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Collaborative Workflows and Version Control Through Open-Source and Distributed Common Data Environment

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Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ICCCBE 2020)

Abstract

Collaboration in architectural design becomes an increasingly complex task involving various actors working distributed in different locations. This complexity is even more hindered by the fact that the various actors involved in a project operate on different software environments and need to access accurate and up to date data at any time. Consequently, managing and keeping track of design changes throughout the workflow still remains a challenge for all actors involved in the design. This is a review paper that presents the state of the art in advanced collaborative design workflows, both in academia and industry, and introduces Speckle, a distributed Common Data Environment (CDE) and open-source data platform for Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC), as well as its version control capabilities.

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Acknowledgements

The present research has received funding from InnovateUK under the competition “Increase Productivity, Performance and Quality in UK Construction” (proj. no. 104799). Speckle was originally developed at The Bartlett School of Architecture as part of the InnoChain project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 642877.

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Poinet, P., Stefanescu, D., Papadonikolaki, E. (2021). Collaborative Workflows and Version Control Through Open-Source and Distributed Common Data Environment. In: Toledo Santos, E., Scheer, S. (eds) Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering. ICCCBE 2020. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 98. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51295-8_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51295-8_18

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