So far, many platform developments have been delivered in 2018: It’s a busy and exciting year for NBS. We want to thank our customers for their active contributions in driving these developments, ensuring that we deliver to suit their needs and requirements.
Our customers drive the roadmap in many ways: From customer satisfaction surveys, innovation panels and advisory panels to feature requests via our customer-facing teams. If you would like to help us shape our roadmap and services, please get in touch; We would love to hear from you.
Our customers’ priorities have been very clear: NBS should focus on providing high-quality technical content throughout our platform, and customers agree that NBS allows them to maintain quality control and reduce risk. So far in 2018, we have delivered 13 full content updates across our specification platform; this comprised over 140 updated sections and over 4000 clauses, with updated guidance for each clause. In addition, we have updated over 12 000 manufacturer National BIM Library objects for designers and specifiers, so they have access to structured objects within their design workflows. If there is specific content that you would like to see from NBS, such as particular disciplines or manufacturers’ data, don’t hesitate to contact us.
NBS Create
NBS Create was released in 2011 as our first BIM-ready specification tool. Featuring pre-written clauses for all sectors and project types, NBS Create offers more frequent and automated content updates, with specifications that can be fully linked to the model in the BIM environment.
In 2018, you asked us to prioritize some of the following themes for development:
- Enhancements to save users time in the completion of a specification.
- The Search My Job feature was released in May 2018, allowing users to quickly and easily search for and access the specific content and information that they need in the current specification. See how to search for a current job here.
- Further work was completed in July 2018 to improve the NBS Resources search functionality, making it easier to find content to include in a job.
- Undo changes which have been made quickly or in error.
Many customers were consulted to understand this requirement in more detail. As a result, we have released the feature to ‘delete your user created clauses from project management sections’ or ‘delete a clause you have added or edited by mistake’. Further features in this area are coming soon.
- NBS content
- We continue to improve and add to the technical content available within the software; this includes the technical pre-written specification clauses and manufacturer content.
- We continue to improve and add to the technical content available within the software; this includes the technical pre-written specification clauses and manufacturer content.
- Additional product themes that we will explore with NBS Create customers include:
- Milestones and revisions review.
- Supporting work package outputs.
- Reusing content from existing jobs.
NBS Building
NBS Building, a mature member of the NBS product portfolio, has assisted design professionals with the production of robust building fabric specifications since 1999. We continue to liaise closely with our NBS Building customers to identify enhancements that would be of the most benefit. Priority themes being explored for 2018 include:
- Publishing.
- Editing and usability.
As a result, the following user-requested enhancements will be released in 2018:
- NBS content
- We continue to improve and add to the technical content available within the software; this includes the technical pre-written specification clauses and manufacturer content.
- We continue to improve and add to the technical content available within the software; this includes the technical pre-written specification clauses and manufacturer content.
- Improved functionality for adding and printing images in the specification.
- More installation improvements.
- It will now be even easier to add and suggest product manufacturers.
- We will introduce a live news feed specifically for NBS Building users.
Future direction: Themes that you have been discussing
Through our customer satisfaction surveys, advisory panels and beta programs, we monitor the key themes being discussed and then validate them with our wider customer base. The recent customer satisfaction survey shows the latest results for these key themes:
Other comments from the 2018 Customer Satisfaction Survey include:
‘Push [it] all online’.
‘Make it accessible for mac native environment…’
‘It would be very useful… [to be able to generate specifications] that are suitable for use outside of the UK…’
During consultations with customers, NBS recognized that not all future product themes or requirements could be implemented as scalable or as quickly as needed in our existing portfolio of products and solutions. These themes include:
- Full online tool with real collaboration and coordination around the specification and model data.
- Specification activities outside the UK.
- Mac support.
- Increasing demand for Uniclass 2015 in the UK and globally.
Over the last 12 months, we have been working hard to prototype how we could achieve the above needs, holding future specification workshops alongside our Agile innovation process. This work has allowed us to develop this prototype into an NBS platform which is right for the future growth of the construction industry.
We hope that those who have been involved to date have enjoyed the experience of sketching out designs with us, critiquing wireframes and seeing your feedback come to life every two weeks. Our teams at NBS have found this iterative process immensely valuable, so we thank you for your time and collaboration.
We are very excited to announce that we are currently developing the latest addition to our product portfolio. NBS Chorus is a collaborative specification platform that will support global design and construction.
This platform will bring everything that you expect from NBS, being underpinned with expert technical content not only for the UK (Uniclass 2015) but also for the Canadian market, with the full CMS and NMS content sets available. It is our first online collaborative specification platform that supports global design and construction. Find out more about NBS Chorus.
Please get in touch for further information on all our developments.
If you would like to participate in the NBS Innovation Process for NBS Chorus (where we will be exploring the product themes of Office Masters and Model Integration Phase), please contact us.
Further Reading
Our global support
Our progress in international markets
Our acquisition of Digicon
