From Meeting Management to Payment Applications, BIM 360’s Recent Releases Streamline Workflows and Increase Collaboration

One of the greatest pain points for construction professionals is the time spent administering workflows and information exchange. It’s an often tedious yet necessary task. A recent study published by PlanGrid, in partnership with FMI, found that 35% of teams’ time is spent on ‘non-optimal’ work - and this work adds up to a whopping $177 billion labor cost to firms. 

Today, we are thrilled to announce several key updates for both PlanGrid and BIM 360 products that help reduce this costly pain point by automating non-optimal tasks and redirecting team members’ efforts towards high-value work. Through improving information accuracy and availability, accountability and collaboration is also improved. 

Here is a roundup of the most recent BIM 360 releases that help teams streamline workflows and increase collaborations:

• Introduction of Meeting Minutes 
• Addition of Pay Applications
• New Submittals List on Mobile
• Submittal Usability Enhancements 

Meeting Minutes comes to BIM 360 

No more hunting for lost meeting minutes, questioning accountability, or running the risk of unanswerable claims. 

BIM 360 Project Management now includes a meeting minutes toolset to make meeting management effortless. Now you can have clear visibility into the commitments made and an organized history of all meeting records.

Meeting organizers can quickly create an agenda for an upcoming meeting and add meeting invitees. The agenda is automatically accessible to all invitees. Once your meeting is live, the meeting organizer can establish accountability by tracking attendance, documenting decisions, and assigning individuals to action items. Unresolved items are easily trackable & automatically carried over to the following meeting as part of the follow-up creation. You can even easily export meeting minutes to PDF and distribute it before attendees even leave the table.

All meeting records are centralized and organized in BIM 360, keeping an accurate historical record for audit purposes and providing meeting invitees with access to the information they need when they need it. 

Meeting management no longer needs to be a disconnected and time-consuming task!

Cost Management now includes Pay Applications 

Requesting and approving payments due and tracking progress is a massive undertaking in construction. It often involves several disconnected solutions, increasing the risk of error and limiting the view into how payments affect the project budget. 

BIM 360 is helping alleviate this common pain point with the addition of Pay Applications to the BIM 360 platform.

Teams can now easily create main (or prime) contracts and automatically generate the main contract Schedule of Values (SOV) from selected budget items. 

Balancing cash flow and accurately forecasting is also effortless with BIM 360 Pay Application. Teams can easily set up billing periods and manage incremental supplier payment applications with the ability to track both pending payments and completed payments against the total work to be completed. All supplier payment applications, change orders, and back-up sheets for each billing period are collated to provide the foundation for the  budget payment application. 

Start decreasing the risk of error, automate portions of the payment process, and instantly visualize how payments affect the project budget with BIM 360 Cost Management.

New Submittals List on Mobile

Submittals play a critical role in preventing misunderstandings or problems from occurring during the building process. Submittals help make sure the project is delivered accurately, on-time, and on-budget. 

However, unless the approved information is distributed and easily accessible in the field, teams run the risk of schedule delays, cost overruns, or potential litigation issues caused by building with outdated or missing data.  

To reduce this risk, BIM 360 takes mobile submittal accessibility to the next level with the release of a new submittal items list view within the BIM 360 iOS & Android apps.

With this release, all team members now have instant access toll approved submittal items. Submittals in progress are also accessible to only those team members involved in the process. 

Tap to open the submittal item. Reference the details and sync the associated attachments for offline viewing. If you’re looking for a specific item, simply use the quick filters or easily search and filter the list to find the information you need quickly (search and filter only available on iOS).

Submittal Usability Enhancements

Several new enhancements are available to make tracking and viewing easier than ever.

• Contractual Date Tracking: Teams can easily track due dates with the addition of five new standard attributes; ‘priority’, ‘required date’, ‘required approval date’, ‘required on job site date’, and ‘lead time’.
• Re-open/Edit Closed Submittal Packages: Project Admins and Submittal Managers can now re-open and edit closed packages.
• Export Submittal Data: Project Admins and Submittal Managers can now easily extract submittal log data in the form of an Excel export. 
• Enhanced Submittal Items & Packages List View: Customize and configure the columns you wish to see in the submittal items and package list view via the control icon.
• Improved Filter Options: The filter options have been redesigned and now allow you to filter by your action items.