Construction Computing Awards 2006

Since my previous post regarding the UK’s Construction Computing Show 2006, I have received an email about the inaugural Construction Computing Awards 2006: "the Hammers 2006" (potentially confusing for any West Ham United football supporters!).

The email and associated website currently focus on the attractions of the awards dinner – tables for ten a cool £1495 each! – on 22 November 2006 (London venue yet to be confirmed) where it appears almost 20 awards will be presented.

Some of the categories clearly overlap. There are, for example, nine distinct product categories, plus software and hardware products of the year and an overall product of the year; there are three company awards and an ultimate ‘company of the year’ accolade, and there is what appears to be a project-related case study category (the Construction Computing solution of the year), plus an Editor’s choice:

• Environmental product of the year
• Property/surveying product of the year
• E-commerce product of the year
• Security product of the year
• Project management product of the year
• CAD product of the year
• Estimating and valuation product of the year
• Management information product of the year
• Mobile technology of the year
• software product of the year
• hardware product of the year
• product of the year
• Business IT service provider of the year
• Distributor of the year
• Reseller of the year
• Company of the year
• Construction Computing solution of the year
• Editor’s Choice

For most UK construction industry awards, people submit entries and these are judged by panels comprising representatives of various sectors or organisations within the industry. Construction Computing has departed from that route and instead is inviting online nominations; closing date is 15 September. Ten days later (ie: 25 September), the finalists will be announced (no information as to how the final shortlists will be selected) and "the readers of Construction Computing magazine will choose there [sic] favourite products / companies," by voting online up to 10 November (I wonder how they will guard against people voting more than once, or running internal ‘vote for us’ campaigns among their customers or end-users to encourage as many votes as possible?!).

Sadly, there is no "construction collaboration solution of the year" (or similar). Presumably, if they want to nominate an ‘extranet’ system, Construction Computing nominators will select what they think is the most suitable category – perhaps regarding ‘extranets’ as project management or management information products or the vendors as Business IT service providers (or maybe all three).