What is a common data environment (vienotā datu vide), and who provides it?

What is it, in practice?

VNĪ's BIM requirements describe it as a file management solution for storing, sharing and exchanging what a project produces, with one central source of information for all the teams. What it holds are called information containers: 3D models, databases, documents and other files. A 2021 study for the standards body LVS adds that a CDE is not only a platform: it also covers the rules on who may do what with files, versions and access.

Information moves through stages as it matures:

Does a project have to have one?

Regulation No. 529 doesn't mention it. The model goes to the Construction Information System (BIS), and BIS's help describes adding a model file to the design documentation, not a shared place to work. The annotation to the rule lists work in a CDE among the minimum the client has to define, so it reaches a project through the tender's BIM requirements. The 2021 study also found that projects duplicate information between the CDE and BIS.

Who provides it?

The client decides, in the tender. VNĪ's project-specific requirements template has a line for the type, split-cycle or full-cycle, and for full-cycle a line for who is responsible, client or supplier.

Either way the CDE has to meet the minimum in section 3.6.1, and the client can ask for rights to see what the supplier's team shares among itself.

VNĪ gives two reasons for choosing split-cycle: the client wants to keep the CDE in its own hands but lacks the IT or administrative resources for its busiest phase, when the team shares and coordinates over and over; or the client has no need to follow the team's work before submissions, for example on very large projects with several supplier teams.

If the supplier provides the CDE during construction, it must keep it running until the works are finished and handed over, and the technical specification can extend that to the warranty period.

What do other sources say?

• ISO 19650. The standard's text was not read for this article. UK BIM Framework guidance says part 2 expects a project CDE provided and managed by the client or a third party acting for it, in place before the tender, and that delivery teams may run their own as well, but not instead of it. It also accepts hosting moving to the lead supplier after appointment, once the CDE works. VNĪ's split cycle looks much like the first of these, in our reading; a full cycle run by the supplier differs mainly in that the client needs no CDE beforehand.
• LVS CEN/TR 18093:2025. A European technical report on CDE solutions and workflow under EN ISO 19650, in English, sold by LVS. It was not read for this article.
• The 2021 study for LVS. It looked at 12 Latvian projects, seven public and five private, among them the Great Guild at Amatu iela 6 and the extension of Mārupe primary school. Half used a full-cycle CDE and half a split-cycle one. It recommends that public tenders use a split CDE, one for the client and one for the contractor, and that the client manages the CDE so that one environment can serve the building's whole life. In those projects the client paid in a third of cases, the general designer in a quarter, and builders or general contractors together in another third. InnoMatrix and BIM Solutions did the study for LVS in 2021, so read it as a recommendation from that year, not a rule.

What must it be able to do?

VNĪ's minimum (section 3.6.1):

• a history of each information container: who made it, who changed it, and the earlier versions;
• no move between stages without a request or submission that the person in charge checks, then approves or rejects;
• rights to view, download and edit per stage and per container;
• roles that decide who can submit and who can approve a move, with the time and name logged;
• container names by VNĪ's file naming rule (section 4.3).

Desirable but not mandatory: revision codes, status codes and classification. UK guidance on ISO 19650-2 lists revision, status and classification as attributes every container must have, so a project working to that standard needs more than VNĪ's minimum.

Is a shared folder enough?

The 2021 study found two approaches in Latvia, specialised CDE systems and general file storage adapted to the job, and found that the cheapest offers don't always meet its recommended minimum. UK guidance says a CDE solution can be software or another form of tool, as long as workflows support it. So the test is the list above, not the product's label.

In our view a plain shared folder struggles with two lines: rights per stage and a record of who approved what. The study also found that approval inside the system was very rarely used on the projects it looked at, even though every project needs it, so ask to see it working.

What does running one take?

• A CDE manager on the side that provides it. Under VNĪ's requirements this role gives access and keeps data correctly placed and structured, and it can be combined with any other role.
• Rules of use. The party that runs the CDE must have them, and VNĪ's annex 10 is a template. It also says that information in the CDE can't be published or passed to third parties without the client's agreement, and it has a part on users' personal data. An instruction for users is recommended.
• People. In the 2021 study, keeping a CDE running took one to six people per project, 2.75 on average.
• The client's own use. The study names active use by the client's representatives as an important factor in getting a CDE adopted.

A municipality without BIM staff can buy this in: VNĪ's requirements for a BIM specialist include running the CDE when the client provides it. Building a platform of its own is another matter. Looking at a national system, the study put an existing platform bought as a service at about a third of the cost of a purpose-built one, on one supplier's 2021 offer.

What does a bidder have to say about it?

In VNĪ's pre-contract plan, section 3.5 asks for the CDE solution and who provides it and, if the supplier does, the developer and the product name. Whoever provides it, the supplier's BIM execution plan describes how information will be structured, what is shared with all parties and, where needed, the file size limits. If you are the one providing it, price it for the whole period the tender asks for.

What should a client write in the tender?

Our suggestion, drawn from the above:

1. The type: split-cycle or full-cycle and, for full-cycle, who is responsible.
2. What it must be able to do: VNĪ's section 3.6.1 or your own list.
3. Who pays: the client, or it is in the supplier's price.
4. How long it must run: until handover, or through the warranty period as well.
5. What happens to the data afterwards: who keeps it and in what form it is handed over. In the 2021 study all projects but one had addressed who owns the data, directly or by reference to other rules.
6. Whose rules of use apply.

How Digitalyse can help

We set up the CDE's structure as part of BIM management and write the CDE part of a client's BIM requirements. See BIM management.

Sources

Checked on 4 November 2026.

• VNĪ BIM requirements, version 2.0, sections 3.1, 3.3, 3.6 and 4.3
• VNĪ annex 1, project-specific requirements template
• VNĪ annex 7, pre-contract plan template, section 3.5
• VNĪ annex 10, rules of use for the CDE
• VNĪ requirements for a BIM specialist, section 2.5
• Study for LVS: the common data environment and requirements for it in public construction tenders, 2021, final report
• The same study, presentation of results
• LVS: building information modelling
• LVS catalogue: LVS CEN/TR 18093:2025
• Annotation to the amendment of Regulation No. 529, 23-TA-816
• Cabinet Regulation No. 529 “Ēku būvnoteikumi”, point 74.¹
• BIS help: adding the design model (BIM)
• UK BIM Framework guidance, part 2, clause 5.1.7, edition 6
• UK BIM Framework guidance, part C: the common data environment, February 2021 issue