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What are the benefits of BIM Data Wrangling?

30.04.2024

Inconsistent, voluminous, inaccurate and unstructured data is one of the main challenges to BIM adoption. Add to it that models come from multiple data sources and that numerous requirements and different disciplines are involved in the construction process, and it’s no surprise that the actual BIM implementation is facing significant challenges. 

That’s where BIM Data Wrangling comes in.

What is BIM Data Wrangling?  

Data Wrangling is the process of cleaning, organizing, structuring, and enriching the raw data to make it more useful for analysis and visualization purposes. Bim data wrangling does this especially for BIM (Building Information Model) models. 

6 benefits of Bim data wrangling 

1. Data wrangling helps to improve data usability, because it turns data into a compatible format for the downstream applications and usage from multiple different data sources (different design disciplines, model author tools, companies and so on). 

2. The users can use ready-made views and reports, which work for every model, every model update and in every project. 

3. Consistent and enriched data enables automated data-flow and automated data analysis and simulation, because the data is always the same. 

4. Standard enriched data can be automatically connected to other data sources. This again enables game-changing, comprehensive insights to data. 

5. Data wrangling scales the data usage. Because of the automation, the data is available with reasonable skills, resources, cost, and always on time. Enriching and connecting the BIM data to other data sources enable a large number of use cases.

6. Since a large volume of data can be consistently processed, BIM data wrangling enables large-scale, big-picture analysis of building data with modern tools, even machine learning and AI. Not just within a single project, but for the whole project/asset portfolio. 

How Simplebim can help 

BIM data wrangling is, literally, what Simplebim was built for. Simplebim transforms raw BIM data into clean, consistent and rich information facilitating multiple use cases for construction professionals. And better still, the process can be automated for time and cost savings. 

Here’s how our customers use Simplebim 

Bylor 

Bylor, the Joint Venture on the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power station civils works, uses Simplebim to model and transfer data for accurate forecasting, budgeting and resource planning. 

It adopted the data wrangling software when its previous solution failed to offer the level of flexibility and granularity required. 

If we didn’t have Simplebim to map data across 3D models and different bits of design, we would need more administrators and engineers to configure the design, organise what we have to build into a particular pour. Plus, we’d need more commercial teams and more digital engineers. The cost savings are huge. 

Terry Parkinson, Senior Digital Engineer, Bylor 

Find out more in our Bylor Case Study

BAM Belgium 

Part of the Royal BAM Group, BAM Belgium needed a solution to structure the data in IFC models to its requirements, with the added benefit that once the data was restructured, their team were then able to enrich the models, making it easier for them to access the required information. 

One of the key use cases for BAM is that the standardised and enriched data can be used to automate the Bill of Quantities (BoQ), making the process quicker and more accurate. 

When the models are well structured, it makes it much easier for non-BIM specialists to access the data, which helps with more accurate decision making. 

Martine Deloz, Digital Construction Manager, BAM Belgium 

Find out more in our BAM Belgium Case Study

NCC 

Leading Nordic construction company NCC turned to Simplebim to unlock the benefits of BIM. It needed a solution that would allow its team to map data from IFCs to standardised properties, making the data more accessible and user-friendly to non-BIM experts. 

With multiple projects running concurrently, Simplebim’s automation capabilities have saved the organisation approximately 300 working hours per week as the standardisation process can happen automatically overnight. 

We get regular, at least weekly, updates from designers on IFC models. Usually, you would need to have a BIM specialist to go through each file manually to standardise the data. Now, using Simplebim, the process is automated. We do not need that number of specialists in the project, and we only have to act if there is something wrong in the automation process. 

Marcus Bergljung, Senior VDC Method Developer, NCC 

Find out more in our NCC Case Study

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Could your organisation benefit from our BIM data wrangling tool to provide consistent and good quality data for example project management or quantity surveying. 

Get in touch with the Simplebim team

or book a FREE 15-day trial today. 

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