The case for sharing information across technology platforms
The CDE creates trust between stakeholders on a project by facilitating an information management process and providing a place to access and interact with the information in the process. The CDE records what, who and when something took place with a piece of information and ultimately builds an information model for handover to the operations phase.
Once information is ready to be shared with others on the project, it enters the CDE - Contrary to popular marketing tales, it is rarely achieved through the use of one system and alternatively, an ecosystem of systems which is also known as the Distributed CDE (DCDE) and is employed by the different teams involved. Information sharing typically involves downloading and uploading information (i.e Documents) between systems that make up the DCDE, depending on who needs to access it. This is done by creating a user account in each system for the same person - Usually, the document controller, or dedicated admin on each team.
The stakeholder that has been appointed by another, is typically required to share information with them in their system. Whether this be a document of type submittal, RFI or change order, the appointed stakeholder will require double handling of this information so that teams collaborating within their system can collaborate with their appointing stakeholder. To achieve this, one user, normally a dedicated role i.e document controller, admin, or graduate is added as a user to the appointing stakeholders system. We can call this the “Document Controller” for the time being.
Introducing The Virtual Document Controller (VDC)
Automation systems such as BIMLauncher can replace the manual workflows that would be otherwise required on a project. But, with automation, there is no human involved, and thus, we need a way to control and provide access to data so that it can be worked with by the automation. This is where the concept of a “Virtual Document Controller” steps in, in the form of a standard user account that is set up in each system so that the automation can interact with the project(s) data in the exact same way as the real document controller would.
At BIMLauncher, we have found that the Virtual Document Controller method for creating an interface into CDEs is met with the least resistance from internal IT teams. This is because the organisation providing access to the automation retains full control of their system including the ability to immediately remove access from the automation to their data. Additionally, the user permissions model provided by each platform provides granular control of what the automation can access, and it is easily consumable by project teams. Automations do not have to be complex!
Setting up and configuring a VIRTUAL DOCUMENT CONTROLLER on your project
A Virtual Document Controller is always just a standard user account in your organisation for the respective system - no different to the account the normal document controller has. It will always be configured with granular tool based permissions so that it can only read/write specific information to the set project environment - just as you would with a regular document controller that is not in your organisation. These scopes vary based on the scope of the tasks that you would expect the document controller to perform in the system. On the automation side, this would be the scope of the requirements for the automation.
During the deployment of the automation, which is a configurable process, the automation deployment team will authorise with the credentials of the VDC that connects to the system. The OAuth protocol is the most common authentication strategy available across platforms. It is robust, and secure protocol and may be recognised in vendor documentation as “3-legged” or “Authorization Code grant” type. This approach is not just limited to the OAuth protocol and can be supported by any platform that supports the concept of a user (and has an API). Having completed the login, the automation can take care of reading/writing data to the system, just as the document controller would have done with the manual methods.
It is important that you trust the developer of the automation, as although access and permissions are granular, data can still be accessed and misused - But, this is not different for the document controller alternative. Additionally, we recommend that you have appropriate security protection for VDC account credentials to protect against unauthorised access of project data.
Worked Example of how BIMLauncher workflow is configured with a Virtual Document Controller
An overview of the implementation process carried out by the BIMLauncher implementation team for each project:
Once the customer has set up a VDC and provided access to each project in BIMLauncher’s scope of requirements.
A notification email is received to a secure BIMLauncher VDC mailbox and the credentials are stored in a highly secure environment.
BIMLauncher implementation team verifies access for the VDC meets the automation requirements.
BIMLauncher implementation team starts the Integration setup process in the BIMLauncher (internal) Admin application.
BIMLauncher implementation team hits the ‘Authorise’ button which opens the browser window for the system login.
Our implementation team enters the login details for the VDC, and ‘submits’ them.
BIMLauncher API securely handles the OAuth callbacks and continues the OAuth process before delegating responsibility of the token credentials to our token lifecycle management system.
Conclusion
The concept of a VDC requires no major leaps of imagination for anyone on the project team - as it is just as it is done today, except the user is controlled remotely by the automation.
As automation increases amongst the multiple systems that make up a CDE on a given project today, and the requirement for teams to invest / double down on their own point solution whilst interacting and meeting client mandates increases, it is important to note that a common concept for a user that can be used by Automations in these systems are required.
The virtualised user concept leveraged in VDC allows the industry to build on a shared idea for automations in general, which is important as automation becomes more prominent not just amongst project management systems (or CDEs) but into the areas of resource management, financial management, preconstruction and operations.