The importance of data analysis in document management

Throughout the lifecycle of a project, an immense amount of data is generated. In a digitised AEC industry, data is considered a form of communication, and the translation of intelligent data analysis into meaningful insights and well-presented messages can provide valuable opportunities for improved document management.

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Benefits of data analysis and visualisation in AEC projects

For any document management system, a structured and comprehensible presentation of project deliverables is indispensable. When provided with a well-organised overview of information, project team members can ensure that they are always working on the correct and up-to-date documents. This helps maintain information accuracy across projects, eliminate errors, and ensure non-disrupted collaboration.

A solution to intelligently present project information in document management systems is to analyse and visualise data in a way that is intuitive and understandable to project teams. Project data is usually associated with letters and numbers; without visualisation, they can only be presented with traditional methods such as lists or spreadsheets. On the other hand, dashboards with visual elements like graphs, charts or maps can tell deeper stories that are full of insights, trends, and patterns which will not be found in traditional representations of data. It is also simpler and more interactive for team members to access and handle project information, since they can easily interrogate, select, and highlight data on a visualised dashboard to obtain the insight that they require.

Implementing data analysis in Atvero’s document management capabilities

In Atvero, documents in a project are organised in lists of records, approvals, transmittals, or issues. Project related information can easily be searched and accessed using advanced filtering of ISO 19650 metadata. However, lists and filters are still rough data that does not provide an intelligent overview of project information. To provide users with an intuitive overview of their project data, our team use Microsoft PowerBI to analyse and present the Atvero Project Hub database in reports that are directly connected with customers’ projects. These reports will automatically refresh with updated information in the database, and can present a wide range of project information, including document groups, publishing history, or accepted and rejected documentations.

With PowerBI visualisations, we look to not only present project information, but also provide additional insights into how data are associated with each other. For example, our reports will show the connections between documents groups and their associated metadata, published files and their corresponding document types, or approved documents and their assigned reviewers. The reports will also contain pages with different themes to present condensed data by topics. An example is the ISO 19650-focused page that not only shows how many documents are associated to a certain building plot, level, discipline, or type, but also displays properties on the other chart of the elements selected.

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Our goals

Acknowledging the importance of data analysis and visualisation in document management, our team at Atvero look to provide an innovative approach to presenting project data that allow users gain profound insights of documents throughout a project’s life cycle. With this approach, we hope to aid customers in making informed decisions based on data, as well as improve productivity and collaboration across teams.