Core concepts
Builddar has one data model. Everything you do sits somewhere in it. Learn these objects once and every other guide becomes obvious.
The hierarchy
The objects
Organization
Your company's workspace. It holds your people, your branding (the logo and colors that print on reports), your shared catalogs, and your plan. Every account belongs to an organization.
An organization has a business role — architect/MOE, site manager/GC, or developer/MOA — and a default language used for members and emails.
Project
One construction project. It belongs to exactly one organization and contains everything below it. A project moves through a lifecycle: it starts in setup, is activated when it has the minimum it needs, and can later be archived.
Zone
A place in the project. Zones form a tree defined by zone types — typically Building → Floor → Room, or Building → Floor → Apartment → Room on residential work.
Zones are where issues are located, and where the unit lifecycle runs if your organization has that product.
Drawing
A plan you upload. Issues can be pinned on a drawing at the exact spot they were observed, which is what turns a defect list into something a contractor can act on without a site visit.
Issue
One quality observation. This is the core object. An issue has a status, an assignee, a location (a zone, and optionally a pin on a drawing), a company, a trade, a phase, comments, photos, and a complete activity history.
Company
A contractor or firm on the project. Issues are assigned to companies, meeting attendance is recorded per company, and guests are scoped to their own company's work.
Trade, Discipline, Phase
Three different classifications, easily confused:
| Term | What it classifies | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Trade | The work package an issue belongs to | Plumbing, Electrical, Painting |
| Discipline | The drawing category | Architecture, Structure, MEP |
| Phase | The stage of construction the project is in | Shell, Second fix, Finishes |
Trades are set per project. Disciplines are shared organization-wide and apply to drawings — changing one takes effect on every project immediately. See Configure catalogs.
Checklist
An inspection. A template defines the sections and items; an instance is one run of that template against a zone. Failed items can create issues automatically.
Document
A file in the project's document management, organized in folders, with versions, an approval workflow, tags and controlled sharing.
Report
A generated PDF or Excel output built from your issues. Reports can be generated on demand, split per company or zone, emailed, and scheduled.
Site meeting
A dated meeting rendering a view of the project's point register. See Site meetings.
Workflow
The set of statuses an issue moves through and the transitions allowed between them. A project has one workflow, capped at eight statuses.
Two things that are not the same
Issue statuses and meeting point statuses are different vocabularies. An issue moves through your project's workflow. A meeting point uses its own fixed set — To do, In progress, Pending, Done, For the record, Dropped. They're kept separate on purpose: the question "is this defect fixed?" and the question "is this subject closed?" aren't the same question.
Permissions and plan gating are different limits. Am I allowed to do this? is roles and permissions. Is this available at all? is plans and limits.