Properly implemented naming conventions are the foundation of efficient building project workflows. They reduce confusion, improve coordination, and unlock the full potential of STWs and AI-assisted processes.
Why Naming Conventions Matter
Maintaining Standards, Templates, and Workflows (STWs) is one of the most powerful, yet overlooked, levers in building projects.
Yet keeping these standards—especially naming conventions—accurate, timely, and fiscally efficient is hard work. It’s not glamorous, but it is critical. As AI tools mature, they will increasingly assist teams in tracking and maintaining naming conventions, accelerating BUSA’s mission to standardize and optimize building data.
A Name: It’s All in the Family
STWs are made up of many components. Some are large and strategic; others are small and precise:
- Font size
- Capitalization rules (sentence case, title case)
- Color schemes
- Line weights
Historically, these Aesthetic Formatting (AF) STWs were the primary focus of pre-digital offices and later during the transition to early CAD systems. They created visual consistency and improved document readability.
Every office today should maintain at least two sets of AF STWs:
- Conceptual Design AF STWs – Communicate design intent to clients and stakeholders with clarity and aesthetic consistency.
- Permit-Bid-Construction AF STWs – Align with industry-wide standards so any discipline or trade can easily interpret and utilize the documents.
The Real Value: Standardization Across Teams
Simply put, building is the ability to; “assemble the correct people, materials, tools, and information at the right place and time—and do the work correctly the first time.”
Most building projects spend roughly:
- 20% of time physically constructing the structure
- 80% of time organizing people, materials, information, and workflows
Standardization, especially through naming conventions—dramatically improves efficiency, understanding, and quality.
For example, why does every office illustrate a metal stud & gypsum wallboard wall differently? Why are standard details named differently?
Industry-wide standard detail configurations could:
- Align architects, engineers, contractors, manufacturers an distributors
- Reduce rework and risk
- Improve timing, cost, and quality
Custom conditions are still necessary, but they should follow the same AF STWs as standard details. Since standard details account for 60–70% of a building, this approach has a major impact across the project lifecycle.
Naming Conventions: The Foundation of STWs
While AF STWs are important, naming conventions (NCs) are one of several STWs that are significantly more powerful. Proper data management begins with consistent file names and codes.
Each file must:
- Clearly define its content
- Follow a consistent format
- Enable databases to sort, clean, organize, and analyze the data
As illustrated in “17. What is Building’s Problem? #$%&”, naming conventions provide a backbone for automation and data analytics, enabling a level of coordination humans alone cannot achieve.
“Standardizing naming conventions is the first step in unlocking the full power of STWs and database-driven building workflows.”
Once naming conventions are in place, additional coding, classification, and categorization can be layered on, creating a robust, analyzable, and shareable building dataset that benefits design, construction, and ongoing building operations.
Conclusion
Naming conventions may seem mundane, but they are foundational to every efficient building project. They reduce errors, increase confidence, and enable AI and database tools to deliver their full value.
When naming conventions are standardized across the industry, coordination, quality, and speed improve dramatically—for every project participant and for every phase of the building lifecycle.