Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) has been rebranded as Autodesk Forma Industry Cloud.
The Forma Build module is now available under a Forma Build Essentials subscription, offered at a reduced price point. Forma Build Essentials is positioned for small‑ to mid‑sized contractors and is optimized for teams with field‑based personnel who require streamlined, mobile‑first workflows with minimal configuration and onboarding effort. The target user group typically includes small business general contractors and specialty trade contractors who prioritize rapid project initiation, intuitive access to site‑level tools, and consistent field execution with limited administrative overhead. This market segment is distinct from larger organizations or users requiring advanced project controls, cost management, or enterprise‑level reporting, for which the full Forma Build offering is more appropriate.
The best comparison between Forma Build and Forma Build Essentials can be found within the official help files.
For a building project manager coordinating with contractors and responsible for establishing Autodesk Forma hubs and projects, a Forma Build Essentials subscription enables the creation of a Forma hub hosted within a selectable Amazon Web Services (AWS) regional data centre. Forma supports multiple geographically distributed AWS regions, allowing the hub location to be selected in accordance with data residency and regulatory requirements.
In the absence of a dedicated Autodesk-supported AWS region in South Africa, it is recommended that the European Union (EU) data region be selected to address data protection and privacy considerations. Once established, the Forma hub can host an unrestricted number of projects and supports unlimited storage for supported file types, providing a centralized common data environment for project collaboration and information management.
Here are the supported file types for the web interface.
Here are the supported file types for the mobile interface.
When you are the HUB Administrator, or when you invite someone to be a HUB Administrator, then the HUB Tool Visibility is constrained by the subscriptions the hub has.
Similarly, when you are the Project Administrator, or if you invite someone to be the Project Administrator, then the tools available to administrators in Project Admin are dependent on the subscriptions the host hub has.
Once the Forma hub and initial projects have been established, the next consideration is the functional scope of Forma Build Essentials.
Users are provided with access to the web‑based Forma Project Home page, which serves as a centralized project dashboard. This interface presents a consolidated view of key, day‑to‑day project information—such as quality‑related issues and other critical indicators—and enables direct navigation to relevant workflows, reducing the time required to access operationally pertinent data.
The home screen of the Forma mobile application is illustrated below on a mobile device. Three sequential images are shown from left to right, collectively representing the user interface as it appears while vertically scrolling through the page.
Sheets constitute mobile‑optimized information views developed by Autodesk for consumption within the Forma mobile application. For projects of greater complexity, sheets may be structured using Collections, which typically represent discrete assets or buildings within the Forma project environment, with Version Sets applied within each collection to manage revisions, phases, or information states. In this case, the first two characters of the sheet name were intentionally reserved to encode the discipline identifier. This convention accommodates the platform limitation whereby only a fixed number of leading characters from the sheet number can be referenced for classification and filtering purposes.
Given that sheet numbering conventions are often replicated across multiple projects (for example, AX1001), the title block was configured to include the sheet name at the beginning of the full ISO container reference rather than as a suffix. This approach improves uniqueness, clarity, and traceability of information containers across project contexts.
Illustrated below is the Autodesk Forma mobile application, showing the published outputs prior to the application of any metadata, such as tags or spatial location. Where tags are assigned—for example, to route items to a specific contractor or subcontractor, those recipients can subsequently filter and isolate sheets by the associated location metadata, provided the location has been defined and tagged accordingly.
The files functionality available within Forma Build Essentials is correspondingly scoped. Key supported activities include the publication of sheets, automated extraction of pages and title block attributes, version viewing and comparison for both documents and models, document markup, and the creation and management of issues for field coordination and quality tracking.
Issues may be created directly while navigating files or sheets or established as references to related project items. When associating references within an issue, the supported reference types are limited to the following: other issues, photos (including video content), files, sheets, forms, and specifications.
Forms support multiple workflows within Forma Build Essentials and may be referenced by other project items.
A key application is quality assurance. In this context, checklists and method statements are configured as forms to document installation requirements and provide task‑specific instructions that contractors must follow when executing assigned work. A corresponding quality inspection form is then used by an inspector to verify compliance with the defined requirements and to confirm that the work has been completed to the required standard. Upon successful completion and approval of the quality verification, the work item may be deemed complete, enabling downstream processes such as commercial approval or payment for services rendered.
Additional form‑based workflows commonly include safety observations, incident reporting, time recording, and the capture of tools and labour resources utilised on site. These form types support operational, health and safety, and commercial traceability requirements. Forms may be authored directly within Autodesk Forma or imported from existing Smart PDF templates for reuse and standardisation.
For the management of snag lists and the provision of contextual explanations within issues, the image and video capture capabilities of the Forma mobile application provide significant value, enabling precise visual documentation and improved clarity of on‑site conditions.
It is important to note that report generation capabilities—such as the creation of summary reports for issues, forms, and related project data—are not included within the Forma Build Essentials subscription. This level of analytical and reporting functionality is exclusively available to customers licensed for the full Forma Build offering.
If there is uncertainty regarding the most appropriate subscription selection for a contracting organization, we recommend engaging with us to assess operational requirements and field‑level workflows. Conversely, where the focus is on project establishment and governance, a consultation is advised to review the full range of available configuration and licensing options. Based on our experience, early evaluation of the supply chain and delivery structure significantly improves cost predictability and supports effective project mobilization.
Where uncertainty exists within the supply chain regarding subscription selection, it often leads to inefficiencies and unproductive negotiation over capability tradeoffs. In such scenarios, it is recommended that an Exchange Information Request (EIR) be formally defined, enabling the appointing party (asset owner) to prescribe the subscription types to be deployed on the project. This approach establishes clarity of requirements, reduces friction between delivery parties, and supports a coordinated and efficient project mobilization strategy. Given Micrographics’ established expertise and practical application of best‑practice information management within the ISO 19650 framework, this is an area in which clients may benefit from engaging us for specialist consultation and guidance. Irrespective of project scale or complexity, we support the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) across all phases of the project lifecycle. Our services enable both clients and their delivery partners to achieve efficient project execution while ensuring that information is structured, accessible, traceable, and auditable throughout design, construction, and handover.
If you need help adopting the AEC Collection or Autodesk Forma in your practice or you are looking to invest in hardware, please contact Micrographics so that we may be of assistance.
