assign Docs access. Once you have all your members, you can individually assign a company and a role. This step is very important because, on each trade folder, we'll assign different permissions.

After you're done, you can now go to the docs module for folder creation and to modify permissions.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, so now we'll go through folders creation and permissions. Since all members will have access to the same project, we need to make an exclusive folder for the Revit models. And creates subfolders for each trade. Additionally, on site team will eventually have access to the project. So it's fair to have everything structured from the beginning. This process is very simple.

Add as many subfolders as you need. In this example, we're creating architectural, structural, and so on. Now, permissions, remember, this all depends on your work structure. In this example, we're setting permissions for every member to view and download all models. This is in order to link them while work sharing and uploading cloud models. For each trade, we will have full control for of their own folders in order to be able to access and edit their own models.

ARTURO FLORES: Now let's see how to make a Workshare model with Rivet Cloud Worksharing. In this example, our central model will be the architectural one, meaning that at least two people will work on the same model at the same time. Once you open the model, the next step is to save this model as a cloud model on Docs. To do this, we'll go to Files, Save As. And you'll see your hub's projects.

Make sure you select Your Project, Project Files, Revit Models, and the correct trade folder. Once your file is saved as a cloud model, we'll move on. And we'll make it a Workshare model. For this, we'll go to the Collaborate tab and select Work Sites. Then we'll have to agree and enable work sharing. Once your model is Workshared, you can't go back.

Now that your model is Workshared, you can go to Docs and verify your model has been uploaded correctly. You'll only see the 3D view that you enabled in your public settings, which we'll see further on. Now we'll see what happens when your team edits your Workshare model. You have to open the model from the selected location, and as you'll be able to see, is the same model.

But now, we're going to the lead a couple of skylights. Next, we'll synchronize. And we'll go back to the previous file to see other model updates. We're syncing. And we're publishing to the cloud. So now, we're changing to the other file. In this one, we're going to reload latest. And we'll be able to notice they deleted skylights. While both the users are editing, you can keep on reloading latest and keep track of changes.

You can either use the Collaborate tab options or you can go directly to the same shortcut. As you can see, work sharing a model with Revit in Autodesk Docs is very easy. It allows you to keep an agile collaboration process with your teams.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, now let's link cloud models and manage published things. OK, once you open the model you previously Workshared, we'd add cloud Revit links from the project. Select the required trade folder and model. In this example, we will link structural and civil. You can see the path is a cloud type. Just as any other Revit link, we can see its data. But you can keep on linking other models, reload, and delete according to your needs.

Now we're linking the civil model the same way we did previously. OK, don't forget to synchronize. Keep in mind that syncing doesn't necessarily mean changes are going to be published on Docs. For that, we're going to manage or publish things. We're going to publish a set of drawings and a 3D view to be able to see it on Docs. You already know the process to create a set and to select the required sheets and views.

Now we'll go to Manage Cloud Models. Select the project and publish the latest set. Now in Docs, we can see the past version of the model, which doesn't have the linked models and sheets. In this last version, we're going to be able to see the linked models, which were structural and civil, as well as the sheets we added to the published set. OK, so we've seen almost a complete workflow.

But what can we do to further improve this workflow? We recommend using markups and issues for your design reviews. First, let's talk about issues.

ARTURO FLORES: Right, so the issues tool allows you to follow up on the assigned problems in pre-construction stages. We can identify and communicate concerns and associate these BIMs with documents. You can also create them in the mobile apps.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, the markup tools lets you use the beloved red pen remotely to provide more detail in your reviews than what an issue pin might offer. You can communicate better by using a variety of tools to illustrate all of your ideas.

ARTURO FLORES: If you need to keep up with any key design indicators, you need to check out the inside page, where you'll be able to visualize information about your projects issues, error files, and more.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: OK, so I think we've reached the apex of our story. But what have we learned about these challenging times?

ARTURO FLORES: We can definitely say we've learned to be resilient. This means that we were able to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. I guess, we've all had to practice this last couple of years. We're proud of you.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: Well, it would have been a bigger challenge without the right tools to overcome all of these obstacles along the way. And in our experience, resilience means adjusting and migrating our design process to the cloud, which allowed us to keep working efficiently as a team, even if we were remotely located.

ARTURO FLORES: So that's the end of our story. Thank you for taking the time to attend our class. It means a lot. Don't forget to take a moment to ask yourself what you can do to encourage innovation in your company. You might end up with an extra trillion in your pocket someday.

DANIELA GUTIERREZ: That would be actually really nice. Thanks, everyone. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. See you next time.

BOTH: Adios.