In order for a development to come to fruition, it’s put under a microscope. It’s held to the light to determine, via numerical metrics, whether a project is a sound investment and will improve the quality of life for citizens. 

Real estate development numbers aren’t constrained to only the built environment, but also its impact on its community. Developments affect everything from the number of people that will find more housing availability, to local spending that can support new small businesses, to the long term sustainability and carbon footprint of a project. 

Delivering a comprehensive, compelling analysis that encompasses the entire impact of a development has been a manual, disconnected, laborious process. But Giraffe Analytics overhauls the antiquated process into something sophisticated and simple that delivers complexity with clean reporting.

Overview of Giraffe Analytics

Giraffe Analytics helps you create a library of referenceable data. Leveraging connectivity to Properties from design Features, Usages, and Assumptions, Analytics automatically makes data directly from your project accessible. These Properties can be something from your model like areas and lengths or it can be assumption data like cost per square foot. Making it simple to pull in Gross Area and narrow it down by Usage, like Residential, getting you the Total Area of all your project’s Residential Buildings. 

In addition to its connectivity, Analytics is endlessly flexible. You can use static numbers, create formulas, or connect Properties of Features to use in complex equations. You’re able to access and utilize all of a development, assess it, and produce a metric to support its value. Analytics unlocks the data you need for everything from finance to economics, and transportation to power demand.

Key takeaways and highlights

• Build a connected library of referenceable data.
• Reduce errors by working from a single source of truth that connects every aspect of your project ensuring changes to design don’t create disconnects from reports and analyses.
• Create better designs with instant, continuous performance feedback.
• Present a beautiful, complete story with a 3D digital twin supported by a comprehensive proforma.
• Standardize real estate development analysis at the organization level.

The Giraffe basics

Before diving into Analytics, first you need to grasp the basics of the Giraffe platform. 

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Usages

A Usage is how Giraffe classifies every design feature used within a project. For example, you can classify a Usage type for buildings as Residential, Commercial, or Industrial. Usages are created and assigned to organize, manage, and easily assess all your project features. This classification allows you to fine tune calculations for Usages with Assumptions. 

Assumptions

Assumptions are assumed Properties that customize each Usage. Helping you control the metrics of each Project Feature. If we were looking at a building, this includes everything from the appearance, such as the color when it appears on the map, to the calculations that determine feasibility like Efficiency, Sell Efficiency, or FSR. 

Properties

Properties are individual data points that define Features used in Projects. Properties can come from the model, like length and area, or they can come from properties you’ve assigned to the Usage type, like cost per sqft or the number of packs of nails required per every 100 feet.

You can add Properties as Assumptions to be applied to all Features within a Usage type. Use this when you want a broad Property applied. Or they can be added directly to an individual Feature that will not impact your Usage in your project. 

Getting started with Giraffe Analytics

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Categories

Categories organize the Measures you create within your Analytics Panel. Easily organize and assign categories for an unlimited number of analyses.

Measures

Measures are a numeric product that creates a line item within the Analytics Panel. 

Measures can be created from Components (Properties, Measures, Subtotals, or Site Areas), static numbers, and/or formulas. 

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Components

• Properties are numeric values that come straight from the model. They can be Assumptions or geometric properties. 
• Subtotals are the sum of Measures that use the same unit of measure within a category, such as dollar amount, unit count, or square feet. 
• Measures allow you to reference existing Measures. 
• Site Areas consist of the properties of the site.

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Formulas

Return a product by referencing Components, creating equations, or utilizing numbers. Bring in Components by referencing their corresponding letter.

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Operations

When you pull in a Feature's Property as a Component in a Measure, you're able to determine the Operation for calculation. Meaning you can create calculations in addition to a sum, such as counts, minimums, maximums, averages, or constants.

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How Giraffe Analytics works with the platform

With Giraffe you can tell the whole story of a development. Encompassing intuitive visuals with a lightweight digital twin and the data-driven impact reporting with Analytics.

Giraffe doesn’t just support every aspect of a development, it connects them. Creating powerful links that synchronize design and data instantly. Ensuring you’re maximizing your time by automating and leveraging your design’s geometry to supply measurements for Analytics. 

These powerful connections allow users to continuously design and stay in a creative mindset, while simultaneously receiving feedback from Analytics on performance. Design multiple options and scenarios, then view and compare them with ease. Creating an open dialogue for review and feedback. Along with the ability to make changes on the fly and see them update in real time. 

Using Giraffe Analytics in your organization

Giraffe is built to scale. Giving power to individual users, teams, and organizations. Which means that when you create Usages and Assumptions, you’re able to apply them to the business level for employees to use. 

As you build Categories and Measures in Analytics, you’re able to create Templates that you can share with your Workspaces. De-duplicating hours of tedious work.

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What you can build with Giraffe Analytics

To help you understand what’s possible with Analytics, we’ve created a few templates that you can start using immediately within your project.