Home » Blog » Construction » BiC: smart working for the construction industry

BiC: smart working for the construction industry

Building in Cloud: what it is and how it works yhe smart working for the construction industry

Building in Cloud (BiC) is the tool conceived and designed to digitalize the construction sector, an indispensable ally for Smart Working and digital management of the work life cycle. Here’s how it works, start using it and be productive right away.

What is Building in the Cloud and how can it help the implementation and management of digital processes within a design studio, construction company or real estate management? The answer is very simple: do you know all the stress in managing emails, especially when it comes to communicating quickly, with notes to remember, documents to consult and approve? Building in the Cloud erases all the stress with a flick of the wrist.

An unique tool dedicated to working groups to be managed as a shared working environment with many useful functions to have everything at hand, whether it is the management of a project, a construction site or the maintenance of a building; and last but not least, an excellent along for Smart Working.

It is no coincidence that Building in the Cloud has attracted the attention of many investors, but also the challenge of some internationally renowned competitors in the construction industry.

The creation of Workspace

To start using BiC you need to connect to website, fill out the registration form that immediately gives you free access to the platform without time limitations. Then you just need to log in with the credentials chosen during registration.

To start taking your first steps it may be useful to use the Welcome Tools or the Guided Tour to familiarize yourself with BiC.

In the platform there is already an example Building/Project called “Trial” from which you can start doing some experiments, you can then create new Buildings by clicking on “Menu Buildings>New Building“.

Then you can invite new users, via their e-mail address, to participate in the activities of the building / project from “Menu team>Invite in the team“.

Following the invitation the user will receive an email with an invitation to participate in the Team of the building / project, then you can proceed by indicating name and surname and possibly change the password.

At this point the Workspace is created and, after a short automatic tour, which you can still skip, you will find Building in Cloud ready to welcome your collaborators and start working.

Before inviting employees to the team of a building/project it is advisable to organize the structure of the Workspace. In this regard there is an area of “Settings” and platform settings, which can be accessed only by the System Administrator (who activates the BiC Account) to make the Workspace aligned to your expectations and make the use of BiC more “friendly” to your employees.

Notifications, dashbords, activities and messages

Defined the setting and configuration of the Workspace you can go to define all the details, such as when to allow editing and deletion of messages and notifications, manage the, set the activities to be assigned to team members or resolve the problems that are encountered as the project progresses.

As explained later, Building in Cloud in addition to the Free level, free forever, offers three paid plans, Professional, Premium and Ultimate; you can check the costs and benefits of the levels available at this page. 

Paid plans include progressively additional functionality and a customizable number of users, as well as the possibility to add additional modules for integrated digital process management.

The Workspace has been created, basic settings have been made and team members have been invited: it’s time to start discovering why Building in the Cloud is so useful to work in Smart working.

The first reason is the centrality of communication and data availability: at a glance you have all the Dashboards you need to keep under control the project activities and communication activities useful to interact with other team members, without having to reconstruct the logical thread of the emails, but communicating directly in the platform. For this purpose it is useful to manage the settings of the automatic notifications that allow, through an intuitive setting grid, to automatically update the team members on the performance of the activities.

The second reason is the uniqueness of the visualization tools: there are typical file viewers for the construction industry such as DWG and BIM models (Revit and IFC), a very convenient and intuitive Markup tool for PDF files and Microsoft Office file viewer.

As said before, data, documents and the Team are at the heart of digital processes, in particular we point out the document manager which allows structured access (depending on the assigned permissions) to documents present in BiC from any where and any time and from any device. In practice it is as always having your own archive in your pocket.

For solutions requiring document approval workflow management, a more advanced version of the document manager has been introduced, usable with the adoption of the BiC CDE module, which allows the alignment of the required functionality to a Common Data Environment consistent with the requirements of ISO 19650 standards.

The add-on modules

Additional functionalities can be integrated through the additional modules of BiC that allow to manage digital processes according to the phase corresponding to the life cycle of the building.

The modular structure of Building in Cloud allows the stakeholders, designers, owners, builders and property managers, to build and customize Building in Cloud by putting data from BIM models (also federated) at the center of digital activities and processes.

Modules are available for the management of the Common Data Environment “BiC CDE” – “BiC 4D Time” for the planning of project or construction site activities, “BiC 5D Cost” (available by end 2020) for maintenance cost management, “BiC 6D Maint” for maintenance management and “BiC Space” for building space management.

The offer is completed with the most advanced solution: Building in Cloud Ultimate” which is aimed at complex organizations, typically owners of real estate assets or the Public Administration, who need, in addition to providing the solution, training services, customization, consulting and integration with their information systems.

After a week of use, platform administrators will also have access to statistics to understand how Building in the Cloud is used and therefore how to improve communication and processes in use in the team.

The prices of Building in Cloud differ according to the complexity and size of the workgroups.

As previously mentioned, Building in Cloud offers three main types of commercial offers dedicated to more structured organizations.

In detail, the prices of Building in Cloud differ in:

The “Free” level, i.e. the free plan with basic functionality and no time limit, dedicated to small groups on a low budget. With this plan can access up to 5 users, manage up to two buildings and have 2 GB of storage space.

The “Professional” level provides, in addition to all the features of the Free level, features such as the availability of data management of BIM models, also in federated form, and the possibility to add additional modules necessary to achieve the advanced business goals.

With this plan you can choose the number of users who need to access the platform, manage up to ten buildings and have 250 GB of storage space and the ability to add the necessary additional modules. The cost is 14.90 € per user/month.

The “Premium” level provides all the features of the Professional level, to which all additional modules available at the time of subscription activation are added with the guarantee that, whenever a new additional module is released, it will be added to the subscription at no additional cost.

Also for this plan you can freely choose the number of users who need to access the platform, manage up to 25 buildings and have up to 500 GB of storage space. The cost is 29.90 € per user/month.

For these two plans there is a practical automatic cost calculator that makes it easy to understand the cost/benefit ratio of the platform.

The offer is completed with the most advanced solution “Ultimate” which is aimed at complex organizations, typically owners of real estate assets or the Public Administration. These organizations need, in addition to providing the solution, training services, customization, consulting and integration with their information systems.

In this case the cost will be agreed with a sales manager or a dedicated partner who, after a thorough needs analysis, will produce an implementation plan and a cost estimate.

BIM and Cloud Six main opportunities offered to designers 5

Building in Cloud is therefore configured as the work tool to facilitate communication and collaboration in the construction field, between work groups of any size: e-mails are reduced to a minimum but above all you can easily access all the necessary documentation and receive specific notifications every time you are involved in an activity. Smart Working, also for the construction sector, becomes increasingly easy and accessible.

To register and get free access to Building in Cloud Free click here.