Australian-based construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex has undertaken some research into the information needs of facilities managers. The survey, conducted in partnership with the Facility Management Association of Australia (FMA), got responses from 555 individuals.
You can read the full story here, but the headline findings are unsurprising for anyone working in the field of collaboration technologies (and, of course, support the business case for using electronic tools to manage data through the life-cyle of a built asset).
85% of respondents identified three critical information management issues: finding and retrieving information, collaborative information access among multiple parties, and capturing and storing information efficiently… “finding information is an area of significant cost, both in terms of time spent searching and in terms of consequential damage as a result of dealing with dated and/or inaccurate information”:
- Only 25% of respondents can find the information they require within 10 minutes
- 70% have worked from out-of-date data
- A quarter of people regularly reproduce information because they cannot find it
- Up to a third of organisations have suffered financial loss due to missed deadlines on lease renewals/agreements or service contracts
- only 7% can find all the information owned by their predecessor
Sadly, “Email, phone and fax are still the most common methods of communication with external parties”.
- 55% of all information a facilities manager uses is from the design and construction phases, yet 44% of facility managers stated that little of this information was available to them at handover
- When asked: ‘How useful would it be to capture documents and correspondence into a central archive from the start of the design and construction phases of a project?’ 98% said it would be ‘useful’ or ‘extremely useful’.
