I have just returned from the opening reception and dinner of the Harvard conference on construction collaboration technologies. I encountered some familiar faces (from the UK: Tim Blower from Business Collaborator and his client Marek Suchocki from Atkins/Bank of Scotland; from the US: Burcin Becerik and Spiro Pollalis of Harvard Graduate School of Design), and met some new ones, including: CEO Scott Unger and Natalie Cheney of Constructware, Stephen Carter of eBuild.ca, Sue Watkins of Meridian Systems, and – over dinner – CEO Eric Leighton and Jim Smith of Loadspring (interesting chat regarding, ASPs, MSPs and ISO27001).
Tim described BIW Technologies to Sue and Natalie as "the UK equivalent of Constructware" (which I think was meant to be positive); he differentiated us by explaining that BIW was a pure application service provider (ASP), while BC provided solutions that could be hosted in-house (and rebranded) if required. We both enthused about the NCCTP as a positive step forward for UK-based vendors, and our north American counterparts seemed interested in finding out more about the NCCTP standard and the NCCTP marketing initiatives.
I came away from the evening event with a thick blue paper-back book – "Computer aided collaboration in managing construction" by Burcin and Spiro – which all delegates have been challenged to read by tomorrow morning….. If I manage this, and if I get the opportunity tomorrow, I will post further updates from the conference as it happens.
