Nottinghamshire-based construction group to use Opentree’s information lifecycle management system to support BIM processes
The 1,500-strong NM Group, headquartered in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, has selected the Cabinet engineering document platform developed by Teesside-based Opentree as a basis for its BIM processes.
With annual revenues of £250m, NM Group provides design, build, operation and maintenance services across sectors including civil engineering, building, mechanical and electrical engineering and specialist product manufacturing. Head of BIM, Gary Ross, is aiming for the company to be one of the industry’s leaders in BIM-enabled project delivery and identified that Opentree’s Cabinet can help its compliance with the UK Government’s BIM Level 2 requirements.
“As NM Group provides both design and project delivery services it is doubly important for us to have a strong platform to connect our back-office information management to the daily needs of our project teams,” said Ross. “Cabinet will demonstrate to our customers in highways, civil engineering and utilities that we satisfy the BIM process requirements they and their supply chain partners increasingly demand.”
Cabinet is an enterprise-level information lifecycle management system, helping businesses comply with company and project processes and industry standards. It was developed to help businesses manage standard office documentation and outputs from CAD, with support now extended to BIM.
Andrew Frank, managing director of Opentree, added, “Opentree has invested in developing a state-of-the-art platform to support design teams and document controllers. Growing adoption of BIM has underlined the importance of being able to automate business processes while providing accurate records, including a full audit and revision history for asset life-time records. We will be helping NM Group migrate data from their legacy systems into Cabinet and linking this data to their other business systems.”
NM Group is also working with Newcastle-based Viewpoint Construction Software, having adopted its cloud-based ‘common data environment’ (CDE) Viewpoint for Projects to support project team collaboration. Opentree and Viewpoint have already developed an interface between their respective systems so that file updates and status changes are immediately synchronised between the back office and shared project systems.
“With Opentree’s Cabinet and Viewpoint for Projects as our CDE in line with PAS 1192-2 and other industry standards, we can bring all our information together in a virtual space, strengthening our culture of knowledge-sharing and collaboration,” added Ross. “Achieving BIM Level 2 is only the first step. NM Group will then be working towards BIM Level 3 and helping our business and customers build an integrated, data-driven approach to asset lifecycle management.”
● Cabinet is an enterprise-level information lifecycle management system, helping businesses comply with business processes and industry standards. It was initially developed to help engineering businesses manage standard office documentation and outputs from computer-aided design (CAD). Since the UK Government mandated building information modelling (BIM) for many UK public sector construction projects by April 2016, Opentree has extended Cabinet’s capabilities to help customers comply with BIM Level 2 requirements, including PAS1192-2.
● Founded in 1946, North Midland Group operates nationally from ten strategically located regional offices and operational centres, and also provides engineering and management consultancy services internationally. NM Group provides design, build, operation and maintenance services across six main sectors covering civil engineering, building, mechanical and electrical engineering and specialist product manufacturing. The group’s headquarters is in Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire.
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