V4 Client Introduction

1.0 What is a Data Management System (DMS)?

A Data Management System (DMS) is essentially a computer program that stores, modifies and extracts information from a database. 12d Synergy is a DMS designed for the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry to manage the data (e.g. Client Name and Job Number) and the documents (e.g. Progress Report and CAD drawing) that references the data.

2.0 Differences between 12d Synergy and Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer was designed to store documents; it was not designed to manage the documents or the data that are contained in the documents. Some of the limitations of Windows Explorer are as follows:

• No version and revision control – Windows Explorer does not give the user the ability to manage the different versions of the file or document. As an example, Windows Explorer does not allow the user to revert to a previous version of the file or document unless the user has been maintaining multiple copies.
• No Email management - Windows Explorer does not manage emails.
• Limited search capability – Windows Explorer will search on the file names and file properties and has limited content search capabilities. Search filters are also limited.
• Limited access and visibility control – it is difficult to manage access and visibility of documents in Windows Explorer.
• No audit trail – Windows Explorer does not keep track of who edited documents, or when and why documents have been edited.

3.0 Why Data Management is necessary for an AEC Office

The typical AEC office deals with many projects, processes many types of documents and manages multiple stakeholders. The AEC office does not function like an accounting office or a law practice, and its DMS requirements are different in many aspects. Arguably, the AEC office has more demanding requirements.

An AEC office has specific and sometimes unique DMS requirements which include the following:

• Ability to efficiently handle large documents
  • Most DMS are designed to handle correspondence and accounting documents. These documents are small in comparison to engineering documents which can be a few hundred megabytes in size. Some documents may also include point cloud data or LiDAR information which can be an order of magnitude larger. Though the cost of storage and bandwidth is decreasing, transferring a few gigabytes across a network is still time consuming. If transferring across the Internet, some service providers also restrict the size of individual files that can be transferred or stored. The DMS should have the ability to reliably and efficiently retrieve and manage these large documents.
• Integration with AEC application software
  • Some AEC application software products, particularly CADD, have special features such as referencing to one or more external files. File referencing or file association needs to be maintained in the document management process.
  • Some AEC application software stores data across many files in a Managed Folder. The association between these files needs to be maintained to protect the integrity of the data.
• Ability to group documents on a project or job basis
  • The typical AEC office manages work on a project or job basis. It follows that the DMS should also be able to classify and group documents in the same logical categorisation.
• Controlling document issues
  • Transmittals (the issuing of documents) in an AEC office is a managed process because the publication of the documents has legal and financial implications. There should be a register of who issued the documents, which version of the documents was issued, who received the documents, why and when.
• Attribute management
  • Besides managing documents, the DMS should also be able to manage project attributes or data (e.g. Project Number) which can then be used in drawing title blocks, cover sheets and reports.
  • The ability to manage data can facilitate the automatic generation of documents around company templates and project specific data. As an example, project specific data could be the name of the council, the water authority and estimated finish date. If the finish date is varied, the DMS should be able to propagate this new information through all documents that reference this data.
  • Data Management may also include the management of external reference files in CAD drawings, line styles, templates and environment configuration, ensuring the adoption of company and project specific standard across the organisation. It could also be the integration of a document workflow with the office accounting and timesheet system. As an example, the event associated with the issuing of a report could trigger an invoice to be created by the accounts department. 12d Synergy Training – Client Introduction 6
• Collaboration tools
  • Projects typically involve functional groups with many members, and often they may not be in the same office. Tools are required to facilitate communication between the members in a timely and organised way.
  • Membership of functional groups is often transient and short-lived. Besides documents, information in the form of data, experience and informal knowledge (the “conversations”) of the members should be captured, managed and shared in the DMS.
• Report generator
  • A report generator is required to re-purpose data maintained by the DMS for creating reports. It should be flexible enough to create reports to suit the intended audience.
• Taking documents offline
  • There will be occasions when members of the team may be required to work outside of the office and where there may not be connectivity back to the office computer network. In such a situation, the ability to temporarily take documents offline to work in the field is desirable. The DMS should be able to synchronise the documents when taken back online in the office.
• Task and document association
  • Working as a team, the ability to collaborate by managing tasks as well as the documents associated with each of the task is desirable. As an example, it would be desirable when creating a task, such as the approval of a drawing, to provide the task assignee with either the actual drawing or at least a link to the drawing.
• Publishing
  • Many email services block large attachments. Outlook and Hotmail have a limit of 10Mb-20Mb and Gmail’s limit is 25Mb. IT departments may also lower the allowable size of attachments. Using public file transfer and file sharing systems such as wetransfer.com and dropbox.com may overcome the problem, but it would be desirable for the documents to be published directly from within the DMS to allow the process to be managed.
• Document audit trail
  • For compliance, the ability to produce a report of the document versions is essential, and the ability to produce a log of the document access is desirable. The log should provide a trail of who viewed a document and when it was viewed.