Working with your BEP

Before diving into authoring specific sections, it helps to understand the basic operational flow: how to open a BEP, how saving works, and what the difference is between what your AI has loaded and what is published in the platform.

Opening a BEP

At the start of every session, you need to tell your AI which BEP to open. The most reliable approach is to ask it to list your available BEPs first:

List my available BEPs.

The AI will show all the BEPs in your account, both your own and any that have been shared with you. From there, ask it to open the one you need by name:

Open [BEP name].

Your own BEPs vs. shared BEPs

The platform distinguishes between two types:

Your own BEPs are BEPs you created. They open in full edit mode and the AI can read and modify any part of them.

Shared BEPs are BEPs that other users have given you access to. They open in read-only mode. You cannot edit them, but you can ask the AI questions about their content as a project participant. Some examples of what you can ask:

How is the coordination process covered in this BEP?

What are the responsibilities of the BIM Manager in the design workflow?

Which standards apply to structural modeling on this project?

What deliverables is [team name] responsible for, and when are they due?

Saving changes and BEP versioning

The AI does not save automatically after every edit. Changes are staged in the active session and you need to explicitly ask it to save. When you do, dotBEP always stores the result in the cloud and creates a new version entry in the BEP history.

There are two types of saves:

Patch: a minor save for small, incremental changes. Use this for corrections, adjustments, or edits that do not represent a significant milestone in the BEP.

Version: a significant save that marks a before-and-after point in the BEP. Use this when the BEP reaches a meaningful milestone, for example when it is ready to be put into practice on the project.

To save, tell the AI which type you want:

Save the changes to the BEP as a patch.

Save the changes to the BEP as a new version.

It is a good habit to save after completing a meaningful block of work. If you are unsure which type to use, a patch is always a safe choice for day-to-day edits.

Local vs. cloud

When your AI has a BEP open, the dotBEP platform detects the active session. If you open the same BEP in app.dotbep.com, a Local toggle appears in the top bar of the viewer.

Local: shows the BEP as your AI currently has it loaded, including unsaved changes.
Published: shows the last saved version stored in the cloud.

Switching to Local is useful to review what the AI has done before committing to a save. Once you save, both versions become identical.

Closing a session without saving

If you close your AI before saving, your work is not lost. The unsaved changes remain available locally and will reappear the next time you open the same BEP in your AI. The only difference is that those changes will not be visible in the platform until you explicitly save them to the cloud.

To resume, open a new conversation, ask the AI to open the BEP, and then:

Save the pending changes to the BEP.

Sharing a BEP in dotBEP is done by adding people as participants in the project. The philosophy is simple: anyone who needs to see the BEP is, by definition, a member of the project. Adding them as participants gives them access to the BEP and keeps the participant list accurate at the same time.

You can ask your AI to add a participant at any time:

Add [name] from [team name] as a participant. Their email is [email].