Maber Architects is a design-led practice, delivering creative architecture, interior and landscape solutions across a number of different sectors. Teamwork is at the heart of the practice, and runs through everything that they do. Their structured approach and BIM capability ensure that they work effectively and efficiently with clients, contractors and consultants.
In 2019, Maber moved from NBS Building and NBS Create to NBS Chorus, and they are now using the platform on all of their new projects. Chorus is a cloud-based platform, offering a suite of collaborative features which are essential to support Maber’s working practices and company values. The whole project team, including contractors and consultants, can be easily added to the system so they can work together on the same specification across different organisations and locations.
Unlike the previous desktop-based NBS software, Chorus can be used on any device – including macOS. As Maber is a practice of mac users, this was a key feature needed to help them successfully adopt the new platform.
At a recent innovation showcase, Taylor Maxwell (a facade and timber product manufacturer) joined Nick Greenwood (Architectural Designer at Maber) to showcase how Chorus is enabling them to work more collaboratively, and to seamlessly develop their model and specification in parallel using the new GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD add-on.
NBS Chorus links with our ARCHICAD models and helps to eliminate any discrepancies between the specification and the drawn information that we provide contractors.
- Nick Greenwood, Maber
Industry best-practice is to annotate drawings with annotations to project specifications so those receiving these can have a better understanding of the wider set of coordinated project information. There can be many of these annotations and managing these on a large project can be very challenging. With the NBS Chorus add-on for GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD, this task of coordinating project information is now a lot easier. Objects can be associated to the relevant specification clause from within the modelling environment. The key data from these clauses, such as classification code, clause title and any prefix or suffix can then be placed on the drawing or used as fields in the schedule. This has a number of big advantages over picking a reference from a text file. These annotations can be reported on so that any broken links can be fixed within the model. This ensures that all drawings, schedules and specifications can be coordinated prior to issuing a package of work to other members of the project team.
Watch the video below to find out how NBS is helping Taylor Maxwell to collaborate better with specifiers and ensure they're meeting the needs of the construction industry.
As product manufacturers, the NBS platform and how it links to the BIM model is crucial for us because it gives Architects visibility of our products.
- Mitch Smallwood-Rose, Taylor Maxwell
NBS Chorus is now being used by thousands of practices around the world to produce technical specifications up to 70% faster than writing them manually.
Nick commented: "We've found Chorus to be really easy to use. It's intuitive interface has meant that members of our team who have never used the software before have been able to generate complicated specifications in short periods of time with minimal training. This has brought huge benefits to our practice."
Find out more information...
To discover more about NBS Chorus and how it can help your organisation, visit: theNBS.com/chorus
To find out how to download the GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD add-on visit: theNBS.com/support/downloads
