Uses of databases in construction firms-Yang

The database is the foundation of design and innovation. When a design team wants to develop a project, they need lots of the documents, files, and sources. One of the main function for database in the construction firm is to do the resource management, which is a critical issue among construction firms. Since organising, sharing, and using those resources in construction are crucial, resources management is considered to be one of the key sources of success for the construction projects.


Storing and organising materials are very critical in the construction firm. Every construction firm will have many finished project documents, researched materials, or their own designed documents. Those files are valuable for a firm. Ten years before, some firms had all the documents in paper, and they might have room or library to store those paper documents. And label the shelves to sorting the documents for people to find the documents they need. But this method wasted the office space and wasted the time to find the documents. If the office need move, it will cost lots of time to transfer the paper files. Now, the firms develop their electrical database. They scan the old file and store the new files in their own database and develop the data dictionary to search the files. Database helped them to save time, office space and improve the efficiency.


One construction project will not only include one person, it will involve several different team and party. It will include at least owner, designer, contractor, and the manufacturer. How to share the information to other team will be a critical problem to the construction firms? If they use the traditional delivery method like mailing, will cost time and money. And mailing will be hard for construction team to make changes on the file. If they use email to transfer the files, some of the design files will be too large to transfer by email. Database will help the construction firm to sharing the files to the other team efficiency and they can work together in the database.


Depends of the numbers of files increase, the database becomes to an efficiency method to help construction firm to store, search and sharing the files. Database will make the construction firm work easier.


Comments:

Mridual (Link): I agree with you that the easy access and utilisation of the data. Also, I like your example about the Revit Material Library and Dropbox. Currently, the database helps the design firm save lot of time. When they sharing the files in Dropbox, they save the time to upload files, download files and transfer the files. Some design firms will have their drawing standard library which includes the layer, line type, text font, it can help them to save the time to do the uniform drawings. 


Abdullatif (Link): I like your post about the ODBMS. Before read your post, I don't know what the ODBMS is. Your example of Relational Database Management Systems helped me to understand the ODBMS. You wrote that ODBMS are used to support and maintain simple forms of data such as employee name, date of birth and other pieces of information that combine to create a profile. Also,  audio, video, CAD modules and Geographical Information Systems all should be ODMBS systems. 


Arthur (Link): A relational database is a hard topic for me. Your post helps me to understand it which is a collection of data items that are organised in a manner that relates the parameters between the data items. Also, your scheme show the relational database visually. The diagrams simplified progression shows how the various schemes can be put together to relate the appropriate attributes.