B5: Uses of Databases in design firms Derek R Lavigne

Current and Future state of Design Phase Data:

Databases in design firms are currently used for internal business affairs.  Each company has a log of business correspondence, internal notes and memos, accounting receipts, revisions and design details,  and depending on their particular expertise a few other necessary files and folders.  This database is generally separated by project,  then information type, and organized by revision and/or date, in order to keep track of business transactions and work done internally/externally.  This also allows companies to keep their intellectual property organized and records complete for future use.  A small firm will have a database inside their office, while firms with multiple branches tend to store the information via the company's intranet that has data stores in the main branch.

This internal data storage/hoarding is made in place to protect and log companies intellectual property, however with the nature of the building industry and the need to share and access information between different disciplines in the design phase (Arch, AE, CIVE, MEP, CM), i can see the market for a transition to a cloud based system (run by the owner) to share store and monitor all of this data in one location.  The emergence of BIM has began to force more interaction between all phases of design, and the data associated with BIM, requires larger files, with more information, and sending these files through traditional methods (ie Email or Flash Drive) are difficult and time consuming.  If a cloud based system were in place, firms could not only avoid upgrades to their database systems (because of rapid technological growth), but save money and share data more freely.  This would not only save firms money and time, but with more free flowing it may actually spur more innovation throughout the entire sector.

Reference:

http://www.aconex.com/blogs/2014/01/global-state-of-bim-construction-market-data.html

Comments:

To Ilana Ritvalsky:  Thank you for posting the Relational Database theory, those points are very useful to me personally, on how to design a more logical data store.

To Justin Hileman:  I understand how data could be useful for estimating project cost for construction firms, are there anymore useful places data can be used and stored? Are construction companies doing anything to control that data or are things mostly documented on paper and scanned as a pdf in those databases?

To Hope Lewis:  I wasn't aware that database storage was in any other form than 2d Column/Row data sets.  This information was extremely useful to me. Thanks!