Case study / Design Management
Group BC: CDE Document Workflow Intelligence for a Tier 1 Contractor
Background
A CDE capturing every document movement — but no way to manage design at portfolio scale.
Group BC is the common data environment used across a portfolio of major construction programmes at a leading tier 1 contractor — capturing every document issued, reviewed and accepted or rejected through a structured workflow. On any live project it holds a precise, time-stamped record of every revision submitted, every QA decision made and every outstanding action. But the platform was built around the project, not the portfolio.
Design managers and leadership had no way to see across projects simultaneously — to understand which programmes were behind on document delivery, where QA rejection rates were highest, which supply chain organisations were carrying the most outstanding actions, or whether workflow stages were running on time. The business engaged Acumine to build the reporting and analytics layer that made portfolio-scale design management possible.
No portfolio view of document workflow status
Group BC recorded the workflow position of every document revision across every project — but this data lived in separate project environments. Getting a consistent view of accepted, rejected, under review and outstanding documents across the portfolio required manual extraction from individual projects and compilation outside the system, which meant it happened rarely, if at all.
QA review performance invisible at scale
Every document submitted through Group BC passed through a QA gate before entering the formal workflow — where it could be accepted, rejected or returned for correction. Rejection rates and the reasons behind them (naming conventions, revision sequences, document titles, withdrawn documents) were held in the system but never aggregated, so there was no structured view of QA performance by project, originator or document type.
Work package document delivery progress untracked
Each project had planned document deliverables organised by work package — structural, MEP, façade, civil and others — with targets for what should be issued and accepted at each stage. Comparing planned versus actual document delivery across work packages at portfolio level was not possible within Group BC, making it difficult to identify which packages were at risk of falling behind the information delivery plan.
Outstanding actions and overdue tasks unmanaged
Group BC tracked workflow actions — review requests, approvals, comments — assigned to individuals and organisations across the supply chain. But overdue actions, organisations with large volumes of outstanding work and individuals with tasks past their due dates were not surfaced in any aggregated form, making proactive chasing and escalation dependent on manual project-by-project investigation.
What Group BC captures
Structured document lifecycle data across workflow, QA, work packages and design communications — fragmented by project.
Group BC recorded a granular, time-stamped picture of every document through its full lifecycle — from first submission through QA, into formal workflow stages, through every revision, to final acceptance or rejection — alongside all project communications including RFIs. Acumine connected to the Group BC REST API, aggregated this data across all live projects into a single governed data model in Microsoft Fabric, and surfaced it in Power BI.
Document workflow
Every revision, every workflow stage, every suitability code — full lifecycle tracking
Each document revision in Group BC moved through a defined workflow with suitability codes (S1–S5 for review stages, A5 for construction issue, AB for as-built) tracking its progression from first issue to formal acceptance. The API exposed document number, revision, suitability, workflow stage, originator, recipient, issue date, modified date, days in workflow, outstanding issues and associated actions — providing the complete data model for workflow status and QA reporting.
Work package progress
Planned versus actual document delivery by work package and suitability stage
Group BC organised documents by work package and tracked whether planned deliverables had been issued and accepted at each suitability stage. This allowed Acumine to compare planned document counts against actual issued and accepted counts at work package level — surfacing which packages were on track, which were behind plan and which were carrying the largest volume of outstanding documents relative to their target.
Design communications
RFIs, technical queries and project instructions — all design communications tracked through the CDE
Alongside document workflow, Group BC captured all project communications issued through the CDE — including RFIs, technical queries and instructions — with form ID, revision, communication type, status, issued by, raised by, date issued, days open, number of responses and outstanding review actions. This gave the reporting layer a complete picture of communications progress, overdue items and response performance by sender and recipient across every active project.
The solution
A nine-tab design management intelligence platform — plus automated project-level reports
Acumine built a Microsoft Fabric data pipeline connecting to the Group BC REST API — pulling document, revision, workflow, project communication and user data across all live projects and structuring it into a single, governed model. The Power BI reporting layer delivered a nine-tab portfolio dashboard and two automated project-level report types that refreshed from the same data pipeline.
The portfolio dashboard was filterable by project, work package, originator, document type, suitability status and date — allowing design managers and leadership to slice the portfolio view to the specific combination of projects and supply chain partners they needed to manage.
01
Overview
A portfolio-level summary of document status and forms progress — showing documents by workflow status as a donut chart, workflow status by originator (top 10) as a bar chart, and workflow progress by month tracking how the portfolio was moving through review stages over time. Forms status by work package (top 10) and forms status progress by month gave design managers an immediate read on the current position across both documents and communications across all live projects.
02
QA review
A dedicated QA performance dashboard showing uploaded, reviewed, QA accepted and QA rejected document counts as KPI cards — with accepted and rejected volumes by month as a line chart tracking QA throughput over time. The top 10 rejection reasons (naming convention, revision sequence, document title, document number, S5-Withdrawn, A5-Construction Issue, AB-As-Built and others) were ranked as a bar chart, rejections broken down by originator, and QA status split by document type (drawing, specification, schedule, method statement, calculation, survey, report) — giving the design management team a structured picture of where QA failure was concentrated and which supply chain partners were generating the most rework.
03
Workflow status
A comprehensive workflow position view with a breakdown donut (accepted, rejected, under review, other) and volumes by month tracking the portfolio's workflow progress over time. Documents were further broken down by suitability code (S1–S5, A5, AB) to show how the portfolio was progressing through formal review and issue stages — and by originator (top 20) to surface which supply chain organisations were carrying the largest volumes at each workflow stage. A toggle between all revisions and latest revision only gave design managers control over whether historical revisions were included in the counts.
04
Workflow status detail
A detailed action-level view showing a matrix by originator and workflow status — with columns for documents issued, issues completed, percentage complete and active issues with outstanding actions. A second table showed actions by recipient — broken down by reason for issue (for comment, for approval, lead review, for information, for acknowledgement) with incomplete and overdue counts for each. A bar chart of actions by reason for issue gave an at-a-glance picture of where workflow bottlenecks were occurring, which recipients were carrying the most overdue actions and where the review pipeline was most under pressure.
05
Documents by work package
A work package progress view showing planned versus actual issued documents as a side-by-side bar chart across all work packages — with documents issued to each package broken down by workflow status, and outstanding documents by type surfaced as a bar chart. An actual versus outstanding donut gave the overall completion picture at a glance, and a drill-down to individual work packages allowed design managers to understand the precise document position within each discipline — including which documents were outstanding, under review or accepted relative to the plan.
06
Documents detail
A full searchable document register showing every document across the portfolio — with columns for document number, revision, latest revision flag, suitability status, document status, modified date, accepted (Y/N), workflow, days in workflow, outstanding issues and a direct link back to the document in Group BC. An associated issues sub-table and an actions-associated-to-issues sub-table beneath each record gave design managers the ability to review the full action history for any selected document without leaving the reporting environment, and to track which actions were still open and who was responsible.
07
Design communications including RFIs
A portfolio view of all project communications issued through Group BC — showing issued, completed, unanswered and overdue counts as KPI cards, communication status breakdown as a donut chart and communications by month (last 12 months) as a bar chart. Status by sender (top 10) and by recipient (top 20) gave design managers a structured view of which organisations were raising the most queries, which were the slowest to respond and where overdue communications were most concentrated.
08
Design communications detail
A searchable register covering every project communication and RFI across the portfolio — with columns for communication ID, revision, type, status, responded (Y/N), issued by, raised by, days open, number of responses, outstanding review actions and a direct link to the item in Group BC. A review actions sub-table beneath each record gave the communications management team the ability to track exactly where each RFI or query stood, who held outstanding actions and how long items had been open — without navigating across multiple project environments.
09
Organisational performance
A supply chain design management performance view — showing an indicators matrix by organisation with columns for active users, documents issued, documents QA accepted, percentage QA accepted, documents accepted, percentage accepted, communications issued, communications completed and percentage complete. Three donut charts summarised the portfolio position on QA acceptance rate, document acceptance rate and communications completion rate — giving design leads and leadership a structured cross-portfolio view of which supply chain organisations were performing consistently and which were generating disproportionate QA failures, document outstanding rates or unresolved project queries.
Automated project-level reports
Project workflow and submissions review reports — generated automatically from the same pipeline
Alongside the portfolio dashboard, Acumine built two automated project-level report types that ran from the same Microsoft Fabric data pipeline — giving project teams a consistently formatted, always-current document management report without any manual compilation.
Workflow status report
Document workflow position, overdue issues and revision audit — project by project
Each project's workflow status report opened with a summary donut of document positions and a workflow status breakdown by originator. A dedicated section showed organisations awaiting document review — with bar charts and tables split by S3 and S4 workflow stages — giving the project design manager an immediate view of where review bottlenecks sat. An overdue issue list (separately for S3 and S4 workflows) showed documents past their due dates with the names of individuals holding outstanding tasks, and a detail section broke those individuals down by workflow stage (Initial Review, Lead Review, For Approval, For Comment). A Revision Duplicates Audit at the end of the report flagged any documents where duplicate revision sequences had been submitted, supporting consistent naming discipline across the project.
Submissions review report
Lead Review and For Approval submissions — filtered by originator and recipient with deadline analysis
The tasks report focused on submittals in the Lead Review and For Approval workflow stages — filterable by originator and recipient — and provided a breakdown of each issue by timeliness: to complete, late, late by more than 15 days and late by more than 30 days. A detailed list for each issue sheet gave the project team and supply chain partners a precise record of every outstanding task, its due date and how far overdue it was running — providing the structured data needed for design management meetings and supply chain chasing without any manual data extraction from Group BC.
Outcomes
Portfolio design management intelligence that Group BC alone could not provide
A live portfolio view of document workflow status across every live project
For the first time, design managers and leadership had a single, always-current view of document workflow progress — accepted, under review, outstanding and overdue — across all active projects simultaneously. The overview and workflow status dashboards replaced a process of logging into individual Group BC project environments and manually compiling document status reports, giving the team the portfolio picture they needed at the start of every design management cycle.
QA rejection patterns identified and acted on
The QA review dashboard surfaced rejection reasons, rejection rates by originator and QA performance by document type in a single view — making it straightforward to identify which supply chain organisations were consistently submitting non-compliant documents and which types of non-compliance were most common. Design managers could direct QA improvement conversations with specific organisations using the data, rather than relying on anecdotal experience from individual project reviewers.
Work package document delivery tracked against plan
The documents by work package dashboard gave the design management team a structured view of planned versus actual document delivery for each discipline across the portfolio — making it possible to identify packages at risk of falling behind the information delivery plan before the impact reached the construction programme. Outstanding documents by type and the actual versus outstanding donut gave an immediate picture of delivery status without any manual analysis.
Overdue actions and outstanding tasks visible and manageable
The workflow detail dashboard and automated project-level workflow status reports gave project teams and design managers a precise view of outstanding and overdue actions by individual and organisation — with deadline analysis showing how far past due each item was running. This made proactive chasing structured and targeted rather than reactive, and gave leadership the data to escalate supply chain performance issues before they became programme risks.
Technology
Group BC CDE data structured for portfolio design management in Power BI
The solution connected to the Group BC REST API via a Microsoft Fabric data pipeline — pulling document, revision, workflow, project communication and user data across all live projects and structuring it into a single, governed medallion architecture. Power BI delivered both the nine-tab portfolio dashboard and the automated project-level report types, with regular refresh ensuring every view always reflected the current position in Group BC across the full programme portfolio.
This challenge — a CDE platform with rich project-level document workflow data but no portfolio view — is one Acumine encounters consistently across tier 1 contractors managing large design supply chains. If your team uses Group BC and your design managers and leadership lack a consistent cross-project picture of document workflow status, QA performance, work package progress and supply chain accountability, Acumine can build the same reporting platform for you.
Work with Acumine
Using Group BC and missing portfolio visibility of design management performance?
If your projects are recording document workflows in Group BC but your design managers and leadership have no consistent cross-project picture of workflow status, QA rejection rates, work package document progress and supply chain accountability, Acumine can build the reporting platform that connects it — aggregating your Group BC data automatically and delivering the portfolio intelligence your business needs.