I was looking at the Australian market last week (see INCITE = ThinkProject!), so this is a bit of a follow-up. In the May/June 2007 issue of Architecture Australia, architect Anthony McPhee looked at project management software and ranted about the inappropriateness of email – “email is BAD, email is EVIL. … Basically, email creates a huge, disparate, amorphous mess” – a topic also being discussed by Leigh Jasper on the Aconex blog (and in a document management article – A Thorn in AEC’s Side – in Cadalyst).
McPhee also sums up some of the main Australian project collaboration offerings as follows:
- Aconex (www.aconex.com.au) – Simple and easy to use, but it only has basic mail and document management. Excellent training, support and help desk. Good if you are new to this type of software, but it lacks sophistication for proper project management, particularly during construction.
- projectCentre (www.projectcentre.net) – Highly configurable system that controls contract forms well (RFIs, etc), work flow (who can what to whom) and document management (creation of drawing sets). Not as pretty as Aconex, more workmanlike. Good support and training.
- TeamBinder (www.teambinder.com) – This is the web collaboration tool developed by QA-software, which has provided software to the construction industry for many years. Although fully featured due to their depth of experience, some of its processes are unnecessarily cumbersome and appear to be based on traditional paper-based processes.
Sadly, despite its Australian connections, there is no mention of INCITE (or Nexus Point Solutions), but McPhee does say the “architect project management software market in Australia is far from mature, and new players are bound to pop up in the near future. … The list is not exhaustive….”
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[…] a judgement in the next month or so); I have written about Incite (here and here); and I linked to a review of Australian tools in February, which included today’s subject: […]