Project data, broadly, is the full body of information generated over the life of a construction project: drawings, specifications, RFIs, submittals, schedules, cost records, daily reports, correspondence, considered as a collective asset rather than a scattered pile of individually useful documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Treating project data as a coherent asset, rather than a byproduct of doing the work, is a relatively recent shift in how the industry thinks about documentation. For a long time, most of this information was generated to satisfy an immediate need: a submittal to get approval, an RFI to get an answer, and then effectively archived and forgotten once that immediate need was met. The realization that this same data has real, ongoing value, for everything from dispute resolution to future renovation planning to portfolio-level performance analysis\u2014has pushed firms to treat project data with more deliberate structure and retention discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quality and structure matter as much as sheer volume when it comes to the actual usefulness of project data. A project that generates significant documentation but cannot consistently store it and does not use naming conventions or cross-references between related data has tons of data but little ability to retrieve it when a particular question arises. Project data that is structured and organized turns a mess of raw documentation into data that a team can rely on to answer questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is also where the connection to integrated project data becomes relevant: raw project data sitting in isolated silos across different tools has real value individually, but connecting it across systems unlocks its full potential for answering questions that span multiple categories at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One easy first step for a firm focused on better project data discipline: pick one or two submittal log and RFI log naming conventions and standardize them for each active project. One of the many reasons is that these logs are often the project data type to be standardized first. After incremental standardization, you are more likely to sustain long-term organizational change compared to an overhaul that occurs across a busy firm at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data retention policy deserves explicit thought rather than default settings inherited from whatever software a firm happens to use. Some project data warranty-relevant records, for instance, genuinely need to survive well beyond typical default retention windows, and a firm that hasn’t deliberately reviewed its retention settings against its actual legal and warranty exposure may discover a gap only when a multi-year-old record turns out to matter and is no longer available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Project data, broadly, is the full body of information generated over the life of a construction project: drawings, specifications, RFIs, submittals, schedules, cost records, daily reports, correspondence, considered as a collective asset rather than a scattered pile of individually useful documents. Treating project data as a coherent asset, rather than a byproduct of doing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-p"],"yoast_head":"\n