Jan 10 2013

4Projects involved in BRE-led Clouds4Coordination (C4C) project

A research project to coordinate construction in the cloud using building information modelling (BIM) includes Sunderland-based SaaS collaboration vendor 4Projects. The project is among 13 winners sharing in £5 million of grant funding from the Technology Strategy Board, reports Building4Change.

The Clouds4Coordination (C4C) project, which is led by BRE, will demonstrate how a multi-vendor cloud computing system can be used throughout the construction lifecycle, preventing single vendor lock-in and enabling a variety of cloud environments, accessible at different costs, to be used. Data sharing through C4C will be managed and provenance-tracked to automate coordination and staged data verification, which will be based on the BIM process model. Other partners in the project are Cardiff University, Costain, RIBA Enterprises, IBM, AEC3 UK, Lee Wakemans, and 4Projects.

Iain Gray, chief executive of the Technology Strategy Board, said:

“The market for cloud computing services is growing by 26 percent each year. It is an area with exceptional potential for growth. Finding the correct balance between trust and flexibility, without compromising security, is vital. Through this support we aim to help UK suppliers of cloud infrastructure and outsourced IT services to work together on the challenges that are holding-back the adoption of cloud computing, in order to capture a bigger share of this expanding market.”

Project contact for the Clouds4Coordination project is Nick Tune at BRE, which recently took on management of the UK Chapter of BuildingSMART (see December 2012 Building4change story).

4Projects is already engaged in another BIM-related research project, 4BIM (post), involving Northumbria University/BIM Academy, specialist technology consultancy AEC3, contractor VINCI Construction and construction products manufacturer Kingspan. I am hoping to get an update on these projects from 4Projects’ CTO Andy Ward in the near future.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2013/01/4projects-involved-in-bre-led-clouds4coordination-c4c-project/

Dec 19 2012

Thru: enterprise-level file transfer platform

Over the past decade or more, I have heard numerous construction people say they don’t really need to collaborate upon a document or drawing, they just need to share it quickly and securely with a colleague. For them, FTP (file transfer protocol) used to be an option; more recently, generic cloud-based storage such as DropBox and Box.net (post) have presented alternatives, and I’ve blogged about AEC-specific services such as HP’s ePrint&Share (recent post), and Adobe’s Acrobat.com (post). Earlier this year, I encountered Skydox, and via Twitter this morning, I learned about another: Thru.

Thru-logoIrvine, Texas, USA-based Thru provides a File Transfer Platform and describes it as “the first and only secure dropbox solution to meet enterprise needs.” It plainly regards DropBox and similar solutions as consumer-type products unsuitable and insecure for corporate use, and is highlighting its platform’s use by customers including a handful of US-based architects and contractors: HKS, SWA Group, Webcor Builders (example case study) and BSA Structures. The website mentions integration with Microsoft Solutions including SharePoint and Outlook, plus Lotus Notes and Salesforce.com. Thru also has offices in the UK (Camberley, Surrey) and Australia.

Update (12.30pm GMT) – The site carries no pricing information – as one of my Twitter correspondents suggests: “… wary of services that don’t offer their pricing on their website… It spells $$$”. Perhaps Thru will comment…?

Update (8am, 20 December 2012) – Via Twitter @ThruMFT replied: “Our focus is large business -we don’t list pricing since SEs [sales engineers] work with our clients to tailor solutions that fit exact needs.”

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/12/thru-enterprise-level-file-transfer-platform/

Dec 18 2012

Meeting McLaren: talking FM and mobile in 2013

McLaren-logoYesterday I travelled to London Gatwick Airport and the nearby offices of FMx, the facilities management software business acquired by McLaren Software‘s parent company Idox plc in October (post). The visit included an update on McLaren’s financial performance, an introduction to CAFM Explorer, and discussion of future plans for this business as it is progressively rebranded and integrated into the wider McLaren offering.

McLaren revenues growing

McLaren’s parent company Idox recently announced its latest end-of-year results, revealing revenues were up 50% to £58m (2011: £39m), and pre-tax profits up to £6.9m (£5.6m) in the year to 31 October 2012. Idox’s international revenues increased, with 31% (2011:12%) coming from outside the UK with a particular focus on non-European markets such as the USA and Australia.

McLaren, the group’s engineering information management division accounted for 31% of group revenues (up from 12% in 2011). The result includes revenues generated from the SaaS business formerly known as CTSpace, acquired soon after the start of the financial year, and subsequently rebranded as part of McLaren Software (this was not the parent group’s only acquisition – as well as FMx, there were three others). The review from CEO Richard Kellett-Clarke highlights the impact of recurring SaaS revenues:

Visibility of revenue in the EIM business has also increased during the year with 48% (2011: 36%) of revenues coming from recurring maintenance and Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) contracts. … EBITDA for the EIM business increased five-fold to £5.3m (2011: £1.1m), 32% of the Group total.  Margins increased to 30% (2011: 23%) which reflects both the increased scale of the business and progress made during the year in rapidly integrating CTSpace to achieve planned cost synergies.

The report gives a financial breakdown of the November 2011 £11.6m acquisition of CTSpace, and it is clear that just over half of the EIM division’s £17.8m turnover was generated by the business formerly known as CTSpace:

The revenue included in the consolidated statement of comprehensive income since 15 November 2011, contributed by CTSpace was £8,996k.  CTSpace also contributed a profit after tax of £1,098k for the same period.   If CTSpace had been included from 1 November, it would have contributed revenue of £9,398k and a profit after tax of £965k.

However, this does not mean McLaren Software is generating substantial SaaS revenues (yet). CTSpace’s Fusion Enterprise product was – like McLaren’s incumbent systems – an on-premise solution as CTSpace offered both on-premise and SaaS-based revenues.

According to McLaren’s chief marketing officer Tim Taylor, the latter is expected to grow; he told me about recent successes in Australia and China where customers had consciously selected the SaaS solution, Fusion Live, for the delivery phase of major projects. He also anticipated continued growth in France, the UK and Germany, and was aiming to build awareness of the SaaS offering in the USA, where McLaren is still best-known for its on-premise EIM applications, particularly in oil & gas and major asset-intensive projects

CAFM Explorer rebrand

CAFM Explorer logoThe home page of the CAFM Explorer website already includes a small McLaren Software logo in the bottom left-hand corner, and I understand that it will gradually take on the livery of the rest of the McLaren business in due course (I also learned that, despite its wide use by other FM software vendors, the abbreviation CAFM is claimed as an FMx trademark – its founder being a pioneer of FM software).

At the same time, McLaren is including CAFM Explorer in its wider plans to base its solutions on a common technology base, and – as mentioned at the time of the acquisition in October – to demonstrate to existing and potential customers that it has a suite of built environment solutions covering the whole project life cycle.

CAFM Explorer already includes some web-based functionality, and this is likely to be expanded during 2013 as McLaren invests in creating a comprehensive hosted FM capability that also supports mobile working.

CAFM Explorer comprises a series of modules, and customers (450 of them – including firms such as BP, ABB, Balfour Beatty Engineering Services and Aer Lingus – are currently spread across 45 countries) get all ten as part of the standard offering. These include dashboard reporting, planned and reactive maintenance, work planning, building and asset registers, room booking, cost control (some integration with in-house ERP and other finance systems), and document management. Like other CAFM applications, the platform draws heavily on AutoCAD roots, with users able to use CAD-based information to interrogate databases about buildings, floors, zones, rooms and equipment and people within those spaces.

Clearly, document management and collaboration will be one area where McLaren will deliver greater sophistication (more support for workflow, for example). However, it will also be expanding CAFM Explorer’s web capabilities and its suitability for mobile devices. PDAs have been supported by CAFM Explorer for some time, but McLaren is looking to create a consistent technology that will enable users to access and interact with data across a range of desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone devices. I was shown some early prototypes of the user interface, and we also touched on integration of private social network tools such as Yammer into the services.

Building information modelling also features in McLaren’s plans for its engineering information management division. It recognises that in some sectors, such as mechanical and electrical engineering of petrochemical facilities or power stations, there are numerous long-time users of on-premise three-dimensional design solutions. Its web and mobile plans also implicitly recognise that these same users and many others will also increasingly want accurate, up-to-date data that can be accessed wherever they happen to be working. And much of this data will also be needed by those who have to manage, operate and maintain a facility throughout its working life.

My view

Through its 2010 acquisition of McLaren, Idox diversified into the private sector, into new areas of software capability and into new geographical markets, a process that it has continued with its CTSpace and FMx purchases. The growing McLaren Software division now has some prestigious customers for its on-premise enterprise solutions, some strong recurring support and maintenance contract revenues, and a network of offices across most of the key markets (plus plans to open further offices in places such as the Middle East and South America). McLaren clearly has ambitious plans to entrench itself in markets where it is already strong  and to grow its footprint in new markets.

The hybrid offering of SaaS and on-premise also provides an easy adoption ‘ramp.’ Customers can opt for SaaS to support the involvement of a geographically dispersed, multi-disciplinary, multi-company planning, design, construction, commissioning and handover process; they can then bring the data and applications in-house – and satisfy governance, regulatory and compliance requirements – when it comes to operation and maintenance of the finished facility.

While McLaren’s strength in heavy engineering and major infrastructure projects is clear, it has less of a track record in SaaS and in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector. Buying CTSpace gave it credibility in both areas; it has already built on its SaaS credentials to launch McLaren Enterprise On-Air (post), and it has the opportunity to build an even stronger AEC offer by incorporating post-construction facilities management support into its portfolio. With five acquisitions in the past year, I would not be surprised if Idox continued along its acquisitive path in 2013 and boosted McLaren’s strengths still further.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/12/meeting-mclaren-talking-fm-and-mobile-in-2013/

Nov 30 2012

Aconex growing revenues again

Aconex reports growing revenues and reduced losses for year to June 2012.

The annual report and accounts (for the year ending 30 June 2012) from Melbourne, Australia-based Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex have been published – albeit with what I have begun to regard as the quadruple-A: the “Annual Aconex Accounts Adjustment.” The headline figures show the business grew its revenues 20% to Au$44.4m (c. £28.9m) from 2011’s (restated) Au$36.9m, while incurring a loss of Au$3.5m (c. £2.3m) compared to 2011’s (restated) $9.8m loss (post).

AAAA

The latest Aconex accounting policy adjustment has pushed the company, again, towards a yet more conservative approach to revenue recognition. It is aligning its financial reporting practices with those of US-based SaaS companies, believing this will – in time – maximise the valuation of its business. Its 2012 financial statements were prepared under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) with several corporate accounting policies amended to suit US Generally Accepted Accounting Policies (GAAP).

Regional performance

The global financial crisis dented Aconex’s performance in previous years, so the 2012 result is encouraging, though heavily dependent upon revenues from Aconex’s domestic market in Australasia, which contributed 50% of total 2012 revenue and increased 32% from 2011.

Revenue from the Americas accounted for 12% of total revenue and grew 70% from the previous year (partly reflecting Aconex’s heavy investment in sales and marketing in north America, and recruitment of some financial and managerial heavy hitters).

Asia revenues grew 7%, contributing 11% of total revenues – Aconex CEO Leigh Jasper picked out China and Malaysia as strong markets when we had a results conference call recently.

However, the “continued fragility of economies” in Europe, the Middle East and Africa saw revenues decline 6%. Last year, Aconex had to write-off revenues from Libya due to the civil war; this year, though, “diversification into Qatar and Saudi Arabia drove 10% sales growth for the Middle East,” building partly on deals that had begun to materialise last year. Meanwhile, the UK and mainland Europe remains “tough,” Leigh said. EMEA now accounts for 26% of total revenues.

While most well-known as an AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) platform, Aconex has also been making inroads into the oil and gas and mining sectors, helping protect the company against the ebbs and flows of the AEC market. This has helped Aconex in Australasia, though Leigh did report a “slow-down in the last six months” in that region. Elsewhere, recent Americas performance had also been been affected by the US presidential elections, but, in the long-term, Leigh expected this region would eventually surpass the ANZ and Asia markets.

Overall, the Aconex order book at 30 June 2012 was up 13% to Au$64.5m (£42m).

Product development

Over the past year, Aconex has invested in various new product lines, and continued to support previous new ventures. Leigh highlighted the company’s development of tools to allow capture of and access to data in the field (something we’d previously discussed; post), while the adoption of building information modelling (BIM) continued to grow, particularly in the UK, US and Australasia, with volumes of BIM data doubling in the past year.

Aconex’s currently Australia-focused e-tendering business, BidContender (post) has continued to grow, and Leigh said they would be looking to expand it beyond Australasia in the next 12 months, with the US and Asia identified as potential markets.

Following the June 2012 acquisition of one-time partner business Grazer (post), Aconex was also looking at expanding its partner network and finding acquisition targets that fitted with its long-term product roadmap.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/aconex-growing-revenues-again/

Nov 28 2012

NEC3 contract management software offer

Have just received a gushing email promotion from NEC Contracts promoting the contract software management capabilities of its licensed content partners, SaaS construction collaboration platform vendors 4Projects and Conject (appointed almost two years ago).

Apparently, “2012 has been a fantastic year” for NEC3 Contract management software from these partners, with “impressive usage and adoption in the UK and abroad” and their NEC tools “used with great success on some high-profile schemes around the world such as the London 2012 Olympic games.”

Aside from the hype, the email offered the chance to get a 10% discount on either NEC3 contract management software service ordered before 31 December.

Construction Computing Awards

Meanwhile, rival contract management software vendor Sypro picked up an award (for best project planning software – not sure that this equates to contract management, but never mind!) at last week’s Construction Computing Awards (post). 4Projects won best collaboration platform for the second year running, while Asite took the award for best document and content management system (news release – added 7 December 2012).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/nec3-contract-management-software-offer/

Nov 28 2012

Chapoo formally launches

Chapoo, formerly Vondle (post), has been formally launched (see news release). The cloud-based project information and collaboration platform provider is offering two Software-as-a-Services: Chapoo Premium aimed mainly at architecture, engineering and construction project teams, and a more limited free service.

  • The Premium service is a project information management and collaboration platform. Like other SaaS collaboration systems, it provides project teams with a single view of the most recent project data and of all documents, with full version control and a strong audit trail. Pricing starts at €1500/year (one project, unlimited users, 5GB storage), with enterprise pricing (unlimited projects and users, 25GB storage) starting at  €5000/year. As an optional feature, Chapoo Premium also offers ‘Live data‘: an easy-to-use data repository that allows users to build forms and tables with simple drag-and-drop wizards, and to connect the database to internal and external data sources
  • The free service enables simple document sharing. Most text, image and office formats, but also CAD drawings, can be viewed and annotated without the requirement to download them and without the need for the authoring software tools.

Erik De Keyser, Chapoo CEO, says:

“With thousands of users in the AEC industry, Chapoo has proven itself as a rock solid cloud solution for project collaboration. With the new REST API and distinctive functionality in the area of data repository, forms, queries and reporting, the platform can now be put to service across different application domains in financial services, government agencies and manufacturing enterprises.”

The paid-for service has established a strong customer base in Belgium and the Netherlands, but is less well-known in other parts of Europe and beyond. Gent, Belgium-based Chapoo (a sister company of Bricsys) says it is looking to expand its market reach through partnerships with consultants and system integrators with specific industry expertise (law firms and government agencies appear to be two targets).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/chapoo-formally-launches/

Nov 22 2012

Bentley ProjectWise to get more ‘cloudy’ with Bentley Connect

I first encountered Bentley ProjectWise when writing a case study about its use by London-based DLG Architects in 1999, and the product has been in my peripheral vision almost ever since. While my main focus over the past decade has been on Software-as-a-Service, I know ProjectWise has been widely used as a locally-hosted solution for AEC document collaboration, particularly on infrastructure projects, and it was exhibited at last week’s COMIT MobiBIM event (post).

One of the Bentley representatives told me ProjectWise is available as a Bentley hosted service (“Online”), but its suite of collaboration servers and services remains most widely deployed in-house (“Onsite”). As part of the Bentley portfolio, it is, of course, well integrated with other Bentley projects, as well as other standard industry applications (Revit, AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, etc), offering a range of different views of data and easy content reuse.

At the COMIT event, the former ProjectWise Navigator (essentially its design viewing, analysis and markup tool – now rebranded Bentley Navigator) seemed to attract a lot of attention, particularly as it was easily demonstrated on an iPad (ProjectWise Explorer and Bentley Navigator are both iPad-specific apps – Android or other OS solutions are still in the pipeline apparently). Reviewers can open a range of 2D files, 3D i-models (Bentley’s proprietary approach to sharing containers of information) and PDFs, and make comments or add mark-ups, which are then automatically synchronised with the files, communicated to other team members and saved as part of the audit trail.

Bentley Connect

Lachmi Khemlani attended Bentley’s recent BE Inspired event in Amsterdam, and heard a business update on ProjectWise (AECbytes article). She reported on the detail within a recent announcement that this “workhorse for worksharing” will soon be supported by a new cloud storage and sharing service:

Bentley will be complementing ProjectWise with a brand-new cloud software service called Bentley Connect, which will provide every Bentley user with an individual “Bentley Connections” space to store files and other data securely and share them easily. This data will also have the benefits of audit trails, versioning, data file transfer, and so on.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/bentley-projectwise-to-get-more-cloudy-with-bentley-connect/

Nov 20 2012

BuildQatarLive2012 update, and HOOPS

Build Qatar LiveWith a week to go until Build Qatar Live 2012 (see post), the latest collaborative openBIM event promoted by London, UK-based construction collaboration technology vendor Asite, ten teams from across the globe have signed up (so far) to test their building information modelling and collaboration capabilities against each other. Observers can also follow the competition and view the 3D designs as they are uploaded live onto Asite. It’s also not too late to enter the event – you can register here for an opportunity to test your BIM skills against the rest of the AEC community.

HOOPS integration

And while on the subject of Asite, the company has announced an integration with US-based Tech Soft 3D whereby the latter’s HOOPS Exchange and Visualize products can be used to create and building information models. Asite CEO says Tony Ryan says:

“Tech Soft 3D was able to work with our software-as-a-service model to help us provide an immersive 3D experience to our cBIM users. … HOOPS Visualize and HOOPS Exchange had the functionality and reliability we needed to ensure the highest level of performance within cBIM.”

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/buildqatarlive2012-update/

Nov 17 2012

COMIT #MobiBIM conference pushes cloud-based data and tools

I attended COMIT‘s latest conference, on BIM and Mobility, at London’s Building Centre on Thursday, and tweeted a lot of the event highlights (my ‘co-tweeter’ Su Butcher helpfully created a great Storify stream where you can see the event unfold). As usual with COMIT events, the conference was a healthy mix of construction people and technology people, and the speakers and their presentations reflected this cross-section of knowledge and experience.

A few things stood out for me. First, the debate about BIM has definitely moved on from a year ago, when many industry professionals were still wondering what BIM was, and why was mobile technology relevant. This year, we had some practical examples of how BIM and mobile devices and applications are being used (augmented reality tools are being deployed by Costain and Network Rail to help visualise model-generated site layouts at London Bridge Station, for example).

Second, concerns about interoperability appear to be diminishing as the industry starts to look at the importance of data (“Big Data” got several mentions during the day), with the Cabinet Office’s David Philp stressing the need for the industry to be good at buying and using data everywhere, and talking about being application agnostic as far as data formats were concerned.

Third, cloud-based access to data and the importance of Software-as-a-Service also got several mentions (along with the usual caveats about connectivity, security, etc). For the techies in the audience, Francis Rabuck (@frabuck) gave a rapid-fire tour of the future, stressed the importance of mobile and big data, citing Pachube (now Cosm) as one example of how machine-generated and machine-readable data will be increasingly ubiquitous, and showing some gadgets and cloud-based mobile developer tools (by coincidence, I yesterday received a useful link to a blog post: 43 Free Cloud Services for Application Developers).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/comit-mobibim-conference-pushes-cloud-based-data-and-tools/

Nov 16 2012

RICS JCT Contract Administrator “no longer commercially viable”

In May 2011, I wrote about RICS Contract Administrator, a web-based service provided by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors for managing JCT contract processes. At the time, the RICS told me take-up of the tool was mostly be small and medium-sized firms as larger firms tended to have other systems, and many users still apparently preferred to print out paper copies of the forms rather than send them electronically.

If you haven’t heard of this before and are keen to try it out, you’d better rush as the service is to be discontinued. No new projects can be created after January 2013. According to an email I received yesterday:

“RICS Contract Administrator has been running for three years, but unfortunately it is no longer commercially viable and we have had to make the difficult decision to close RICS Contract Administrator. RICS Contract Administrator will be closing on 31 July 2013, and you will no longer be able to use it for your projects after this date. … To reduce the risk of having partially completed projects at the closure date, you will no longer be able to start new projects in Contract Administrator from 31 January 2013.

“An archive tool is being created to allow you to export copies of all your past and current projects for further use or record-keeping purposes. You will be notified once this service is available.”

It is not the only RICS web offering to be under-used; as I have written previously (eg: in July 2012), the RICS eTendering service has faced stiff competition from rival services, some integrated with SaaS document collaboration services, and was used just 50 times in the 15 months following its launch.

The RICS Contract Administrator platform also faced competition from many of the same SaaS vendors. While NEC contract administration has been a key battleground, firms such as Asite also offer JCT contract administration as part of a wider suite of services built around document collaboration (post).

Update (2 August 2013): Email from RICS says RICS Contract Administrator will be closing on 31 August 2013 and a tool to export project data is now available at https://www.ricscontractadministrator.com/ and will be available until 31 August.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2012/11/rics-jct-contract-administrator-no-longer-commercially-viable/

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