Advances in PLM and PDM are helping the AEC industry take the next step in its digital transformation.
Project Frog has sponsored this post.
On the surface, manufacturing and the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry may seem vastly different, but the digital tools that manufacturers use are starting to change the AEC world.
While manufacturing quickly caught on to the benefits of a digital transformation, AEC—and especially construction—were left behind. The difference in adoption of digital transformation has played a key role in more inefficiency, more time on projects, more mistakes and higher costs in construction.
A key factor holding the industry back is the highly fragmented nature of construction. While designing, creating and shipping a manufactured product relies on a team of people, those processes fall under one company to make that happen. Construction projects involve a host of stakeholders from different companies, making it difficult to create a standardized workflow from beginning to end.
Although some AEC firms have tried to stick to the old ways of doing things, a data-driven world has created new challenges that require a digital transformation to produce solutions. From the labor shortage to the complexity of projects to meeting sustainability goals and dealing with rising costs and supply chain issues, harnessing data and developing streamlined workflows provides an opportunity for firms to take on those challenges.
Taking a Digital Cue from Manufacturing
While the AEC industry is known for unique one-off designs, many of the types of structures being built have growing similarities. The need for multi-family complexes, healthcare centers and data centers has shifted the industry toward looking more like manufacturing.
The rise of prefabricated and modular construction has helped the industry take on some of the labor and supply shortage issues. Similar to a manufacturing plant, parts or modules of a building are fabricated and assembled at an off-site location in a controlled environment. The incorporation of assembly lines, robotics and design software enables the precise fabrication of these parts, significantly reducing the construction time.
Some AEC firms have also started to follow lean principles commonly applied to manufacturing practices. A principle focused on eliminating waste, this methodology focuses on the entire management of a project and brings together each of the stakeholders to create a continuous workflow that connects the downstream process to the upstream ones. By using lean methods, firms can better use the talent they have, eliminate defects, reduce overproduction and discover ways to improve tasks.
A solution for both manufacturing and construction as a way to create virtual prototypes of a product or structure, building information modeling (BIM) has become a foundation for advances in other technologies. Manufacturers benefit from BIM in many ways, including reducing waste, finding errors before a product is built and taking the ability to collaborate to new levels. It offers the same benefits for construction, enabling enhanced planning and management of a build.
The use of 3D models has further evolved into the ability to have a digital twin of a part or building. These virtual representations of real-world objects simulate every part of a build in real time, automating traditional tasks that were once time-consuming and prone to error. For construction companies, these tools create a single source of truth about a project that is data-driven, allowing for better-informed decisions before the construction process even starts.
The move to a data-driven approach inherently requires solutions to manage the vast amounts of data created. For manufacturers, BIM and other technologies have opened the door for tools like product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems to handle data management.
A software tool designed to manage and catalog product data and other information in one system, PDMs bring together every element of a product’s design and fabrication, including parts information, CAD data and part requirements. This secured data management tool incorporates a version control system, which eliminates the risk of working off an old version. Every stakeholder on the project has access to this real-time data, which creates a more streamlined engineering process and enhances workflows. The data stored can be used to copy, replace, reuse or reconfigure design elements into a new project, which can greatly speed up the design process.
PLM software evolved from PDM software, taking data management beyond just the product to include the product’s entire lifecycle. Many PLM options feature a PDM element, giving manufacturers one platform for all stakeholders to work off of. PLMs often can integrate data from other systems, such as bills of materials and parts supplies. PLM continues to evolve, providing companies a way to use the Internet of Things artificial intelligence and machine learning to tie every stage of a product’s lifecycle.
A Lack of Options
As the AEC industry continues its digital transformation, PLM and PDM could offer a way to have all information about a building, from the initial design to storing data once in use. Unfortunately, the industry has faced a problem when it comes to PDM and PLM software.
“The problem in AEC as we move toward productized approaches to designing buildings, which we firmly believe we are there, there’s just a huge absence of PLM and PDM tools on the market,” said Mike Eggers, KitConnect chief product officer. “What a tool like Revit gives you out of the box is not really those data objects and data models set up to support things like Bill of Materials or nesting of sub-assemblies, so the CAD space itself was never meant to play well with PDM and PLM. The only actual solutions you can go purchase are built for mechanical CAD.”
Many of the challenges that have held the industry back from the digital transformation have also led many PDM and PLM providers to stay more focused on manufacturing and other similar industries. From its inherent fragmentation to unique procurement paths for each project to firms having the perception that storing so much data is not a necessity, connecting the gap comes with difficulty. Although slowly, those differences are starting to change.
“With industrialized construction, such as modular prefab, the industry is waking up and saying we need to take a more product approach,” Eggers said. “If I’m a fast-food company or Amazon and have distribution centers or data centers, these are really productized buildings and they’re developed and evolved and iterated over time. If you’re doing things like multifamily housing, or anything that you’re reusing a lot of the same design information again and again, you’re basically doing productized design. Even if 50 percent of your building is a one-off, all that stuff that you just keep reusing, wouldn’t you rather have a system that helps you manage that better?”
Emerging PDM Options for AEC
While some software providers have tried to incorporate a form of PDM or PLM functionality into their platforms, they often lack the usability that the AEC industry needs. KitConnect has worked to change that, creating a PDM solution for the industry and working toward a future PLM offering.
Designed for use with Revit, it offers companies a way to store and manage data for repeatable or productized projects using data-centric workflows. This cloud-based software aims to streamline design and construction processes, bringing together all stakeholders while also ensuring easy usability.
“KitConnect is really trying to bridge that gap and allow you to model with assembly structures to have seamless construction document workflows,” Eggers said. “Our component allows you to create assembly structures, nest them and have revisions layered on top of them. We give you a real object that handles all the design relationships. We maintain all that information in the cloud and then the processes that layer on top of that, such as revision control and access control layers, come from a PDM also managed inside of our system.”
KitConnect includes an object called components that allows the user to nest like assemblies and sub-assemblies, and create a parent-child relationship structure. A model of a module with sub-assemblies can be created and those sub-assemblies can be made up of more sub-assemblies. It allows for anything modeled in Revit to become a proprietary content component.
Another key element in KitConnect is kits. “Kits are just snapshots or curations onto that big database of components,” Eggers said. “Just like I can reuse a component inside multiple other components, I can also catch a single component and multiple kits. I’m not cloning the component. I’m just curating and packaging up various assemblages of components. I might have highly secure product information that I share with one team but not with another.”
Regardless of the industry, collaboration is a vital necessity. KitConnect serves as a distribution hub, allowing for different users to be invited to a project. Each user can be assigned a different level of permissions, helping to ensure that only specific data is shared. Depending on the permission, data can be extracted for such things as a design improvement or a bill of materials.
Whether manufacturing or construction, not having the right version of a design can create costly mistakes. KitConnect incorporates an automatic revision management system that defaults to the most recent version. If a user makes a component change, every person invited to the project receives a notification. This revision feature opens the door to a more streamlined process that minimizes repeated tasks and makes tracking and making changes easier.
The AEC industry has a host of digital tools within reach to allow firms a more competitive edge while finding ways to save time and money. While in its infancy, PDM and PLM offerings for the AEC industry are emerging as the latest solutions to help companies achieve their goals.
To learn more, visit KitConnect.
