What Is Business Intelligence
Collecting data is helpful, and understanding data is insightful, but being proactive about data is impactful.
It’s a fact: AEC decision-makers and leaders are increasingly looking for ways to extract actionable insights to improve team synergies and project workflows.
Data is at the heart of everything we do as AEC professionals. In practice, modern Business Intelligence (BI) is impactful when you use that data to drive change, eliminate inefficiencies, and quickly adapt to market changes.
How Is Data Influencing AEC Today?
To start, let’s clarify what we mean by “data in AEC”.  With Speckle, we are on a mission to democratise data, all sorts of data. In other words, we are vouching for an easy way to access complex workflows by quickly transferring and exchanging data from different software and applications. As an Open Source Software, Speckle simplifies the way you access and leverage data from 3D, BIM, CAD, GIS software, and more - thanks to our many SDKs and friendly APIs, there are no limits to what can be stored in our platform.
Since 2015, we have seen a shift in data and the AEC industry. There used to be a culture of "commodification of mistakes, "meaning that contingencies are written into contracts, numbers are carried for unforeseen costs, and there is a standing assumption of labor inefficiencies and injuries on the job.
Today, we are seeing the AEC industry progressively embracing BI and data-driven approaches to enhance project performance, optimise resource allocation, improve cost control, and promote sustainability. The smart use of data intelligence is enabling the industry to move forward toward a more insights-inclusive culture, where decision-makers are encouraged to collaborate.
As leaders are wakening to the importance of data and its impact on the performance of their organisation, solutions like Speckle are driving this force of change by leveraging the power of Business Intelligence and data democratisation.
Why Does BI Matter In AEC?
Not only is data the key to optimising the potential for enjoyable experiences, it also represents a positive driver for change. Architects are conscious of the influence of data over design, construction, and feasibility. Below are some impactful use cases leveraging Business Intelligence in the context of AEC:
- Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Analysis: AEC firms can use BI to analyse building energy consumption patterns and identify opportunities to optimise energy efficiency. These calculations can be performed based on volumes, material properties, quantities and so on.
- Building Performance: BI brings meaning to the data overflowing from BIM. Designers are able to access strategic information about their project performance, enabling them to provide structure and sense to their design practices and workflows.
- Evaluating Project Performance: Key stakeholders want to understand a project’s financial returns. BI allows architects and engineers to leverage analytics and dashboards when it comes to explaining that budget and time goals are on track.
- Leveraging Model Statistics: Deep diving into BIM data and model statistics is feasible with BI. Designers and architects can look at different models and get information from them to better communicate their work.
- Urban Planning & Design: Getting relevant information on different parts of a city and its specific areas can empower planners to act sustainably.
- Resource Allocations: BI in AEC has been useful in performing value engineering by enabling planners and Project Managers to choose the most optimal brief to comply with the financial scope of a project.
- Reviewing Project Brief: Cross-referencing a client brief with the scope of a project by looking at dashboards and visualising early to later stage work can help with planning and accelerating project lifecycles.
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To encourage this positive wave of change, we at Speckle have been working on PowerBI improvements and updates to enable better data manipulation on BI tools.
Claim Your Data Back With Speckle
“Speckle allows you to actually take action over how you can flow data through your workflow. This opens opportunities to use data that enables more collaboration and coordination,” says Jenessa Man, Arup’s Technical Lead.
One of our latest release highlights (see Speckle 2.15 highlights) includes PowerBI changes and improvements. Since the introduction of the PowerBI Connector, we have been listening to our Community for feedback to introduce new changes and improvements. The aim is to become data-proactive by helping you lead impactful changes in your organisation. Some of these changes include:
- Toolbar: We have added a Viewer toolbar containing support for views, section box, zoom extents, and color reset. The latter is still experimental and will be removed in the future once coloring can be achieved with the standard Power BI way.
- Visual Settings: We’re introducing new Visual Settings dialog where you can set the context display, camera projection, and lighting settings.
- Conditional Formatting: 3D Viewer Visual now supports conditional formatting, allowing you to color and highlight data in visuals based on a set of specific criteria.
If you’re curious to learn more, check out our PowerBI playlist on YouTube to go through different steps of the process and make the best use of PowerBI and Speckle.
It’s time to find out what happens when Speckle meets Business Intelligence. Join our next PowerBI Webinar to discuss these latest features, and try Speckle today.
