Information Everywhere: How Construction Teams Can Cut Through the Noise 

Have you ever been struck with decision paralysis? You know, that feeling when you're overwhelmed by too many choices of great ice cream flavors and can't seem to pick the best one? 

Decision-making paralysis is quite common for construction professionals where the stakes are high and time is of the essence. What materials should you use for a critical structural element? Should you schedule the concrete pour a week early to avoid potential weather delays? Is it better to run trade coordination in parallel with onsite work versus staggering the tasks?  

The sheer amount of data available at a construction team’s fingertips certainly can contribute to analysis paralysis. While more data is inherently a good thing and a net positive for our industry, it can also present challenges when navigating complex choices.  

According to FMI, the construction sector produces 2.5 quintillion bytes daily, creating an overwhelming amount of information to sift through, much of it underutilized. We've all heard of doing "more with less." However, when it comes to construction data, what we really need to learn is how to do more with more (i.e., more data, more solutions, and more decisions).  

At Autodesk, we want to help teams cut through the data noise and make confident, informed decisions. Today, we’re thrilled to share how some of our latest September releases will help you do just that.  

Jump ahead to learn more about our biggest September releases or keep reading. You can also learn about all 45+ releases for the month in this blog.

Everyone just wants to find what they're looking for 

With project timelines getting shorter and margins for error shrinking, it's more important than ever for teams to move quickly. Construction professionals should be spending time acting on data instead of looking for it. 

But this is easier said than done. A recent report from Deloitte, commissioned by Autodesk, found that construction managers and executives spend an average of 11.5 hours per week researching and analyzing data. Those in BIM/VDC and preconstruction roles spend even more time looking for data each week, averaging 12.3 and 13.4 hours per week, respectively. 

This tells us that the time spent searching for information significantly drains productivity. Teams need to cut through the noise and zero in on the right information.  

What are the types of data key stakeholders need in construction? 

Of course, the "right" data depends on the stakeholders and what they're looking to achieve.  

For general contractors, cutting through the noise means getting mission-critical information and workflows that help them make better decisions and run more efficient, predictable projects.  

Meanwhile, specialty contractors need to find data relevant to their role, trade, and process.  

Owners, on the other hand, want to build better standards in their capital projects and utilize construction data to make more informed decisions before, during, and after the job. 

All this is to say that the ability to access and act on the right data is essential for every stakeholder's success. 

How Autodesk helps teams cut through the noise 

This month, we're thrilled to share several significant feature releases and enhancements for Autodesk Construction Cloud that can streamline data access and improve decision-making across your teams. 

Package in Files 

When it comes to construction files, "v1" is rarely the final version. That's why most teams face file chaos and issues like duplicate information or little to no versioning, leading to confusion and delays in finding the correct files.  

Autodesk Construction Cloud’s Packages in Files feature alleviates this by providing a more flexible organization of your versioned files across folders to help avoid data duplication and surface the right file version to the right people. You can group specific versions of your files into packages based on milestones, stakeholders, or any other key project attribute, reference it to other workflows such as Assets, and share the package for broader team collaboration. 

Asset Systems 

Commissioning—i.e., the process of checking if everything works before handing the project over to the building owner—is incredibly important for maintaining the quality of your work and, therefore, the reputation of your company. 

That said, not every small detail needs to be tracked alone. For example, knowing a light bulb has been installed is good, but knowing the conduits are properly placed, the circuit breaker was tested, and the transformer connected are the crucial components of that system that make it all light up. 

Enter Asset Systems, which simplifies the management of complex systems by grouping related assets together.  

“At Meta, we were looking for a way to organize equipment from an integration perspective,” says Hantong (Jimmy) Song, Program Manager for Infrastructure Construction Management at Meta. “Asset Systems allows us to group equipment by upstream and downstream functionalities and to focus on commissioning one wholistic system.”   

The Asset Systems feature frees you from having to track every asset individually (unless you need to). It also allows you to change the entire system's status, as well as append a checklist form or reference an Issue. 

Object Colors 

Greyscale model viewers can make certain decisions trickier and lead to potential risk. For instance, if a hot pipe and a cold pipe are in the same color, teams may not know which is which. Or consider how similar-looking electrical conduit and pipes could lead to confusion and potential mistakes at installation. 

With Object Colors in Autodesk Construction Cloud, you get simple visual cues for complex differences in 3D models. Colorization also helps BIM Managers associate colors with model characteristics to show:  

• disciplines 
• stages 
• source files 
• object types 
• and more. 

Sample Project Templates 

Project templates can be incredibly useful, and if you want teams to get the most out of them, they need to be tailored to your team's specific needs and workflows. Guidance on best practices to standardize persona-based workflows and project types is critical to making these templates implementable. 

This is where Sample Project Templates come in. Now, everyone in Autodesk Construction Cloud can benefit from more specific project templates based on their needs. These templates also serve as a foundational point for how other firms in the industry set project standards to improve data consistency. 

Activity Log 

With so many activities happening on a project at any given time, it can be challenging to do a retrospective analysis to trace actions and timelines. 

Activity Log in Autodesk Construction Cloud gives teams quick and easy access to a historical log of activities across the platform. Get an audit trail of activities across workflows to help project teams understand who did what and when in case of any concerns or disputes. 

Budget Snapshots 

Managing the project budget can be one of the most complex tasks people deal with. It's tough to keep track of every cost-related item and analyze how they impact the project budget over time.  

Then, if the budget gets off course, figuring out what went wrong can be a struggle. You can end up "Frankensteining" information by cobbling together reports and spreadsheets to try and get to the root cause.  

Autodesk Construction Cloud’s new Budget Snapshots feature gives teams the ability to capture a "snapshot" of the entire project budget at specific points in time. This lets you stop struggling to pinpoint deviations by easily comparing versions and visually identifying how and why the budget has changed.  

The Budget Snapshot capability provides visual cues that make it easy to spot what changed or if anything was added or removed. Delta indicators highlight positive and negative variances between snapshots, allowing you to hover and view the exact variance amount. 

Snapshots can be captured when needed, but if you want to make things even more streamlined, you can automate and schedule snapshots in advance.   

“Budget snapshots enhance financial awareness, decision-making, and goal tracking by comparing actual expenses and income against budgeted amounts. Regular comparisons help detect issues early, allowing for timely strategy adjustments. Analyzing past snapshots also improves forecasting accuracy, leading to better budget planning and management.” - Noor H Hanafi Harris, Client Project Manager, Arcadis US Inc. 

Plan Room in Bid Board Pro 

Finding the right jobs to bid on can be a pain point for specialty contractors. Going through job boards is a highly manual process, and often, jobs are outdated to begin with.  

With Plan Room in Bid Board Pro, specialty contractors can zero in on the jobs they want in order to win more work, grow their backlog, and build new relationships. 

The new tool allows Bid Board Pro users to easily discover projects that GCs and owners have publicly shared on BuildingConnected, even if you’ve never worked with them before. Then you can add the new jobs directly to your Bid Board where you do all your bid tracking. This also helps GCs expand their reach and get more bid coverage. A win-win for everyone.  

Learn more about Plan Room here.  

Get more out of Autodesk Construction Cloud 

Decision-making paralysis doesn’t have to be the norm. When you have tools that organize data and provide visual cues for straightforward interpretation, you can act quickly and keep projects moving. 

The new releases shared above are just a few examples of how Autodesk empowers teams to cut through the noise so you can spend less time sifting through data and more time acting on it.  

Want to learn more? Check out all our latest product releases.