What Is the Common Data Environment (CDE) and Why Is This Important to the AECO Industry?

The AECO industry’s information explosion challenge

Designing and constructing a built asset is the ultimate team sport, bringing together diverse stakeholders to deliver a unique, one-off project. Construction projects have always required detailed plans and documentation to be created and shared between stakeholders – some aimed at specifying what and how an asset should be built, and others aimed at minimizing risk and meeting contractual obligations.

Over the last quarter century, to help keep those stakeholders on the same page as the volume of documentation has exploded, we’ve seen the rise of common data environment (CDE) technologies aimed at meeting this challenge. They’re also a key requirement in international standards like ISO 19650, which defines a CDE as the “agreed source of information for any given project or asset, for collecting, managing and disseminating each information container through a managed process.”

This multi-part blog series is aimed at charting the history of CDEs, highlighting some of the current challenges the industry is facing around data, and exploring how CDEs need to evolve as the industry makes its next paradigm shift away from files towards granular data, with the ultimate goal of delivering better project outcomes.

In this first post kicking off the series, we will break down what a common data environment is, review how it’s become a standard industry construct, and examine why CDEs have become a critical aspect of successfully delivering a project.

A history of CDEs: From paper to digital

The paper-based era

The construction industry has always relied on shared documentation, even before the concept of a common data environment was formally coined. For example, when Paul Markovits, one of the authors of this post, first started in a design office in the mid-90s, Friday was the day the team would send their drawing set to print on the office plotter each week. The office even had a fancy A0 plotter that would automatically fold the drawing sheets! Drawings went straight from the plotter to the post room, ready for site delivery by Monday.

Generally, most site offices had a document controller whose role was to distribute copies of drawings for review (including markups and comments), after which a status stamp would be applied to indicate whether the drawings were approved for construction. The latest approved version of each drawing was stored on a drawing hanger in the site office, and everyone knew you only built from this set of drawings. The single source of truth. The original common data environment.

Those approved drawings would then also be sent out to all the other parties on the project, and each generally kept their own set of drawings in the office, from which they would cross-reference their design.

Digital paper and project extranets

Despite CAD being the prevalent way drawings were produced, the delivered product was primarily paper copies. That was until the advent of the internet and email in the late 1990s, which allowed people to exchange PDF and DWF versions of drawings. Essentially these were electronic pieces of paper that could be printed, but weren’t editable. Suddenly changes to a design could be shared with collaborators in seconds, rather than days or weeks, and this opened opportunities for design work to be done from anywhere in the world, not just local offices.

While the increased frequency of sending and receiving documentation marked a significant improvement at the time, it also brought new challenges. Critical updates were often buried in crowded inboxes, and with documents exchanged across multiple email threads, teams struggled to trust that they were working from the most up-to-date version. This lack of clarity led to reduced accountability, increased rework, project delays, and inflated costs — often caused by teams making decisions based on outdated information.

In response, during the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, early solutions like extranets were established to centralize document access, sharing, and uploads. These new platforms represented the first iterations of a common data environment and offered a website where all parties could login and upload their latest drawing set. From there, the technology evolved — from FTP sites and local servers to today’s cloud-based solutions. Autodesk itself had a product called Buzzsaw that allowed designers and contractors to securely upload, share, and access drawings. In some markets where there was more contractual rigor around the audit trail, more complex extranets were born – many of whom now still provide CDE technologies to the market.

From best practice to international standards

While the early CDEs were born of the opportunity the internet provided, as CDEs have matured, they’ve become an integral part of International Standards around Building Information Modeling (BIM), and more recently Information Management (IM) through a body of work that was done in the UK.

Off the back of the collaborative working practices developed to build Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport, a British research program called the Avanti Project was funded in 2002 to improve collaboration between project stakeholders. Avanti compiled a best practice protocol for how to exchange and manage Project Information, which went on to become British Standard BS 1192:2007, evolved into PAS 1192-2:2013 and eventually became the basis for the ISO 19650 series.

ISO 19650 describes a maturity progression of how the industry will evolve from 2D information at stage one, through file-based 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) at stage two, to full object-level collaboration at stage three, which we’ll come to in a later blog post (see Exhibit 1 below). Critically, all three of these stages discuss managing an information model within a common data environment as the technology layer.

CDE requirements in ISO 19650

Whilst ISO 19650 does not explicitly mandate technology platforms, it describes processes and principles for a common data environment and details the requirements in ISO 19650-1:2018 Clause 5.1.7 as well as recommend the appointing party (client) sets up the project CDE before invitations to tender are issued. You can see a full analysis of the requirements of a CDE under ISO 19650 from Autodesk University here. For the purposes of basic understanding, there are two fundamental areas to highlight as follows:

Progressive collation of the project/asset information mode

As shown below in Exhibit 2 (Figure 11 of ISO 19650-1:2018), the Common Data Environment Process is aimed at progressively managing the Information Model across the lifecycle of the asset. This maturity progression encompasses both the capital delivery phase (Project Information Model or PIM) and Operations phase (Asset Information Model or AIM).

Information lifecycle

ISO 19650 defines the lifecycle states that information containers pass through during a project. This starts in Work In Progress (WIP) — where each task team privately develops their work. WIP information isn’t visible to other teams until the author deems it suitable for sharing.

Once ready, information is uploaded to the Shared area. Here, it can be used by other teams as background references to coordinate designs. This step replaces the old “Friday night drawing issue” routine. From Shared, information goes through an approval process to check if it’s fit to be Published. The Published environment acts as the trusted source for site teams and other stakeholders — just like the old drawing hanger in the site office.

Autodesk’s common data environment and what’s next

Autodesk’s common data environment is Autodesk Docs – a cloud-based document and data management solution that underpins the Forma Industry Cloud, including Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC). Autodesk Docs has recently been certified to enable the management of common data environment processes in accordance with ISO 19650, with templates to help organize information, including the configuration of folders for information states, document naming conventions, and suitability codes.

Where Autodesk Docs is unique is in its ability to serve as a CDE for all stakeholders, both during capital project and asset operations phases. Docs serves as the foundation to our AECO cloud ecosystem, providing the underlying file management and permissions capabilities that connect stakeholders across the following products:

• BIM Collaborate Pro, which provides integrated work-in-progress (WIP) management for design files, allowing for co-authoring of Revit, AutoCAD and Civil 3D files, as well as enabling referencing of shared models from other authors
• Autodesk Build, which connects field and project management workflows and provides the ability to capture installation data related to assets
• Autodesk Tandem, which enables the transfer of the asset data captured in Build to be accessed by Operations teams to maintain continuity of information flow from design to operation
• Workshop XR, which integrates with Autodesk Docs to enable immersive, real-time design and review sessions in virtual reality—helping teams visualize models in context, collaborate more effectively, and connect feedback to the latest project information
• And, most recently, Autodesk Forma, which enables early-stage site design and planning

As the Autodesk Docs user base has grown to serve stakeholders across the project lifecycle, we have advanced its information management capabilities to serve users from the collaborative phase of live design to the controlled workflows needed to support submission and approval workflows in the published state as construction begins. Today, Docs is used daily by hundreds of thousands of users on millions of projects to facilitate collaboration and information management in support of ensuring the right person has access to the right information at the right time.

Stay tuned

In the rest of this CDE blog series, we will explore how CDEs are continuing to evolve to support the explosion of information that AECO stakeholders are creating, as well as examine the different types of control and collaboration required during each project phase. We’ll also share Autodesk’s vision for how the next generation of CDEs will deliver the ability to structure and control data at a granular level to make information more accessible, trusted and connected for all project stakeholders.

Tune in for our next post on how realizing better outcomes starts with increasing data accessibility, so that the right information is available to the right person at the right time.