Competitions – data analytics
data provide transparency.
Qualities and Quantities
The increasing complexity of building projects, the urgency of achieving sustainability, and growing pressure to ensure economic feasibility make timely, proactive information management indispensable. Building Information Modelling allows us to visualise the qualities and quantities involved in a project at any time and take appropriate action proactively. What is more, this methodology increases transparency for the benefit of all project stakeholders. Data analytics enable us to transform raw data into meaningful, actionable information that we can then use as a basis for creating an effective strategic plan, and to extract tactical and operational insights for
decision-making within tight time constraints. All this knowledge must ultimately be delivered to the right people at the right time through the right channels. Organisations collect large quantities of data. In many cases this is raw data such as facts or large data streams. This information must be processed and interpreted so it can open up new opportunities within the organisation and ultimately translate to competitive advantage. How Business Intelligence (BI) is used depends on the organisation’s strategy, which is often derived from the business objectives or the mission statement.
Competitive analytics
The beginning of a planning competition resembles the launch of a BIM project in terms of the required level of detail when defining the requirements or deliverables: While in the case of the BIM project the focus is on the digital execution of the project, preparing for a competition means establishing the guidelines for the given task in a way that does not overly restrict the variety of designs while ensuring that the principal’s key objectives are met. Combining planning competitions with BIM allows these objectives to be determined in a flexible yet qualified, comparable and measurable manner, giving the principal peace of mind and making sure the requirements profile has the necessary degree of precision.
To implement BIM in a planning competition, we define the information requirements for the competition jointly with our client. These requirements are then communicated at the time the competition is launched. To enable qualified benchmarking of tasks, the relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are defined proactively. These KPIs can then be used to delineate how, on what occasions and to what end the BIM methodology will be applied. By defining further assessment and analytics requirements, the BIM-empowered planning competition for the first time creates the possibility to communicate this assessment structure in a technically mature, clearly structured and transparent manner.
Single source of truth
The purpose of the competition is to identify the right solution for a planning project, and the best contractor for further planning. This definition from the German Guidelines for Planning Competitions (RPW 2013) further states: “Competitions promote the […] technical, functional, ecological, economic and social quality of the built environment.” A broad variety of ideas and concepts has doubtlessly been
documented and demonstrated in many planning competitions in the past. However, the question remains to what extent the stated quality requirements are actually accounted for in the assessment of the proposals. BIM provides the single source of truth that makes quality quantifiable.