Building services engineers routinely spend hours hunting through PDFs instead of designing. Reference data is scattered across standards documents, guides, and manufacturer datasheets. A ventilation rate that used to be in CIBSE Guide A might now be in Part F. A pipe size table lives in one PDF, thermal properties in another. The cost adds up — in time, in errors, and in missed deadlines.
This article looks at why that happens and what engineers can do about it — from searchable reference libraries to structured data that feeds directly into calculations.