One of the biggest challenges in our industry right now is how project data is shared between projects.
With a greater level of integration between ACC and other platforms and increased in-house ACC API tool development, and not to mention tighter data sovereignty, companies are working to keep their data housed within their accounts.
When this occurs, numerous ACC workflows are broken, with companies falling back to manual transfer of data between projects and thereby minimising the advantages of using such design and construction platforms.
ACC had recently released Bridge for the transfer files between projects. This is a great first step in connecting projects from other accounts, but in its current state is doesn't solve the core problem of connecting workflows. Without a Bridge roadmap, it's unclear if this is actually the direction this development is heading.
To digress briefly, the current Bridge functionality continues to play into the narrative that a traditional file storage will continue, rather than a document register that is wrapped with workflows. See my thoughts on this here.
But what do I mean by connecting workflows?
Where ACC Bridge transfers files between projects that then need to be pushed into workflows (via extra steps), why instead aren't the workflows connected, thereby removing the need to transfer the files first?
Examples:
- Connect/sync the Design Collaboration swin lanes. When one company shares a Package in their account's project, it is instantly shown in all other company's project swin lane.
- Connect Model Coordination, so that models are automatically federated between account's projects.
- Use the Transmittals feature to transmit Sheets between account's projects.
In the age of meshed WiFi, the upcoming Matter protocol for IoT devices , and even blockchain technology, the world is moving in a direction of working together while maintaining individual control of your own devices and content.
An AEC project really isn't any different. Each company should have their own project that is meshed with others, with all using the same underlying platform protocol/s for connecting workflows.
My hope is that ACC can move away from legacy methods of managing files, and into managing information.
