Nov 06 2010

Incite innovates

Australia-based construction collaboration technology vendor Incite is developing a lot of new and innovative functionality, and – having grown its business in south-east Asia – is, as I predicted last year, inching towards establishing a presence in Europe.

My latest meeting (previous – post) with Michael Baker, Incite’s general manager (technology), included a first encounter with Scott Crane, who was appointed MD of the company in January 2010 when his predecessor Sean Kaye (blog) moved to a more strategic role in mining and construction giant parent company Leighton Holdings (turnover AU$18.6bn [£11.6bn] in year to 30 June 2010 – report).

Rationalisation at Incite

Scott told me that one of the first things he did was take a long, hard look at the Incite business with a view to building on its strengths and eliminating areas that he felt were holding the business back. This rationalisation process trimmed a few people out of the business (it now has 51 people), and improved the process of onboarding new customers.

Incite has discontinued its old per-seat based pricing approach (post) – a recognition, I think, that a per-project licensing model is more likely to encourage efficient, transparent and, perhaps most importantly, auditable collaboration among individuals in a multi-company project team (this approach also remains the dominant model among most UK SaaS collaboration vendors).

Scott and Michael both described product development as “the engine room” of the business, but from Scott’s comments it seems the company’s agile approach sometimes outstripped its capacity to deliver. Today, a sales cycle that sometimes took weeks is now accomplished in days, he said, supported by templates for the core Incite Keystone modules (including correspondence, quality, tendering and standard reporting tools) that accelerate the configuration of the system to manage buildings, civil works, or infrastructure projects. Support processes are also now better managed, Scott said, with stringent service level agreements in place giving customers firm undertakings on things like response times on support requests.

The sheer breadth of product development activities had also been a hindrance, it seemed. We talked briefly about Keystone Toolbox, a product that I saw at a pre-Beta release stage in September 2009 (post). Further development of this simple file-sharing platform, strongly influenced by the Web 2.0 idea of the social stream, has apparently been put on the back-burner, but Mike said the company had learned a lot from its development and he reckoned there were eight or nine areas of its technology that might yet be incorporated into Incite Keystone.

Incite growing into new markets

As for Incite itself, Scott said it has been snapping at the heels of Australian rival Aconex in its domestic market. Incite’s Leighton Holdings ownership is sometimes raised as a potential obstacle by prospects, he said, but once they understand the benefits of a strong financial backer and how strictly separation and probity are maintained between the parent company and this specialist software development business, those objections usually evaporate.

Incite is a strong force in its home territory of Australasia, Scott continued, but had been successfully expanding into south-east Asia, to countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and India as well as Hong Kong (where it has a hosting facility). Incite Keystone is now being used on projects worth some AU$42 billion, with – on average – between 2,000 and 3,000 unique users logging-in to Keystone daily. For a (refreshing) change and unlike some other vendors, Incite doesn’t quote statistics for all users registered since year dot, it prefers to concentrate on currently active users; it has around 15,000 of these at the moment, Scott said. New projects are being added at the rate of five or six per week.

Expansion into Europe is still on the cards, Scott said. Use of Keystone in south and SE Asia had exposed several European contractors and project managers to the platform, and one reason for this latest trip was to talk to a major contractor in Germany and to other customers based in mainland Europe. As soon as customer demand justified the investment, Scott said Incite would be establishing an office and hosting facility in Europe.

Innovating interfaces with Keystone

Michael was keen to give me a preview of some of the capabilities of new-look Keystone, which it aims to release by the end of 2010.

Screenshot

 

At first glance, the Keystone user interface looks similar to other providers’ products, most of which also resemble email clients (a familiar-looking interface, of course, helps speed up user adoption). Some ability to modify such interfaces has already started to appear. Earlier this year, for example, I was invited to review Sword CTSpace‘s new interface (post) which allows users to reconfigure their views by, say, resizing or moving columns around, and Keystone is offering the same customisation capabilities. Keystone also offers extensive configuration capabilities for its reporting system.

Dropzone panel in outlook

While on the subject of email, Michael showed me Keystone’s integration with Outlook (still the most widely used corporate email client), demonstrating its “Drop Zone” feature which allows users to drag and drop single or multiple emails, including their attachments, into Keystone. Separate Drop Zones can be created for different projects, and, as well as email, the same functionality can be used to drag files from a computer’s hard-drive.

Pivot3

However, when it comes to CAD files and other graphical information such as photographs, it has taken a radical departure from the “drawing register” listing view typical of many collaboration platform user interfaces. Using Microsoft’s PivotViewer technology built into Silverlight, Keystone allows users to view thumbnail images of all the items in a particular database, and to drill-down into the database by searching according to various metadata options. For example, within a large set of drawings, you might want to isolate all those relating to building services, or all those produced by a particular designer, or all those approved for construction. Each time a selection is made, the screen tiles are rearranged accordingly, and users can zoom into and view the details with increasing clarity without actually having to open any of files themselves. (I saw a similar graphic-led approach to file navigation deployed in Kalexo Teamwork last year – post.)

Given the highly mobile nature of many construction professionals’ working lives, Incite has also spent time developing applications for mobile devices (Michael talked fluent “techie” – the Keystone API is 100% RESTful, using JSON and XML). I saw how Keystone could be used to manage a range of workflows via an iPhone, and Michael also talked about the company’s plans to create similar apps for Windows Mobile 7 and for Android. I asked about Blackberry (still a favourite – albeit declining – among corporates), and he said they had no plans to develop a similar application for BB devices, mainly because they expected RIM’s share of the smartphone market to continue to decline as Android grows in popularity and iPhone remains attractive (see latest Nielsen statistics, for example). We also talked about an iPad application: Keystone will be accessible on iPads, with much of the new interface design (large buttons, drag-and-drop functionality, etc) already deliberately created to enable easy touchscreen interaction (Android tablet devices will, of course, also be supported).

Geo-location (or, as Keystone labels it, ‘Spatial) data is also increasingly important in Incite’s software development roadmap. We talked about capabilities that enabled files such as drawings or photographs to be tagged with geo-location details, allowing them to be represented as pins on, say, Bing Maps or Google Earth. This is something that Incite demonstrated at Microsoft’s Remix event in Sydney in June 2009 (post), but the company has since started working closely with Australian provider of high-resolution aerial images, Nearmap whose imagery can also be integrated with open-source map data from OpenStreetMap. Unlike satellite imagery, Nearmap imagery (currently only focused on Australian conurbations) is updated monthly, and Michael showed me how relevant project data could be displayed on a map with a timeline that allows the user to view progress over time. Particularly on infrastructure projects (eg: highways, rail and water supply projects) Michael said Keystone’s Spatial capabilities were helping construction professionals in the field quickly find key locations such as service access chambers or the locations of soil compaction tests.

Reaction

After looking at CTSpace’s new interface and then Aconex’s v10 (post), I wasn’t sure what to expect when Michael said he wanted to show me how Keystone had developed (“Kick-ass new builds”, indeed!). But I was surprised: Incite is clearly investing significantly in its own product development and its Application Programming Interface (API) is helping it incorporate new capabilities utilising data from third party software developers. Some of the results are certainly innovative as far as the construction collaboration sector is concerned, and, at least from a technology perspective, Incite’s core platform already bears credible comparison with established players in the European market if it plans to launch in the northern hemisphere, and most European customers will have fewer issues with Leighton Holdings’ ownership.

The display of graphical files in Incite is user-friendly and intuitive to navigate, and the iPhone application is among the most polished smartphone solutions that I have seen so far in this sector (eg: Asite’s cMob, SmartBuilder’s proof-of-concept Site Clean-Up reporting tool, and, more recently, Sword CTSpace’s third-party developed app – post), and I am looking forward to seeing the Keystone mobile application deployed on larger format tablet devices.

This is likely to become a key battleground. Some industry analysts (eg: Gartner) are predicting that mobile devices will supercede laptop and desktop hardware as the preferred tools for internet access, so having mature mobile applications or mobile browser-based tools will be a key area for differentiation.

The API-enabled delivery of spatial data from Nearmap is also visually stunning (particularly if, like me, you are used to the grainy pixellated views derived from satellite imagery), and if Nearmap (or an equivalent) was to start offering similar services in the UK (and other markets, of course), I could see it being very attractive for teams involved with, for example, what’s left – after the Government’s recent Comprehensive Spending Review – of the UK’s infrastructure investment programme. It is a great example of how an API can be used by a vendor to add a differentiating, even game-changing capability to an existing software platform.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/11/incite-innovates/

Nov 05 2010

A first look at EADOC

I recently did a GoToMeeting session with Eric Law of EADOC to get a clearer understanding of this US-based Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration platform.

The system is mainly aimed at construction project teams operating in north America, and has been around since early 2006 (I first wrote about the business in late 2007). It was developed, said Eric, to address some of what he saw as the deficiencies of competing approaches; lots of teams were still managing projects using Excel Spreadsheets, or were using e-Builder, Meridian Prolog or Constructware. Discussing the latter, Eric felt it was eventually likely to be discontinued by Autodesk, despite the protestations to the contrary when speculation about Constructware’s future emerged in May 2009 (post), and he said he knew at least one major construction organisation with a large installed base of Constructware users that was looking to move them across to EADOC.

Supply chain information management

While some vendors were selling their systems using per-seat or per-user licensing, Eric shares my view that the best approach was for the system to be licensed per-project with unlimited users. “While our target is usually the ultimate owner or the construction manager, this approach usually means we get the entire team involved, including sub-consultants and sub-contractors,” he said. “One unique feature of EADOC on the collaboration side is each organisation can add and manage their own subs. For example a general contractor can add sub-contractors and manage their subs with EADOC. Likewise with architects and engineers; they can add their subs and control which documents like RFIs and submittals go to the subs and which comments go back to the clients and contractors.”

EADOC uses user- and company-based security to manage what individuals can see, with document access rights based on the document workflow process, and EADOC tries to make its users as self-sufficient as possible by building extensive context-sensitive support into its SaaS-based tools.

Document and finance management combined

Comparing EADOC with some of the UK-based vendors’ platforms, it differs insofar as it is more oriented towards detailed management of financial elements of project delivery. Yes, there are also features to manage construction documents and design drawings, but from the initial “start” page the focus is plainly geared towards managing cost-related aspects of project delivery. Erid says: “I would say we are more 50% document management and 50% finance management focused.”

Buttons on that home page allow the user to instigate various routine activities, checking memos or the daily log, reviewing the project calendar or meetings schedule, etc. One entire module is devoted to Finance, and Eric said EADOC could also be integrated with back-office financial systems using web services.

Drilling into work activities managed on EADOC, users can see a full audit trail of the history of different types of process-related documents (eg: RFIs, submittals, inspections, punch lists, permits, etc). Eric also showed me EADOC’s extensive in-house developed live reporting tools (a library of over 75 standard reports), plus custom modules to manage safety, environmental issues, and bid documents. Comments about any item can be made by attaching an electronic “sticky note” to the document, form or drawing. One particularly interesting feature in the reporting module was a “relation view” that lets users see how different documents (drawings, specifications, submittals) are related to each other, so that you can get a complete picture of all the items associated with a particular process.

EADOC recommends a separate CAD file viewer but is developing its own viewing tool (combining JavaScript and HTML5) that it hopes to launch in the final quarter of 2011. Before then – in early 2011 – EADOC’s own scheduling application will be launched, Eric said, challenging the dominance of Microsoft Project and other programme management tools.

Eric was optimistic about the future for EADOC, and dismissive of the threat of low-cost file-sharing or planroom-type tools, particularly in the current economic climate in the USA. “The low-cost solutions have been mainly focused on the residential market, and there is a lot of price pressure in that sector at the moment,” he said. “But we are seeing growing demand in the US market for tools to manage larger commercial and industrial development projects – and that’s were EADOC is targeted.”

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/11/a-first-look-at-eadoc/

Nov 01 2010

Business steady at Sword CTSpace?

Monitoring the construction collaboration technology businesses formerly known as Buildonline and Citadon since the combined CTSpace operation was acquired by France-based Sword Group SA in late 2007 (post) is not easy, particularly when companies get merged with other, unrelated operations. From a close reading of various annual reports and some company feedback, I believe the UK operation had an unremarkable 2009; it may have delivered a profit, but I suspect revenues were flat or down.

UK corporate changes

On 1 January 2009 the trade and assets of construction collaboration technology provider BuildOnline UK Ltd were hived across to a fellow subsidiary undertaking of the Sword Group. Exactly which undertaking wasn’t specified, though I later gleaned that it merged with Intech, Achiever and Sword UK – and its operations are now reported as part of Sword UK Ltd.

Intech provided risk management and compliance solutions to the insurance market, while Achiever is a risk management and compliance solution for corporate clients, but the combined reporting makes it difficult to identify how well (or not) the UK construction-oriented business has been doing, not least because Intech dwarfs the other operations.

The former BuildOnline business contributes a relatively minor amount to Sword UK’s revenues. In 2008, for example, Intech generated revenues of €22.9m, compared to BuildOnline’s €2.8m (£2.2m), while Achiever delivered revenues of a similar magnitude to BuildOnline (€2.9m). Judging from the numbers from Sword UK Ltd for the year ending 31 December 2009, Intech delivered £18.9m in revenues, while the two smaller operations, listed as ‘acquisitions’, generated a combined total of £5.3m. Assuming that both these businesses performed in line with the previous year, this would suggest that the former BuildOnline business generated a turnover of somewhere in the range of £2.0m to £2.6m in 2009 – though the latter figure may be optimistic in light of the construction slump. In 2008, BuildOnline UK made a loss of €36k; in 2009, the ‘acquisitions’ made a profit of £990k, but it is difficult to be make an assessment of what contribution the construction IT business delivered to that figure. I asked Sword CTSpace to comment; George Britton wrote: “we did deliver a profit in 2009” (in other words, somewhere in a range from £1 to £990k).

International SaaS operations

For the record, BuildOnline UK is now a dormant subsidiary of Sword Soft Limited (“an investment holding company” with interests in 48 companies [including Sword UK Ltd] – 18 of them dormant as at 31 December 2009). However, other BuildOnline companies and related businesses were still trading during 2009. Sword Group’s 2009 Annual Report (PDF) gives details of the revenues and earnings of its controlled companies, including seven businesses I identified from Sword’s 2008 annual report (post). [Sterling values below are based on 2009 average exchange rates].

Company Sales
€000		 £000 Earnings €000 £000
Buildonline Germany 1,915 1,706 1,750 1,559
Buildonline France 2,422 2,158 702 625
Buildonline India – – – –
Buildonline USA 117 104 -69 -61
Buildonline Ireland 2 2 -15 -13
Buildonline Global Ltd (UK) – – 246 219
CTSpace (USA) 3,627 3,232 441 393
Sub-total €8,083 £7,202 €3,055 £2,722
BuildOnline UK (my optimistic estimate) €2,900 £2,600 – –
Total (approx.) €10,983 £9,802 €3,055 £2,722

Below the sub-total for those seven businesses, I have added my optimistic guess-timate for BuildOnline UK. Adjusting last year’s numbers to account for the disposal of Infotechno (Austria) – sold in August 2009 to a German publishing group, EPP – on this optimistic basis, it would appear that Sword’s combined construction collaboration solutions achieved revenues that were down 5% on last year’s total revenues of £10.272m – probably a sign of the impact of the recession’s impact on the construction industry. But, apparently, profits were up by around a third (allowing that the UK broke even – see quote from George Britton above) from £1.929m.

Segmented performance

How
ever, there are contradictory indicators elsewhere in the 2009 report where Sword Group segments its turnover and earnings by market sector (p.151). Here it says the energy, construction and utilities sector generated a turnover of €15.851m in 2009 (£14.123m), a whopping 40% down on the previous year’s €26.302m (£23.435m). EBIT for 2009 was €2.964m (£2.641m), 53% down from €6.324m (£5.635m) in 2008. Operating profitability was down, Sword explains, as: “entirely the result of the exceptional R&D plan initiated in 2009 that was completed at the end of Q1 2010. In 2010, we expect to see profitability improve.” No hint, then, that revenues were hit by the credit crunch – despite what other AEC businesses have found (most recently Unit4, for example – post).

These figures are also lower than those given to me by John Pomeroy, then Sword CTSpace’s business unit director, when we met in May (post), when he said the Sword CTSpace business achieved revenues of €18m across all its applications in 2009, though this may be because he included some non-energy/construction/utilities revenues in that number.

(Again, I sought clarification. George Britton informed me: “The combined revenue from construction collaboration solutions in all regions has been relatively steady.” On that basis, maybe the UK performed in line with the previous year, achieving around £2.2m?)

There is no distinction in Sword’s 2009 report between revenues from delivering applications on a Software-as-a-Service or ‘on-demand’ model versus revenues from on-premise solutions. Sword CTSpace’s portfolio includes both types of application: FusionEnterprise for in-house hosting; FusionLive as a SaaS offering, for example. However, my analysis of the eight SaaS businesses listed above, suggests their total revenues accounted for more than two-thirds of the group’s AEC-related turnover in 2009. One interpretation of the apparent differences between the SaaS results and the overall AEC figure could be that on-premise solutions outperformed SaaS products in revenue growth terms in 2009, but SaaS delivered better margins.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/11/business-steady-at-sword-ctspace/

Oct 28 2010

Live from ICT4Construction conference, London

The ICT4Construction conference (post), being held today in London, has attracted representatives from several companies regularly covered in this blog. 4Projects is a sponsor (and Clare Watson is due to speak); Sword CTSpace is the opening speaker, followed by MPS, and Union Square will also be talking; and I am sitting behind Yuval Attias and Rob Phillpot from Aconex. I also saw someone from Unit4 Collaboration, and met a representative of ThinkProject!, over from Dubai.

Constructing Excellence‘s Jon de Souza has given a keynote advocating collaborative working, and use of common systems and processes in particular, and highlighting the growing potential impact of building information modelling (I am waiting to see if this will be reflected in the content from any of the collaboration vendors).

Sword CTSpace

10am: The Sword CTSpace presentation, delivered by Mike Smith (see post), was a quick canter through the corporate background (mentions of BuildOnline, Citadon and Cimage), Fusion Enterprise and FusionLive, and the new mobile application (post). Nothing surprising – mainly a sales pitch.

MPS

10.45am: John Broome, a consultant to MPS, gave some background to construction contracts and why the NEC3 family of contracts is different, and a look at active risk registers, compensation events and other contract change processes.

Robin Wilkin followed up by showing how MPS supports the NEC3 – “a simple system that is easy to access” even on low-bandwidth connections. MPS delivers an IBM-hosted service (data hosted at an IBM centre near Portsmouth), supporting projects as far afield as Christchurch, New Zealand). He demonstrated the MPS platform, based on templates for the different versions of the NEC, then configured to suit the precise terms of the project contract, including ‘Z clauses’. The monetary aspects of change are managed through the system, with activities managed through a work breakdown structure (the reports look very spreadsheet-y), with linked documents (eg quotations, instructions) captured in the database. The “All Current” report lists all ‘calls to action’ communications and who is required to take the next step.

EliteFile

11.45am: Stuart Farmer from EliteSuite talked about managing collaboration, including use of email and online file-sharing systems (eg: Huddle, DropBox) for basic collaboration. Email of course remains prevalent in collaboration, he says, along with use of files on desktops and local area networks. He positioned EliteFile as a conduit between internet/cloud or hosted applications and desktop applications and local systems. He described it as complementary to existing applications, unifying workspaces, simplifying tasks, and ensuring files (emails, documents, scanned drawings, photographs, etc) are saved consistently according to consistent rules. Elitefile incorporates a universal viewer for common file formats, with a search tool that allows you to search and to download from online applications (he showed Cadweb). Wonder if this covers much the same kind of territory as Union Square’s Workspace?

RedSkyIT

12.15pm: The RedSkyIT person talked about the Summit product, with presentation of information built around the project or contract – with some good-looking dashboard views (graphs and pie-charts do help convey information quickly). It all looked very Windows-oriented, very conventional – and while the platform is more attractive than the MPS solution’s UI (which, while deliberately simple, Twitter-backchat suggested had been designed by a lawyer!), it didn’t appeal to me.

AceCad

12.45pm: Richard Brotherton of AceCad talked about tools for steelwork design and fabrication, talking about “Fabrication Information Modelling” (FIM), among other BIM acronyms, so that structural modelling could be integrated with other elements of design – process engineering models, for example. From a BIM point of view, this was the most advanced presentation so far (reflecting, perhaps, how far structural engineering is ahead of some other construction sectors). He showed change management associated with 3D designs; the StruCad system automatically manages all documents, including all revisions, RFIs and variations, maintaining an audit trail of all changes; StruWalker helps project review and collaboration. Richard also talked repeatedly about routine e-sharing of information with stakeholders, with a model viewer showing both the design and associated project programmes and other data.

4Projects

14.35pm: Clare Watson’s talk in the graveyard slot was entitled Time, Cost and Carbon Savings Using Online Collaboration (a refreshing break from the sales pitches and demos). Cost is critical at the moment, she says, following the economic downturn and last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review – not exactly “There is no money”, but definitely less money – and she picked up on remarks by UK chief construction adviser Paul Morrell who is talking currently (eg: at Constructing Excellence’s members’ convention) about “More for Less”, and Cost and Carbon as the King and Queen of industry issues.

Interestingly, she resurrected the Compagnia report into the UK collaboration market, produced in 2003, highlighting the benefits it identified – and suggested these savings and opportunities could still be applied today. Some direct cost savings are ‘no-brainers’ (print, postage, storage savings, etc), but also indirect cost savings: reduced network data traffic demands and costs, lower data storage costs, faster searches, less lost information, fewer ineffective meetings, reduced travel costs, etc. Examples included: Six Continents Retail saved £17,000 a year in office space costs due to paper storage savings: supermarket identified 4Projects saved it £50,000 in distributing information; architectural practice saved £1500/project; retail chain opened branches two weeks earlier by using 4Projects.

As for carbon savings, “Working collaboratively is a greener way of working,” Clare said, recalling the paper and related savings (paper, couriers, transport, etc). Emirates Stadium involved 72,000 documents, she said – so print and distribution savings can give major carbon savings. Avoiding car and air travel to meetings can also yield significant carbon savings, as can archiving information
electronically.

Looking into the detail of hosting, she got more interesting, looking at the example of a dedicated project server, looking at typical user patterns, consuming 662kg of CO2 a year. By contrast, the 4Projects datacentre uses 13,109kg of carbon per annum. To achieve similar carbon savings would require 20 customers, and 4Projects has many more than that. Even greater savings could accrue, she said, from using the software to manage information across the life-cycle of a project, not just for project delivery.

Clare also highlighted how the main technologies had all moved way beyond simple document collaboration – tender management, milestone management, and contract manager are all modules that 4Projects has launched in the last 12 months. Some other business processes could benefit (eg: asset management, KPI and financial control, quality management, HR, marketing, internal business processes) as they still involve sharing information and collaboration.

Union Square

15.10pm: Stuart Bell talked about Union Square’s internal collaboration platform, Workspace, which has about 30,000 users, he said, positioning the system as one way to meet various compliance and knowledge management issues. “Too many organisations floundering in a sea of information, structured and unstructured … too many repositories … and specialist technologies,” he said, and – drawing on AIIM research – he highlighted how email represents 85% of correspondence between companies; average corporate user sends/receives 156 emails per day; 2.5 hours a day spent on email-related tasks.

Stuart picked up on Gartner’s 10 Technology Trends to Watch, particularly portals/mashups and cloud computing, and after looking back to the 1990s early adoption of the Web talked about today’s capacity to publish and engage online through Web 2.0 tools (as yet under-utilised for business purposes, he felt). iGoogle and configurable BBC home pages help us keep up-to-date on our personal interests, so perhaps we need similar common tools for business use maybe via an enterprise portal?

He then showed Workspace and its ‘dashparts’ that could be configured for different types of users. Tesco’s use of Workspace as ‘My Property’ got a mention (he didn’t mention that this was delivered by Styles & Wood’s subsidiary, iSite), and he showed several different implementations – all with different look and feel (I liked the company, Connisbeere [I think], who called their portal “Cowshed”!). He touched on cultural change issues (but was a little sceptical about it happening soon), but was obviously optimistic about what portal technology might deliver.

Arup on BEM

16.00pm: Nigel Woodridge talked about changing design requirements, and Arup’s approach: Built Environmental Modelling (BEM): centrally sharing business systems, CAD, GIS and analytical systems, combining information, project, cost and CAD management. He did a quick lesson in using CAD and parametrics, before moving on to 4D modelling, construction sequencing (5D) with costs, GIS (using Google Earth as an example for public consultation), and smarter (and smoother and more efficient) information modelling. He also talked about smart tags with barcodes.

Nigel reckons the government drive to implement BIM will need to be emulated in due course with BEM.

The McGraw-Hill Construction SmartMarket Report: The Business Value of BIM in Europe (overview here) got a plug, highlighting the efficiency opportunities, but also the challenges (including the biggest one: interoperability). Technophobes also need to lose their fear of BIM, and work out a way to evolve progressively and cost-effectively.

The Smarter Planet – IBM

16.30pm: Lu Kum Tan(?) of IBM had a presentation that started at the Planet level, then looked at Smarter Cities, and the need, within that, for Smarter Buildings and for horizontal/vertical connection. The Smarter Planet initiative adopted a “system of systems” approach demanding we be ‘instrumented’, ‘interconnected’ (people, buildings, campuses, offices, etc) and ‘intelligent’ in order to be smarter. Clients adopting ‘Whole life-cycle cost model’ approaches are driving changes (as are contractors looking at similar approaches), and we need to be greener with our buildings (both existing and new build). He highlighted the UK programme for new nuclear power stations as an opportunity to really push the BIM approach.

Review (added 29 October 2010)

The collaboration theme was interpreted in various ways at this conference to fit with vendors’ perspectives, but, apart from the speakers looking at the BIM opportunities (non-vendor Nigel’s presentation was perhaps the highlight), there wasn’t much that was new. Indeed, as one person suggested to me, some content could have been delivered ten years ago with hardly a change, and later speakers were apparently amending their slides so as not to reiterate points already made. For example, the paper and meetings savings were repeatedly rolled out, while I would have welcomed a longer discussion of how SaaS hosting could contribute to carbon savings.

I also think vendors need to avoid talking mainly about their products, services and clients, and including product demonstrations – these are rarely effective and can be a big ‘switch-off’ to some conference delegates.

It was a shame that the event, despite its central location and attractive price tag (well done, Recep!), didn’t attract a bigger audience. Was this because organisations and/or their employees are reluctant to spare time for out-of-the-office events? Did it reflect a view that construction collaboration was something we wanted to learn about in the early 2000s? Was the event publicised sufficiently in the right places?

Whatever the reason, the turn-out (around 50, I think) was relatively sparse and there was little to spark debate – most of the presentations came and went without any questions, sadly. A panel debate, maybe one arguing the pros and cons of Software-as-a-Service, for example, might have broken things up a bit and got more people contributing.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/live-from-ict4construction-conference-london/

Oct 22 2010

Personnel changes, and an iPhone app, at Sword CTSpace

When I wrote about the forthcoming ICT4Construction conference (taking place in central London next Thursday, 28 November), I mentioned John Pomeroy was speaking on behalf of construction collaboration technology vendor Sword CTSpace. He isn’t any more, though, as he joined unstructured information software provider MarkLogic as vice president, Europe in August (see news release).

John’s speaking slot at the conference is provisionally being taken by colleague Mike Smith (formerly at 4Projects and BIW). I understand he will be talking about Sword CTSpace’s dual (on-premise and SaaS) approach to construction collaboration with a particular focus on managing information across the life-cycle of an asset, not just during design and construction. We may also hear about the company’s iPhone application, FL Mobile, developed by Saturated Colors and released in late August (see news release) – this was something flagged by John Pomeroy when we met in May (post).

(Incidentally, another change to the conference running order sees 4Projects‘ CEO Richard Vertigan replaced by VP Marketing, Clare Watson.)

John’s jump is not the only recent change among the Sword CTSpace management. I heard an as-yet unconfirmed rumour last week that Frankfurt-based operations director Gert-Jan de Kieviet, whose involvement with the company dates back to 2005 BuildOnline days, has also departed the company. I sought confirmation of this earlier today (he could be moving elsewhere within Sword Group, of course).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/personnel-changes-and-an-iphone-app-at-sword-ctspace/

Oct 19 2010

Pessimistic Unit4’s revenues down, but profits up

Unit4 Collaboration Software (until February 2010 known as Business Collaborator – post), the UK-based provider of construction collaboration technologies (and other applications) recently filed its annual report and accounts for the year to 31 December 2009 at Companies House.

This time last year (post), the company’s directors were not optimistic about their ability to deliver sustainable growth due to the general economic decline associated with the credit crunch. Their pessimism was justified in some respects: turnover, already slowing in 2008, declined 8.5% from £3.108m to £2.843m in 2009. However, pre-tax profits were up again, reaching £268,950, up from £221,367 in 2008, making 2009 the business’s fourth consecutive profitable year. Staff numbers were down slightly, from 34 to 32.

The company mainly operates in the UK and Ireland – which together account for 97% of its revenues (the remainder arises from operations in mainland Europe). Unit4 has not followed UK-based competitors such as 4Projects, BIW and Asite by opening operations in regions such as the Middle East or north America.

Analysis

The report suggests that the UK and Irish construction market downturn has yet to bottom out sufficiently for Unit4’s directors to be more positive about prospects for 2010; their gloomy ‘Future outlook’ is word for word identical to that given for 2009. Afore-mentioned rivals at least have the option of expanding their operations in overseas markets, but Unit4 has yet to look beyond Europe, and its heavy reliance on the UK construction sector – itself deeply concerned about the impact of further public spending cuts in tomorrow’s Comprehensive Spending Review – justifies such caution.

I notice Unit4, iSite (formerly Styles & Wood’s StoreData) and Asite have all achieved very similar pre-tax profits, but from different revenue levels.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/pessimistic-unit4s-revenues-down-but-profits-up/

Oct 19 2010

Senubo to launch early 2011

Not strictly a collaboration solution, more an expertise-oriented social network, start-up Senubo is set to launch in early 2011.

Yesterday I attended a half-day workshop organised by the Construction Productivity Network focused on how to get the UK construction industry to deliver “more for less” – a topical ambition given that tomorrow the government is set to announce some major spending cuts in its Comprehensive Spending Review. Perhaps a sign that the pivotal role of ICT is now being recognised, building information modelling featured among the ideas raised by many of the tables (although it was equally recognised that technological advances also need supporting changes in industry structures, processes and people), but the potential of social media got hardly a mention – apart from when its potential value in knowledge management was suggested by somebody at my table.

I talked to that person, Eddie Horkan (owner of a Carlow, Ireland-based piling and foundation company, Terradrive), afterwards, and his colleague Conor Heffernan. Belfast-based Senubo.co.uk is described on its (currently one-page) website as “private social networks for the construction industry”. While the website imagery of mobile phones made me think of a private Twitter-type network, like Yammer (post), Eddie said the company aimed to help companies create internal LinkedIn-type networks where the expertise, experience and project-related knowledge of individuals could be researched and shared via a handheld application:

“Senubo provide construction companies with a means to leverage their teams’ knowledge. Creating a powerful database of expertise and insight, Senubo delivers connections right across your team, enabling you to stay in touch with, and on top of, projects and groups throughout your organisation.”

Given my ten-year background in construction collaboration technologies and my related interests in knowledge management tools including wikis and intranets, we had an interesting conversation about the appetite of the construction industry for such tools. While I have seen growing interest in recent months in use of Web 2.0 tools among UK construction professionals (eg: Mace – post), they are still some way short of being regarded as mainstream as email or intranets, for instance. But maybe this will change. Senubo plans to launch in the UK in early 2011.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/senubo-to-launch-early-2011/

Oct 14 2010

CAD in the cloud – needs selling on the ground

Software-as-a-Service approaches to design in the AEC market can learn a lot from how SaaS has been deployed to provide construction collaborative platforms since the late 1990s, but the marketing challenges still tend to require more than just an online presence.

CAD in the cloud

Thanks, once again, to Roopinder Tara’s, CAD CAM CAE TenLinks Daily, I found an interesting article, Design forecast: CAD in the cloud, by Martyn Day at Develop3D.com. While this is a site about “technology for the product lifecycle”, this article also talks briefly about how CAD might be delivered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis in the architecture, engineering and construction, AEC, sector – a topic which I have dubbed CADaaS (and latterly BIMaaS) in several blog posts over the past couple of years.

For his target audience, Martyn gives a good overview of the pros (for both customer and vendor) and cons of SaaS-based design tools, and he describes how several of the leading players in the PLM market are developing capabilities in this field (eg: Autodesk, SolidWorks).

I have commented on the Develop3D article, offering some perspectives from 10 years of construction collaboration experience, but I wonder: are the existing software giants properly structured and equipped to move into the CADaaS space? Thinking about the businesses that have been successful in the AEC collaboration space since 2000, the headlines and dominant market positions tend to have been grabbed by SaaS start-ups (eg: 4Projects, Aconex, BIW).

As SaaS pure-plays, they were able to launch their businesses with products that carried no ‘baggage’ from existing products; there was no need to emulate existing product functionality in a browser-based environment; the platforms were developed from scratch as web-native tools. As start-ups, the businesses themselves were also not hampered by concerns about cannibalising revenues from existing on-premise solutions, their sales and marketing and their accounting processes were geared towards achieving revenues delivered through recurring subscriptions and managing ‘churn’.

Dassault to launch AEC CADaaS?

In the final part of Martyn’s article, he talks about Dassault Systèmes, which has apparently been looking at opportunities in the web-connected world for a couple of years. Today:

“…reading between the lines, it seems that Enovia – the company’s collaborative PLM database – has been built-into the core of its applications and through a cloud-based service can connect multiple users to a single model. Here, a lightweight user-interface of Catia (and even SolidWorks) could be downloaded with the CAD data kept on the web. Access to the multitude of powerful engineering analysis applications could also be hosted and delivered on-demand.”

Martyn then quotes Dassault Systèmes’ Bernard Charlès remarks from 2008:

“The next big thing for AEC … will be a new type of on-line application for 3D design in architecture. The 3D processes in that industry are far behind and I believe it will change and it will happen online.”

The implication is clear, says Martyn: “Dassault is gunning for Autodesk” and its AEC market dominance; “For Dassault, the cloud levels the playing field and gives potential access to its competitor’s customers via a web browser”.

Marketing challenges remain

However, I am not so sure that going online bypasses the AEC sales channel in quite the way that Martyn imagines. Again, experience in the SaaS construction collaboration field suggests that delivering solutions via the web does not remove the need for conventional sales and marketing techniques. All the leading SaaS providers have sales teams and consultants whose job it is to identify opportunities and then secure the deal – often a complex and time-consuming process due to the geographically-dispersed, multi-company, multi-disciplinary nature of most project teams. In some respects, Dassault might find it easier if their targets are individual companies, but, even then, SaaS collaboration experience suggests that significant software investment decisions tend to require detailed presentations regarding the software’s capabilities, plus considerable reassurance and back-up information regarding the hosting regime, the vendor’s financial and management stability, its experience and track-record, its product roadmap, etc.

Small businesses might make a decision to invest in, say, a SaaS-based CRM or accounting system without going through a complex procurement process, so online marketing of a CADaaS solution may work at the SME level. Pricing is, of course, a critical issue here; UK-based Woobius is making a concerted online marketing push targeting buyers of simple, low-cost construction collaboration (see Woobius pushing the self-service SaaS offer), but its self-service SaaS approach may not work when dealing with a multi-company project team demanding more sophisticated – and therefore more expensive – functionality and support.

So looking at the specifics of a SaaS-based CAD solution for a still very conservative and risk-averse sector like construction, I suspect most substantial architect, engineer or contracting businesses will want a lot more information than can be gleaned through a website before they choose to replace their existing design tools with a CADaaS solution. But one advantage of CADaaS, particularly if it could be purchased on a pay-as-you-design basis, is that businesses can try the tools out without a substantial upfront payment, perhaps on a pilot project; we might therefore see firms augmenting their in-house tools with cloud-hosted applications until they feel confident in making the switch more permanent.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/cad-in-the-cloud-needs-selling-on-the-ground/

Oct 05 2010

HP ePrint & Share – a follow-up

Iolanda Monserrat-SilesFurther to yesterday’s post about HP ePrint & Share, I have now received a response from product manager Iolanda Montserrat (right), so I can shed a little more light on this cloud service’s capabilities.

  1. Email notifications – As regular readers will know, I like services which can be managed online without (m)any emails – perhaps a single ‘digest’ email each 24 hours covering all notifications. Other people, though, like more frequent email updates, so they may appreciate how ePrint & Share notifies users about each new upload they need to see. For me, the downside is that if someone uploads a succession of files one at a time, I would get multiple email notifications.
  2. Multiple downloads – Iolanda confirms that users can download multiple files simultaneously from the cloud space, provided the files are part of the same ‘share event’.
  3. Tagging – Users will be able to search within tagged sets of files that have been issued to them, and HP is working on extending the functionality to allow multiple tags.
  4. Version control – “Every user has his own library,” Iolanda explains. While access to this library is restricted to each user, when files are distributed, copies are placed in the libraries of the recipients. If a drawing is updated, and a “specific user wants the others to see a revision, he must share these changes…. Otherwise this last version will not be available for them.”
  5. File formats – “HP ePrint&Share supports all kind of formats. The user will be able to share whatever they need (DWGs, Word and Excel documents, PPTs, ZIPs, JPGs, TIFs, HPGLT… etc). But when somebody wants to print some of this content through a Large Format printer, it will only be possible to print PDFs, HPGLTs, PLTs, JPGs, TIFs, PPTs, Excels. HP ePrint&Share will show the user with an icon which files can be printed and which ones cannot. Other formats will need to be printed by small format printers through the standard workflow.”

SoME thoughts

HP said ePrint & Share was designed for the small or medium-sized enterprise. After writing recently about practice management software (post) and offshore outsourcing (post), I think there might be a good fit between HP’s service and these types of businesses, particularly at the SME level.

For example, practice management solutions often include print register functionality whereby design practices can closely monitor what gets printed, at what size, how many copies, colour or mono, etc, so that information can be recorded and invoiced to their customers. Again, this is an area where third party software vendors like Union Square might want to effect a simple integration so that users might use their large format printers to share drawings hosted in their Workspace or Archetype drawing registers, while recording what gets printed and when, etc.

And, HP ePrint & Share seems tailor-made for situations where architects or other designers are sharing design work with colleagues in other offices or with an outsourcing company so that design work can become more productive by ‘following the sun’.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/hp-eprint-share-a-follow-up/

Oct 04 2010

Collaborate – via your printer

Hewlett-Packard has rarely featured in ExtranetEvolution.com – which is hardly surprising as HP is mainly known in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) circles as a provider of print hardware solutions, not collaborative software applications. Indeed, I learned last week that there are now around 1.5 million HP DesignJet large format printers in use, and that it has about 65% of the EMEA market for such devices. But reflecting recent trends in AEC professionals’ working methods, HP has begun to think about how its printing solutions can meet the needs of those who need to share design information in an increasingly mobile and collaborative world. And the printer itself can now become part of that collaborative enterprise.

EMEA launch

Along with a handful of other bloggers and a lot of journalists, I was invited to the Copenhagen press launch (see also news release) of two new HP large format printers and – of most interest to me – its HP ePrint & Share service.

The HP premise, conveyed in some flashy videos (like this), is that despite advances in electronic communication design teams still need to print out and to sketch and write upon printed paper drawings. According to HP research, design projects typically take up to two years, involve around 30 people, feature three design reviews a week, require three PDFs to be shared a week, with around 500 plans created per project. Around 80% of large format prints come from PDFs sent through email or over the web, we were told, but now most sites (60%) have wireless internet and can receive drawings by email (no mention of online construction collaboration platforms).

However, professionals also want to be able to share design information simply by means other than a desktop such as smartphones or tablet computers, without some of the multi-step conversion processes related to PDF creation (“publishing PDFs can be a nightmare” said one HP person), and simplifying the digital-to-paper then paper-to-digital transmission processes.

As a result HP has begun to look at how its hardware might incorporate ways to help those professionals, and simplify the sharing process. The result, said Santiago Morera (HP’s VP and general manager for HP DesignJet Worldwide), is a new generation of printers that are currently ‘web-enabled’, and which, from next year, will be ‘Web connected’. We saw HP’s new T2300 eMFP – already dubbed “the world’s most collaborative printer” – a multi-function printer with scanner capabilities including vectorisation (using Autodesk Raster Design), that has been in development for three years. It incorporates a user-friendly touchscreen interface (similar to smartphone screens – see video), and prints can be shared with team members with just a few taps of the touchscreen. Importantly, that touchscreen does more than manage the device – it can also be used to access files stored on the web, so users wouldn’t always have to use their PC.

Free online storage

Currently, sharing is accomplished via conventional network folders, but in Spring 2011 HP will open its HP ePrint & Share service (“the world’s most collaborative printing solution” – video), offering free storage of files “in the cloud”. Iolanda Monserrat-Siles, product manager for ePrint & Share, explained that users would get up to 5GB of free storage space (adequate for most users, she said; pressed on this, she admitted there were no plans on how much extra space might be available – and at what price – if users needed more than 5GB).

Using Copenhagen-based BIG Architects‘ Shanghai Pavilion as an example, she demonstrated how a HP plug-in for AutoCAD enabled one-click PDF creation locally, and then showed how the PDF could be saved to HP’s cloud storage service. In the meantime, the recipient in Shanghai would receive an email containing a link to that file which they could then print out, review, mark-up and then scan back into the ‘conversation’ as another PDF.

Along with a couple of other attendees, I was curious as to whether this development meant HP was going to be going into competition with existing vendors of online collaboration platforms (I talked about BIW, Aconex and 4Projects, for example, while Berlin-based Eric Sturm – who I met for the first time at the event – wondered the same about Conject). HP said that once the service went live, they didn’t want such vendors to see HP as a competitor; instead they envisaged opening up dialogues with such third party vendors and other planroom providers about enabling HP printer users to be able to upload, scan and share drawings direct to their preferred platform provider, perhaps creating new gateways to these platforms via an application programming interface (API).

The storage space is effectively a single library folder and as dozens of files are uploaded it could become difficult for one to find particular files. To help identify files relating to different projects, the HP service allows users to ‘tag’ each file – but this is still a “basic” service only capable of holding a single tag.

Other questions concerned the AutoCAD plug-in. Clearly AutoCAD was selected for its dominant position in the AEC design market, but HP anticipated that customer demand would also prompt other CAD vendors (eg: Bentley, Graphisoft) to work with HP to create a similar plug-in.

(I will be writing a further post giving a little more detail about HP ePrint & Share after I have received some responses to some questions I asked Iolande.)

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/10/collaborate-via-your-printer/

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