New Year, New Tools: Time to Get Rid of Text-Based Requirements

As we step into the new year, it’s time to rethink old habits—starting with how requirements are managed in engineering and construction projects. If your team still relies on lengthy PDFs or static spreadsheets to define project needs and develop project briefs, you might be missing opportunities to deliver exactly what your clients ask for while reducing risks and controlling costs. The evolution toward Intelligent Requirements Management offers a structured, actionable alternative that integrates with modern workflows. Let’s explore why text-based requirements hold you back and how moving to an intelligent approach transforms your processes. 

The Problem with Text-Based Requirements

Traditionally, project requirements have been stored as text in extensive documents. For instance, “… a maintenance crew must inspect all emergency exits in the tunnel every three months. The inspection report must be submitted to the safety officer…”

Despite the fact that we have been working like this for years, this approach presents several challenges:

1. Lack of structure: Have you ever tried finding a specific requirement buried in a 100-page PDF? If so, you understand that text documents are often hard to navigate, making it challenging to track requirements or ensure nothing is overlooked.
2. Data is not actionable: Locked inside a text file, requirements can’t easily be verified, related to subjects, or systematically analyzed. 
3. Data is static. requirements stored in text-based files don’t easily integrate with other software tools, making collaboration and activities like analysis and verification challenging. Nor can they be reused intelligently rather than copy-pasting texts from one document to another.

These challenges aren’t just frustrating; they also increase the risk of missed requirements, scope creep, and costly delays.

The Solution: Intelligent Requirements Management

That is why, with Laces, we’ve developed an alternative. Switching from text-based to intelligent requirements management changes everything. 

This modern and explicit approach brings clarity, structure, and actionability to your projects. It structures requirements with the following building blocks:

1. Extract requirements from text documents: Break down requirements into structured model elements to enable (automated) processing and analysis.
2. Semantically relate to subjects: Link requirements to their relevant subjects, like objects, activities, or agents, for coherence and consistence.
3. Publish as reusable libraries: Create interoperable libraries of requirements that can be reused across projects, saving time and ensuring consistency.

This methodology empowers you to manage requirements systematically, reducing risks and ensuring compliance.

An example: From Textual to Intelligent Requirements

Let’s take the following requirement: “A maintenance crew must inspect all emergency exits in the tunnel every three months. The inspection report must be submitted to the safety officer.’’

This textual requirement contains valuable information, but in its current form, it is ambiguous and unusable for automated systems. To make it explicit, intelligent, and fit for use in models like BIM, we take the following steps:

Step 1: Extract requirements
The requirement is analyzed and broken down into distinct elements:

• Object: Emergency exits (to be inspected).
• Activity: Inspection (a specific action to be performed).
• Frequency: Every three months.
• Agent: Maintenance crew (responsible for the activity).
• Deliverable: Inspection report (output of the activity).
• Recipient: Safety officer (person responsible for receiving the report).

By explicitly defining these details, we create ‘model elements’ that are no longer just text but become structured, machine-readable information.

Step 2: Enrich requirements and link them to subjects
The extracted elements are semantically linked to their relevant subjects:

• Objects: Emergency exits (as the focus of the inspection).
• Activity: Inspection, categorized under maintenance tasks.
• Agents: Maintenance crew (agent performing the activity) and safety officer (agent receiving the deliverable).
• Relations: The inspection activity is linked to the emergency exits, the maintenance crew, and the safety officer, forming a complete traceable relationship. 

This relationship establishes a clear, logical connection between the objects and their attributes, ensuring consistency and traceability.

Step 3: Reusable Libraries
Once modeled, extracted, and enriched, requirements can be published in an Open Standard format like the Resource Description Framework (RDF) with a single click, transforming them into reusable libraries, such as a “Tunnel Maintenance” library. This process significantly enhances their value by facilitating integration across various projects and tools, allowing them to link with other published libraries and form a unified, queryable dataset. 

Published in an Open Standard format, these requirements become Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR), enabling smooth information exchange across different disciplines, teams, and applications, free from proprietary software constraints.

By adopting Linked Data, these requirements libraries are made accessible to a wide range of project applications, including BIM tools and Systems Engineering platforms. This approach ensures consistency, reduces errors, and allows teams to access and utilize requirements more effectively, regardless of the tools they use. Moreover, it facilitates easy navigation through a coherent web of requirements, enabling teams to configure project requirements efficiently while avoiding inconsistencies and maintaining alignment across contracts.

Why This Matters for Engineering Firms and Contractors

Imagine this: Instead of deciphering pages of vague descriptions, you work with a digital model that connects every requirement directly to project designs. This clarity not only accelerates your workflows but also ensures compliance, fosters collaboration, and reduces costly misunderstandings.

By transitioning to a model-based approach, your team can:

• Deliver What Clients Need: Clearly define coherent requirements to meet client expectations with precision.
• Ensure Compliance: Integrate requirements into workflows for systematic validation and verifications.
• Control Costs: Avoid scope creep by identifying unfeasible requirements early.
• Reduce Risks: Spot inconsistencies or gaps before they lead to expensive rework work or additional work.

Ready to Modernize?

It’s time to leave text-based requirements in the past and embrace tools that empower your team to deliver better results.

Read more about how to transform into intelligent requirements and make 2025 the year you leave inefficient workflows behind. Your projects and your clients will thank you!