Category: Future

Collaboration vendors unveil (old) plans for deeper interoperability

Last month, members of the UK-based Network for Construction Collaboration Technology Providers (NCCTP) announced plans to provide greater integration between their different applications (see news release). At the time, I was too busy to write about it, but the topic cropped up briefly in conversation with the Incite guys (post) recently, so I’ve had another …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/07/collaboration-vendors-unveil-old-plans-for-deeper-interoperability/

INCITE insight

Just before I went on holiday (Menorca, very nice), I had lunch in London with Sean Kaye and Michael Baker, respectively CEO and General Manager, Technology of Australia-based construction collaboration vendor Incite. I blogged about Incite a couple of times last year (here and here). Then it was a small business largely focused on the …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/07/incite-insight/

Putting the social into AEC development

I have been following posts on a blog hosted by PTC, a vendor of product development technology solutions to ‘discrete manufacturers’. Its product lifecycle management (PLM) applications are widely used in the industrial, high-tech, aerospace and defence, automotive, consumer and medical device sectors. OK, not my usual industry interests, but useful nonetheless as the blog …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/06/putting-the-social-into-aec-development/

More on BIM and IPD

Catching up with some reading over the weekend, I found this Constructech article: Integrated Project Delivery. Focused on the US market, it is a readable overview of the role that building information modelling (BIM) will play in supporting IPD, but also includes observations from users/vendors of pre-BIM information management systems (eg: Newforma, e-Builder) that facilitate …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/06/more-on-bim-and-ipd/

Gloomy times for SaaS collaboration vendors

Today I have been hearing about redundancies among staff at one of the UK’s leading construction collaboration vendors. This news comes as no surprise. The writing has been on the wall for all the collaboration vendors since the credit crunch hit last year. Widespread project postponements and cancellations have led to corresponding reductions across the …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/06/gloomy-times-for-saas-collaboration-vendors/

E-business penetration of AEC industry

Having completed a PhD in the 1990s and got lots of support from people in completing questionnaires and doing interviews, etc, I vowed that I would return the favour when approached by other researchers. Ever since, I have supported numerous academics in their endeavours, and the latest is Star (Yongjie) Chen, a PhD research student …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/06/e-business-penetration-of-aec-industry/

e-tendering still a minority pursuit

BCISetendercover

Three-quarters of firms still post or email tenders to their clients, despite the fact that e-tendering can reduce their costs and streamline the overall tendering process, reports Construction News, citing a report released last week by BCIS, the building cost information service of the RICS. The BCIS survey (PDF available here) – reflecting responses from …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/06/e-tendering-still-a-minority-pursuit/

Google Wave

The web is abuzz with excitement this morning about Google Wave (see this great summary at Mashable), Google’s new real-time communication platform “coming later this year”. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management into one in-browser communication client. Already, people have started wondering about the potential of …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/05/google-wave/

TEAM building and BIM

I have spent a few hours recently talking to groups and individuals about building information modelling (BIM). My perspective is one fashioned by experience in working in construction collaboration software – a field that is still almost completely 2D – but I find that some of the issues relating to adoption of BIM are simply …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/05/team-building-and-bim/

Constructware conundrum continues

The recent flurry of claims and rebuttals about the future of Constructware (see Constructware’s future questioned) has not convinced everybody that Autodesk remains committed to developing its Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration application Constructware. The atmosphere of uncertainty is also not helped by last week’s news (and here) that Autodesk is to lay off a further 430 …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/05/constructware-conundrum-continues/

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