Brunet Saunier & Associés

After having widely deployed BIM for the realization of complex hospital projects, and achieved the objectives of collaboration and coordination around the digital model, the Brunet Saunier Architecture agency, through its Associate Architect and BIM Manager Jacques Lévy-Bencheton has wanted to go further in optimizing its processes and the quality of its projects.
This new step consists of questioning the value of data according to the phases of the project and the expected deliverables, how to optimize its use.
The primary interest is identified from the design phase, hospitals constitute complex buildings and BSA office wishes to guarantee compliance with the requirements of its customers in the planned designs.
In practice, any hospital project begins with the production of numerous requirements directly linked to the quality of healthcare and health services, through programming. From the start of the project, this information is translated into the functional and technical program. The program, provided by the client, details each room as well as their characteristics. These hospitals can contain on average 3,000 rooms with, for each of these rooms, around a hundred parameters. Here then, approximately, 300,000 data to be managed during the phases of programming, design, construction and operation, the origin of which is often an Excel file.
In view of the exponential number of data produced and their evolution during all phases of the project, controlling information becomes a major issue. Ensuring their uniqueness, reliability and traceability is a prerequisite for optimizing processes during the design-build phases and their valuation for the operation of buildings.
The construction of a data management system on the scale of a hospital complex, therefore, represents a real opportunity allowing increased and facilitated collaboration of stakeholders while ensuring the much sought-after traceability of information throughout the entire process. life cycle of structures.
However, there are many issues related to the management of this data, their production process must be facilitated (can they be managed outside the digital model?), Their integrity validated and certified to allow their sharing and reuse by all stakeholders in the field. project, responsibilities being, of course, identified.
The decision to build such a management system was made possible thanks to Brunet Saunier Architecture’s expertise in data typologies and their production process. The agency has designed around one hundred hospitals for more than thirty projects. Once this step was over, the approach adopted to make the project effective was not to design a complete system from the start, but to identify the first expected benefits in order to be able to initiate the process.
After having identified the modes of data production (Excel, Revit) and their hosting (BIM360), the analysis was focused on the data exchanges between the program and project phases with identification of a chain of responsibilities at the level of the actors. stakeholders.
The study of the new Lariboisière hospital in Paris was the opportunity to initiate this process, which is intended to be generalized to all hospital projects of the Brunet Saunier Architecture office.

The main challenge for the Brunet Saunier Architecture agency is to guarantee the quality of its projects, one aspect of which is compliance, if not exceeding, of the requirements formulated by the client. Automatically controlling the data of the programming stages and studies of the project with direct access to the results is the first way to prove this level of quality and to enhance the design.
The objectives of the Brunet Saunier Architecture agency can be assessed at two levels, internally and externally.
On the one hand, the BSA agency seeks to optimize the production of its data with mass processing of information and to automate the production of design deliverables such as the supply of sheets for each room (6-sided sheets).
On the other hand, it is a question of allowing, to the external partners such as the project owner or the project manager, intervening during the design phase, an easier access to this data while integrating them in a process of reliable validation.
Ultimately, the BSA agency engages in a process of transparency and accountability with controlled management of BIM information in order to increase the excellence of its projects.
Improving processes to achieve the objectives described requires the development of a solution that allows:
• The uniqueness of the data
• Data reliability
• Traceability of modifications
• The commitment of the responsibility of each stakeholder
It is therefore a matter of creating a database specific to the hospital sector and exploiting this data by carrying out functions specific to strengthening the collaboration of actors while allowing the automation of certain tasks.
The solution is deployed for program management and the design phase. The ambition is to ensure, subsequently, the integrity of data during the construction and operation phase of buildings and their equipment in order to facilitate maintenance operations and improve the functioning of health services and care.

Brunet Saunier Architecture has been using Autodesk Revit for the production of its digital models, since 2005. The model coordination is carried out on BIM360 Design, BIM360 Docs being the tool for collaboration between all stakeholders, including for the model review.
BIM360 docs is therefore the centralization platform for all project data.
Autodesk has largely anticipated future needs by providing Forge developers, a set of web services accessible through APIs that allow data to be viewed and operated.
DB-Lab, Forge integrator Certified by Autodesk and Service Provider, then offers the design and development of a web platform specific to Brunet Saunier Architecture connected to their BIM360 space.
The Data Management API, a service for accessing data present on the BIM360 platforms, and the BIM360 API for accessing project management data were implemented. These APIs offer to interact with data via requests from a third-party application and offer the opportunity to build your own business platform based on Autodesk BIM360 data servers.

This web platform is a common data environment specific to the management of hospital premises data, equipped with a data dictionary associated with a NoSQL database, capable of ensuring the uniqueness and traceability of the data of each premises during their entire life cycle.
The BSA web platform makes it possible to communicate with the data present in BIM360 Docs and presents a tool, called DataChecker, dedicated to the management of premises data:

• Input data: direct import of rooms from Revit files (IFC, Excel)
• Restructured data: spatial tree, lists of premises, compared zones, compared data, …
• Output data: Excel reports, PDF files, Re-import in Revit
• Templates / Customization of forms

The key points in the development of this data checker were:
• Ensure the traceability of the initial program
• Optimize the updating of parameters
• Manage and transmit access rights to user parameters
• Ensure the traceability of the modification
• Update digital models with the latest database update bidirectionally
• Automate processes
• Ensure the data life cycle at the local level
• Ensure an intuitive visualization of the data of the premises on the basis of the 3D model

The data checker has, in particular, four uses:
• The co-production of data from the local file
• Automatic comparison of project data with program data
• Editing of the deliverable “local file” including the 3D view of the associated room
• Data reporting

The Data Checker extends and strengthens the BIM processes already deployed by Brunet Saunier Architecture on hospital projects.
The Brunet Saunier Architecture web platform is an extension and a link to their BIM 360 space. Each worker connects from their Autodesk account, with rights and access specified in BIM360.

The qualitative contributions are:
• Easy access to data: the application allows intuitive visualization of data from each previously referenced room without opening the model
• The traceability of information from each room
• Continuity of the data life cycle ensured by versioning
• Identification of responsibilities
• Guarantee of compliance with program requirements

The targeted quantitative contributions are:
• Monitoring the progress of information production from a dashboard
• Mass modification and validation of data from typical premises
• Automatic integration of information into the digital model
• Automatic editing of deliverables such as local sheets

Time savings dedicated to data management is approximately 30%.

Brunet Saunier Architecture, a pioneer in the deployment of BIM, has been able to gain competitiveness and build large-scale hospitals across Europe.
Aware of the importance of data management and of the technological changes to come, the Brunet Saunier Architecture agency sought a partner capable of supporting its ambitions and carrying out the solutions envisaged. DB-Lab was chosen because of its ability to understand the needs of Brunet Saunier Architecture and to explain the technological conditions for achieving the solution, thanks to its technological expertise but also its in-depth knowledge of the construction sector. construction and BIM processes.
The solution was built in stages with points made every two weeks. The method consisted of identifying the phases of development to allow the agency to run tests and suggest improvements as the platform was built.
This solution is the result of a committed, transparent collaboration that builds lasting trust between the partners.
The construction of a solid web platform dedicated to the data management of BIM projects, in the continuity of Autodesk solutions, allows to consider the future transformations to be operated, to demystify the complexity of hospitals by facilitating the management of information and constructing buildings allowing to meet the sensitive challenges of the health sector.