Everything in the facilities management model is an object be it a document, a person, a telephone,a contract, a room, or a piece of furniture.

For management purposes, items of furniture and equipment are referred to as assets and such things as buildings, floors,and rooms are referred to as areas. Areas are drawn in design files and the graphics of assets are stored in cell libraries but, once these have been defined, day-to-day operations can be carried out without any knowledge of where the data is stored.

Classes

All objects within the database, be they assets or areas, are divided into classes, or types, to aid management. A class of asset might be furniture, which in turn might be divided into subclasses called seating, desking, storage, and so on. Likewise, the area class might be divided into subclasses, so that a location might be subdivided into sites, buildings, floors, zones and rooms. Each class has specific attributes assigned to members of it.

Locations

Every asset has a position or location in one (or more) areas. When first entered the asset is logged in the smallest area that contains it and, because that area will almost certainly be contained in a larger area, the asset will inherit a location in the larger area too. For example, furniture might be placed in a room, which is part of a floor, which is part of a building, which is part of a site.

Catalogs and Instances

One example of each type of asset is stored in a catalog together with attributes which apply to every asset of that type; for example, material, maintenance interval, cleaning procedure. Each time one of an object class is placed in a building it is said to be an instance and it may then have extra attributes applicable only to that one instance (for example, purchase date and price, serial number).

Links

One of the most important attributes of an asset is its location. In Bentley Facilities Planner this association is handled automatically as a link. Links (logical connections/associations/relationships) can be defined between objects in the database; for instance, a telephone may be linked to an employee or a number of PCs may be linked to a printer. Likewise an asset may have links associating it with one or more documents such as leases, contracts, drawings or manuals. These links define ownership, help control the logistics of a move and aid reporting; for instance, a telephone list may be generated from a list of employees.

Note: There is an internal link set up between each asset and its location (area that contains it) and this link is managed automatically by Bentley Facilities Planner .

Labels

A label is a text string displaying one or more of an object's attribute values taken from the database. Labels can be applied to both assets and areas and can be varied according to the context of the display.

Document Control

If you only want to look at an existing document in the FM Model then no special precautions need be taken. If, however, you wish to change a document then it is checked out to you and you keep it locked until you have finished altering it, at which point it is checked in again. Other users may view copies of the document while you have it checked out but they may not change it until you check it in again. Within Bentley Facilities Planner this checking out and in is automatic.

Proposals and Versions

An up-to-date database is a record of an as built or as is facility. When a change is contemplated, it is often necessary to explore cost and compare several options before approval is given to implement the change. Bentley Facilities Planner allows the development of proposed layouts, or proposals, and each of these may have several versions under investigation. Versions of proposals can be viewed and manipulated as if they were the real thing. Once approval has been given, the chosen version replaces the relevant as-built assets/areas and all other versions of that proposal are deleted. For simple changes there is an Auto Version that is managed automatically by Bentley Facilities Planner.

Searches

Using Structured Query Language (SQL) you can search the Bentley Facilities Planner database in terms of objects, their attributes and any relationships between them. For example:

• list all furniture bought before 1-Jan.-2018 and costing more than $1,000.
  
  
  
• list all personnel together with their department and telephone number.
  
  
  
• list all departments and list them with their cost center number and gross floor area.

Note: To illustrate the principle, the search criteria above are depicted in ordinary English rather than SQL.

Reports

There are two ways in which a report can be obtained from Bentley Facilities Planner:

• By using a command for reviewing the attributes of one or more objects and viewing the resulting list of objects/attributes directly or dragging the list into a spreadsheet for further manipulation and printing.
  
  
  
• By running a custom report. These are generated from a script which defines the characteristics of the objects sought.

Symbology

As in MicroStation, symbology refers to how an element looks on the screen. In Bentley Facilities Planner, symbologies can be defined for highlighting objects after a search has produced a list of those matching defined criteria.