Jama Connect® Features in Five: Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Solution
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Jama Connect® Features in Five: Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Solution
Learn how you can supercharge your systems development process! In this blog series, we’re pulling back the curtains to give you a look at a few of Jama Connect’s powerful features… in under five minutes.
In this Features in Five video, Michelle Solis, Solutions Architect at Jama Software, explores how Jama Connect helps the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Industry manage complex requirements and streamline project communication.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Michelle Solis: Hello, I’m Michelle Solis, a Solutions Architect at Jama Software. In this video, we’ll explore how Jama Connect helps the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry manage complex requirements and streamline project communication.
AEC projects, whether it’s building a structure, designing a rail system, or developing an airport, come with complex requirements involving multiple teams. Communication is often fragmented and mid-project requirement changes can add confusion. Traditionally, the process unfolds in a linear workflow. The owner issues an RFP, teams respond, and the project is awarded. Once the project is underway, however, the owner may change requirements, making it hard for teams to see what parts of the project are affected.
Managing this process with documents alone, whether in Word, Excel, or PDF, is insufficient for managing these changes effectively, leading to missed updates, delays, and financial losses. Project management tools store documents but don’t provide visibility into relationships between requirements and tasks, making it hard to track changes across teams.
RELATED: Six Key Challenges in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) Industry and How to Solve Them with Jama Connect
Solis: Jama Connect addresses these challenges by shifting from a document-centric to a requirements-driven approach. Instead of static Word documents, Jama Connect allows you to break down requirements into actionable items, improving clarity and manageability.
AEC projects often involve strict compliance requirements, such as LEED or ADA regulations, which can be difficult to track in traditional documents leading to missed updates or compliance gaps. With features like traceability, Jama Connect ensures these requirements are continuously monitored and managed throughout all project phases from the bidding process to construction, helping teams stay aligned with project goals.
By eliminating document silos, Jama Connect fosters collaboration across teams, providing real-time visibility into requirement changes, and ensuring that all requirements remain clear, traceable, and adaptable.
Let’s dive into Jama Connect and take a look at how this solution works. Here’s an example of a project with requirements entailing a new building. This project includes a traceability information model that begins with owner requirements. These requirements represent the written specifications and expectations set by the project owner. They are imported into Jama Connect, and then broken down into project requirements.
Those further break down to system requirements, design documents, and regulatory compliance, all of which we can validate and link to evidence provided by subcontractors ensuring full traceability across different aspects of the project lifecycle.
On the left panel is the explorer tree where the requirements live. If we click on a set of our requirements, we can see them in our List View, which is similar to Excel with rows and columns that we can adjust by dragging and dropping, or our document view, which is similar to working in Word and functions like a live document that we can edit by double-clicking and making our changes.
Jama Connect’s traceability features illustrate to us as end-users how change impacts our project. If I want to make changes to a project requirement, like this example of vertical circulation, I can first run an Impact Analysis to see if there are any potential upstream and downstream impacts. This shows me all of the requirements that may be impacted if I change this requirement. If this requirement changes because there’s a new weight capacity regulation to the elevator, then downstream, we should make the according changes to the elevator control system requirement and further downstream to the elevator validation and load monitoring subsystem requirement.
RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution
Solis: There are requirements here that will not be affected if I were to make these changes because it’s specific to the elevator functionality, so some of these escalator downstream requirements won’t be impacted. Impact Analysis shows us all of the potential impacts, but it’s up to us to decide if there’s indeed an impact and to make the necessary changes.
Jama Connect also has a full version history for all of our projects and other types of requirements. If I click on the version history, I can compare version two to version three and see all of the red and green line differences. So it looks like I removed some text and added that weight capacity regulation compliance.
With Jama Connect, AEC teams can move beyond static documents to a dynamic, requirements-driven approach, breaking down complex project requirements into actionable items, ensuring traceability, and maintaining compliance with industry regulations like LEED and ADA. By fostering real-time collaboration and eliminating silos, Jama Connect helps teams stay aligned, adapt to changes seamlessly, and keep projects on track from design to construction.
Thank you for watching this demonstration of Jama Connect for AEC Industries. If you would like to learn more about how Jama Connect can optimize your AEC projects, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com. If you’re already a Jama Connect customer and would like more information, please contact your customer success manager or Jama Software consultant.
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Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series
Solutions Architect at Jama Software
Dynamic, highly technical, hands-on professional with a wealth of knowledge and experience designing and launching new solutions, effectively managing products/projects, and delivering outstanding technical support to team members and other stakeholders. Utilize a structured approach to problem-solving to quickly eliminate emerging issues and prevent recurrence with robust corrective actions. Forge and strengthen relationships through frequent, transparent lines of communication.
Latest posts by Michelle Solis (see all)
- Jama Connect® Features in Five: Empowering Project Owners in the AEC Industry - August 1, 2025
- Jama Connect® Features in Five: Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Solution - April 4, 2025
- Jama Connect® Features in Five: Requirements Management for Seamless Product Delivery - March 7, 2025