A common data environment asks every project team — design, construction, and the owner — to work inside one shared environment. A connected data environment lets each team keep its own environment and links them, so the single source of truth for each phase stays where that phase works, and the data still flows between them. The second model is what most capital projects are moving toward, because design work in progress and construction execution rarely belongs in the same place.
Why Project Data Became Hard to Manage
With so many megaprojects in the construction industry these days, it’s no wonder that contractors are looking for more and better ways to deliver on their proposals and best estimates, always seeking to improve cost, time and accuracy to meet market demand.
In addition, asset owners (generally the client or end user) need more data at project handover, putting more pressure on the already depleted resources of contractors and consultants. What is driving this need? Primarily, government mandates around building information modeling (BIM), the evolution of digital engineering, execution plans (DEXPs) and the ability for the latest software solutions to deliver more than ever before.
Dodge Construction Network surveyed US owners spending over $100 million a year on capital construction and found that 80% of the most digitally mature could pull data within hours when a cost or schedule issue arose, against 13% of everyone else. The mature group was roughly three times more likely to finish on or under budget.
What a Project Data Environment Has to Cover Now
How can we manage our data better, with more consistency and how can we save money, reduce timescales, and improve accuracy?
By enabling better data collaboration across disparate project teams. This is a key component in achieving the “holy grail” of improved project delivery. We need accurate data, in a timely manner that is shared across our critical projects. In years gone by, this was all about documentation – drawings, specifications, datasheets and project information to be shared with the team. This brought about the advent of engineering document management systems (EDMS) to manage that project information in a collaborative format.
These days, the landscape has completely changed. It’s not only about the documentation anymore – we are talking 3D models (preferably as a BIM deliverable), project estimates schedules, forecasts, contracts, change documents, work packaging and handover documentation that includes data requirements for the asset owner, not to mention the need for reporting and dashboards so we know how projects are tracking. The EDMS has become a part of the data collaboration piece that is now focused on a shared project environment.
What a Common Data Environment Is
The common data environment (CDE) is traditionally understood to serve as a project environment that contractors are turning to today as a resolution to the data issue.
The original concept around the CDE can be described as a single source of information used to collect, manage and disseminate documentation, the graphical model and non-graphical data for the whole project team.
Where the Single-Environment Assumption Breaks
The idea behind this version of the CDE solution is to give all project stakeholders a single point to go to for all information. It is a single environment for all project data throughout the project life cycle. The assumption here is that all users from all project phases (design, construction, handover) are working in the same environment. Permission controls are in place to determine who can access what information. The primary issues to be considered with this environment are around security, work in progress – specifically in the design phase with federated models, etc. — and native filetype sharing capabilities.
What a Connected Data Environment Is
Though the initial definition of a common data environment is workable, a more recently adopted definition and model are serving our industry in more impactful ways. We may understand this new version as an environment of connected data software solutions used to collect, manage and disseminate documentation, the graphical model and non-graphical data for the whole project team; a connected data environment. As you can see from the image below, this new version of the CDE contains three different pillars or environments, but the key is that they are all connected. This enables a digital thread of information to travel through all environments without manual re-export. Design information, though in its own controlled environment, can be shared throughout construction with the project owner (or operations) easily through the overall connected data environment.
The difference between the two models comes down to where the single source of truth lives and how it reaches everyone else:
| Common data environment | Connected data environment | |
| Structure | One environment holding all project data for the whole life cycle | Each phase keeps its own environment, and the environments are linked |
| Who works in it | Design, construction and handover teams all work in the same place | Design, construction and ownership teams each work in their own |
| Single source of truth | One shared repository, with access set by permissions | Sits in each phase’s own environment and is exposed to the others |
| Work in progress | Design WIP and federated models sit alongside published data | Design WIP stays in the design CDE and is published when it is ready |
| How data moves | Permission controls decide who can see what | Native integrations or APIs carry the digital thread between environments |
| What to watch | Security, keeping WIP separate, and native file type sharing | Whether the integrations between the environments actually hold up |
Why the Asset Life Cycle Matters, Not Just the Project
We are certainly seeing more adoption of this connected data solution as it enables an open-standard style of delivery. The digital thread is becoming the key as project stakeholders have realized the importance of data, and its availability, throughout the asset life cycle. Note that we are talking about the asset life cycle, not just the project life cycle. Asset data and the digital thread start at the concept phase and are a consistent theme for the life of the asset until it is decommissioned. Therefore, the connected environment has become more important to enable the data flow over time and for the different stages of the asset life cycle.
The concept behind the connected data solution is to enable project phase teams to utilize their own environments, with the single source of truth residing in their own area. The “single source of truth” is then available to other stakeholders, outside of the environment, through native integrations or through application programmable interfaces (APIs). This becomes especially powerful when you consider the basic phases of design, construction and ownership. These three groups of stakeholders will often have their own environments with their own data requirements and use cases.
What Design Publishes, and When
Design teams can work in their own design CDE with work in progress (WIP) design models that can then be published to the construction or owner CDE when ready for review. The construction team can in turn use the published models for estimating takeoffs, verifying model data, creating work packages and tying into the EDMS, etc. without affecting the WIP models that are still in the design phase.
This connected construction CDE becomes the key point for collaboration between all parties as project execution commences, considering contracts, forecasting, field work management, documentation and drawing review, etc.
What Happens at Handover
As project execution draws to an end, the construction team begins thinking about project handover documentation to the owner. This comes in many forms including drawings, documents, models and other project data as agreed during the initial contract negotiations. Getting that right depends on agreeing what a BIM deliverable has to carry at contract stage rather than at turnover. This is also the point where the owner is thinking about their own CDE and the asset management platform. Thoughts are now moving to operations and maintenance (O&M), the project digital thread of information being supplied at handover and potential digital twin management.
As the design and construction CDEs come to a close, the owner needs to consider how to integrate all the project deliverables — specifically drawings, documents and data relating to the asset — to the asset management system. The final asset deliverables tend to stay in the owner CDE, with specific asset information around O&M, work orders, maintenance schedules, etc. residing in the Asset Management system. The ideal scenario is to have these linked to ensure there is a single source of truth for all asset information once the O&M phase begins.
Operators and maintenance crews need to be sure they have up to date, accurate information. The best way to ensure this is the adoption of a connected data environment — from project inception through execution into operations where data is stored in the right place to be available at the right time for the right user.
What to Look for When Evaluating a Connected Data Environment
Most vendors will say their environment is connected. The distinction shows up in a few specific places:
- Published integrations and documented APIs, not a roadmap. If the connection between the design, construction, and owner environments has to be built as a project, it is not a connected environment yet.
- A publish step that protects design work in progress. Construction should be able to take a released model without reaching into models still being worked on.
- Native file formats preserved end to end, so the owner inherits something usable rather than a flattened export.
- Permissions that follow the phase, not just the person, because the same organization often plays different roles across design, execution, and operations.
InEight Document and InEight Model sit in the construction pillar of that picture — document control, drawing review, and a federated model environment that takes published design models and hands a maintained record on at turnover.
