new way of working with BIM 360 field - please provide feedback

[Anonymous]

I have taken a different approach to using 360 Field and would like some opinions on it.

I have taken serious consideration of the way 360 field operates and the way we were shown how to use it. Most of our users expressed that it could be easier to use and that we could get more out of it. I have come to the conclusion that there is a better way of using the system.

Under the current training information ‘issues’ are raised as though they are problems to be resolved and the ‘location’ was set up as a chainage for our tunnel project, as recommended.

I have decided the ‘location’, rather than being the physical location on site, should instead be thought of as the filing system ‘location’ similar to a computer directory.

I have decided that the term ‘issue’ should instead of referring to a problem or matter requiring attention, should instead be thought of as ‘issuing of data’…..into the cloud storage system.

In this way the ‘location’ sets the folder/directory location and the ‘issue’ acts like a zip file and contains the data bundle stored at that location.

When working this way we can for example ‘issue’ an activity plan to the ‘location’ MAIN TUNNEL>HEALTH AND SAFETY>ACTIVITY PLANS. Any of our user can do this by scanning/emailing into the project - an issue is automatically created and awaits completion and assigning to a location via the desktop software.

The description of the issue would read ‘activity plan title, ref no. xxx etc’ and multiple subsequent attachments can be made to this, eg photos, tasks briefings, addendums, engineers sketches.

I set up a 'Location' folder structure for the main tunnel and also created a ‘location’ at the top level which is called ‘REQUEST NEW LOCATION’ - anything saved there will need to contain a request for wherea folder should be made and what it should be called.

The one drawback of this is that the folder structure cannot be collapsed and so appears as a fully expanded list in the drop down box. For this reason I proposed that we split the project (two tunnels) into two smaller sub projects, as this will remove half the irrelevant data in each instance. One possible loss of usability would be that supervisors moving between the two tunnels would have to switch projects, but this seems minor compared to time spent trawling through excessively long dropdown lists. Also the reporting would have to be done on each project and the data combined, but we are so far off having usable data to report against that I figure, once again that the bigger saving trumps the smaller loss.

The old ‘issue type’ dropdown box should be considered redundant – it has hard coded info in it, which no longer fits with my new proposed way of working.

This is a new way of using 360 field, so please give me feedback, and hopefully the fact that it now more closely resembles a computer system, more of our users will feel more comfortable using it. I also feel that the filtering function of issues will be very useful for managing the 5000 odd drawings that we need to upload in the next 2 years.

I am thinking that all the quality data, such as inspection and test plans and Operation and Maintenance manuals can be pinned into physical location within our 3D model if it is rendered via Navis works.

So, this left one further question - how to deal with the conventional matters of concern/issues - I felt these can better be managed by using tasks, after all construction matters of concern/snagging/NDW's all require someone to action them - so by raising a task we can attribute a creation date/creator, a company/responsible person to action and a date required, as well as run reports to establish statistics for their status in terms of open/updated/closed etc.

Please provide feedback on this concept of workflow.

Thanks,

Ben