Large Building with Multiple ongoing projects

[JProctorAD7VJ]

I want to pick the communities brain on how you've been managing multiple on-going projects within a single building that require separate drawing sets. Think a large hospital with 4-5 projects happening at any one time and it never stops there are always more projects. There needs to be an up to date master file maintained continuously.  

I've heard of two methodologies. 

1. Save off copies of the model for each project and recombine them into the master model when the project is complete. Requires a lot of time to make sure that the master file is up to date after each project is complete. 
2. Manage your Master model with phases for each project. Link the master into a separate Revit file (annotation model) to put together your sets, because you can't duplicate sheet numbers in Revit. This requires making model updates in the master and then reloading into the annotation model to tag and update views. This method keeps post production maintenance at a minimum and keeps sheet and view clutter out of the master file. 

We switched to method two a couple years ago. It works pretty well when you have 1 or 2 people on the project, but we've been running into issues when we have larger teams. Relinking the master into the annotation model is a bottle neck. When one person sync's and relinks they now own the link in Revit, they sync again and then the next person has to sync to reload the link, and it ripples through the whole team till everyone is waiting to relink and sync what feels like continuously. And somewhere in the mix of sync and relink some not insubstantial amount of keynotes and tags come unlinked and have to be rehosted. 

I'm interested to hear if anyone has found a way to mitigate the bottle neck of relinking and syncing. Perhaps worksets can be used in some way I'm not familiar with? Or maybe someone has used a different methodology for large multi-project building models that allows for multiple sets.

[HVAC-Novice]

With sheet collections, you can duplicate sheet numbers. 

I assume projects will be designed by a variety of design firms. So, there will be no standardized method of how things get handled in Revit. I also assume one project will start before the other project is completed. i don't have solutions, just wanted to point out some added difficulty. 

I assume you work for the hospital with the task to keep the records?