cobiereport vs filling COBie by hand
The manual baseline is a blank multi-tab template and a deadline. A browser tool removes the bulk transcription, but it cannot invent the data your model never held.
- cobiereport
- browser · €0–29
- Manual Excel
- blank template
What filling COBie by hand in Excel is
Manual COBie means transcribing Facility, Floor, Space, Type and Component data into the spreadsheet template from drawings, schedules, cut-sheets and O&M documents, all by hand.
It is brutal at scale: a modest project runs to hundreds of thousands of rows, and complex buildings exceed a million, past what one spreadsheet holds. Error rates around one percent are considered normal, which on that volume is thousands of mistakes.
Side by side
Time to a filled register
cobiereport · Seconds. The model-derived sheets are written for you.
Manual Excel · Hours to days of transcription, then a re-check pass.
Errors
cobiereport · Mapping is deterministic; the gap report flags what is missing.
Manual Excel · Manual entry compounds; ~1% error is considered normal.
Cost
cobiereport · Free for 3 reports a month, €29/mo for unlimited.
Manual Excel · Free software, expensive labour.
Data the model never held
cobiereport · Not captured. The output is only as complete as the IFC.
Manual Excel · Fully flexible: you can type warranty, spares and O&M data in.
Traceability
cobiereport · Rows carry the IFC reference; the gap report names elements.
Manual Excel · No automatic link back to a model.
When Manual Excel is the better call
- The data you need lives in O&M documents, warranties or commissioning records that were never in any model. Those still have to be entered by hand.
- The scope is tiny, or you are correcting a handful of rows, where opening a tool is more ceremony than it is worth.
- You need total control over every cell and accept the time cost for it.
Common questions
- Does cobiereport replace filling COBie by hand?
- It removes the bulk of it. The structured asset register that lives in the model (Facility, Floor, Space, Type, Component) comes out in seconds. But COBie also wants data that models rarely hold, like warranty and O&M details, so expect to finish those fields by hand. The gap report tells you exactly which ones.
- Why is manual COBie so slow?
- Volume. A modest project is hundreds of thousands of rows across the multi-tab template, and complex buildings exceed a million. Transcribing that by hand is where the time and the errors come from, and it is the part a tool can take off your plate.
Other comparisons
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