BIM coordination concepts

Each discipline owns its model: architecture, structure, mechanical, electrical, hydraulics. They're combined — federated — for coordination, often in Navisworks or a cloud coordination platform, rather than merged into one file. Each author remains responsible for their own model.

Collaborate › Interference Check finds elements occupying the same space between categories in your model or against a linked model — e.g. ducts vs structural framing. The report lists element IDs; use Show to find each one. It's useful for quick checks; large projects use dedicated clash tools.

Coordination tools run clash tests between model sets with rules and tolerances: hard clashes (overlap), clearance clashes (too close for insulation or maintenance) and duplicates. Clashes are grouped, reviewed, assigned and tracked.

Issues are often exchanged as BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) topics — a viewpoint, a screenshot, a comment and an assignee — that open directly at the problem in each author's software.

Typically weekly or fortnightly: each team uploads models by an agreed deadline; the coordinator federates and runs clash tests; a meeting reviews priorities; issues are assigned; authors fix their models; repeat. Agreed tolerances, clash priorities and naming live in the BIM execution plan. See the Navisworks course for the detailed workflow.