May 05 2011

Buzzsaw Mobile launched

You wait for ages and then two come along at once…. Like London buses, two mobile collaboration applications for iPhone have been launched this week. In the same week that SaaS construction collaboration vendor Aconex launched its Aconex Mobile (post), rival provider Autodesk has announced the release of its Autodesk Buzzsaw Mobile app designed for iPhone and iPad. According to today’s news release, the app provides Buzzsaw users “with more secure, remote access and exchange of building project information,” and “enables users to view DWF files, standard office documents and images, as well as upload project photos to a designated Buzzsaw project site.” Rick Rundell, senior director, AEC strategic technology, Autodesk, says:

“Buzzsaw Mobile helps deliver on our Autodesk BIM 360 vision for ‘anywhere access’ to project data. Together with Autodesk VaultCollaboration AEC software, AutoCAD WS mobile app and Autodesk Navisworks software products, Buzzsaw Mobile helps provide building, infrastructure and plant project teams with a complete and more accurate digital view of their project, with access to information across the project lifecycle from wherever they need it — the office, the web, or the field.”

Given that other competitors such as Asite and Sword-CTSpace have already launched iPhone apps, I wonder if vendors without them (say, 4Projects and BIW – post) might just be feeling they need to catch-up?

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/05/buzzsaw-mobile-launched/

May 04 2011

Aconex Mobile iPhone app now available

A couple of weeks after its Australian launch, the new iPhone app (see 21 March post) from SaaS construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex is officially released in other global markets today, with Aconex Mobile now being extensively promoted to existing (and potential) Aconex users. As previously mentioned (post), the new website is already highlighting its availability, banner ads are being displayed on the log-in pages of the Aconex platform, a newsletter will also be issued, and the company has also produced a YouTube video about its app:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqBNHlqsVc

I talked to Aconex marketing VP Frank Carron about the app yesterday, and he said it was part of a strategy to make the Aconex platform even more widely available and so encourage adoption and use of the core system. “Field management will be an increasingly important area for us,” he predicted, “Putting a self-contained app on a phone also means people can use it when in places – like on an aeroplane or down a mine – where there is no internet access.”

He also said Aconex was keen to maintain a reputation for innovation, while keeping pace with competitors – some of whom have already produced their own iPhone apps. But this wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction to such rival products. The new app had been in development for several months, with Aconex’s User Experience (UX) team undertaking detailed research, including a “cultural probe” to find out how Aconex users would use the app, what information they wanted to access, and what kinds of information they might want to upload from site (the app allows upload of photographs, video and sound files as well as text-based data); research has also been undertaken into what other smartphones are most widely used among Aconex’s user base, and a more refined version for the iPad was also likely, Frank said. In the meantime, the iPhone app has been well-received by early adopters in Aconex’s domestic market, with user feedback consistently rating it 4- or 5-star.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/05/aconex-iphone-app-now-available/

May 03 2011

AEC Docuflow selling Organice in Australia

Organice,  the AEC-oriented toolkit (from Netherlands-based Cadac), that helps construction organisations make better use of Microsoft SharePoint for collaboration purposes now has an Australian reseller.

Sydney-based AEC Docuflow was established last year by Nathan Harman and Steve Nelson to offer document management solutions to small to mid-size architecture, engineering and construction businesses, and uses the Organice suite of engineering document management solutions, hosted by Harman’s company Zettaserve. AEC Docuflow also offers Sharepoint-based client and employee portals and document scanning and digital signature products, still with a focus on the AEC market. No pricing information is given.

I have talked about SharePoint-based construction collaboration a few times in this blog (as well as Cadac’s offering, Sword-CTSpace has a similar offering, as do Bentley – see Projectwise StartPoint post; there was a useful review of Organice in Lachmi Khemlani’s AECbytes in February 2009). However, some five years since I first looked at the potential of the system (post), I have yet to see a SharePoint implementation that can match the versatility and accessibility of a web-native Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration platform, particularly if the vendors license it per-project rather than opting for per-seat licensing which can constrain adoption.

Update (3 May 2011): Cadac Organice has introduced a SharePoint framework for the mining industry (see TenLinks story).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/05/docuflow-selling-organice-in-australia/

May 02 2011

Aconex – new website (and new AEC e-commerce venture?)

Aconex website home pageA couple of tweets over the weekend alerted me to the launch of a new website by Australia-based SaaS construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex.

The updated website draws together some recent Aconex initiatives, including its Blog Central (post) and the Spring 2011 launch of its iPhone application, Aconex Mobile (post), while the site’s main navigation also focuses a little more on the product set (solution -12 ‘project solutions’ are listed – how we help, our difference, etc) than on the company. Overall, I think, the update makes it easier to find information; knowing the importance of industry track record, I also like the arrangement of the projects, case studies and clients in the Aconex in Action section. Pricing is now a main navigation item, but – as with most of the leading vendors – it remains vague; it talks about unlimited users, unlimited storage and unlimited support (I think only in this respect is Aconex “unique”), but you still need to contact Aconex to get indicative costs (unlike UK-based rival Asite, for instance, which tells you how much per user its different solutions will cost).

A new Australian Construction Exchange

I did notice something interesting in the footer: a link to something called BidContender. With some locally based launch partners, Aconex is aiming to create what it describes as “the first online bidding network developed specifically by the Construction Industry for the Construction Industry.” In other words, it appears to be developing an e-tendering portal that will allow contractors to distribute tender documentation and subcontractors to have easy access to that data, plus “Every part of the industry will be able to proactively find and connect with suppliers and new business contacts”.

Of course, we have seen e-tendering functionality delivered by several of the main UK industry collaboration vendors (4Projects, Asite, BIW, Sarcophagus, etc), as well as some stand-alone applications (eg: from RICS – post; AskTobi – post), but these have tended to help tender managers issue information and then manage communications with existing supply chains. BidContender seems to be about creating an online marketplace – something that was repeatedly attempted at the peak of the dot.com boom more than a decade ago, only for initiatives (eg: AECVenture, Arrideo, Mercadium) to founder when the dot.com bubble burst (see recent post) amid widespread construction industry scepticism about the wisdom of online marketplaces, while other ventures quickly focused on providing collaboration technology. Times have, of course, changed, and it seems the company founded 11 years ago as “Australian Construction Exchange” thinks this is something worth trying, and a beta test site is now available to potential users.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/05/aconex-new-website-and-new-aec-e-commerce-venture/

May 01 2011

Ennova and Envision

Earlier this month, Hugh Hofmeister, director of construction technology and services at Brisbane, Australia-based technology start-up Ennova contacted me to talk about Envision, its Software-as-a-Service construction management tool. He told me that a launch customer, Australian engineering and infrastructure contractor Downer EDi, had been using the product for the past year, and Ennova was now launching Envision into the wider market, with a new website, Twitter account and YouTube videos all part of the promotional mix.

http://youtu.be/gx6efSPWWew

I talked via Skype with Hugh and he gave some background to the product, which has drawn on experience in lean thinking, aerospace engineering, construction and digital web media to guide its development.

Mobile collaboration

Essentially, Envision provides an application readily accessed via mobile devices (iPhone and iPad), that uses 3D Google Sketchup and project schedules (eg from Primavera or MS Project) to help users visualise the project they are working on and validate the sequence of activities, providing 4D (3D + time) schedule simulation and status high-lighting. If on-site users notice there is a problem that might cause a delay, they can take a photograph on their phone and then immediately share this with project colleagues. Issues may be flagged as technical queries or notices of delay, and their resolution can be tracked from wherever the individual is working.

Hugh also stressed the product’s novel use of the Kanban (Wikipedia definition) approach, where boards – in this case, screen-based – are used to plan what is going to be done, when and by whom (Envision has a white paper talking about use of Kanban to manage construction work packages). This is linked to the Envision timesheet module so that the impacts of any changes on labour resources are immediately clear. The application is also applying techniques that are common in social media applications – Hugh described how the conversations that might take place about a delay can be presented as a Facebook-style “wall”, encouraging openness and collaboration (though we did discuss how prepared some adversarially-oriented construction project members might be for such transparency and co-operation!).

Integration opportunities

Envision has been developed using Ruby on Rails (Ennova’s website also talks about the company’s expertise in agile/lean and software development consulting), and Hugh said he had already registered as a developer, and completed the first iteration of integration with construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex‘s SaaS platform. Ennova’s strength, he says, is in developing cloud-based mobile tools for construction contractors in the field, not in document collaboration (though Envision does provide some tools to manage correspondence, photographs and contract-related workflows), and he is keen to find existing players in the collaboration market that want to add new functionality to their systems.

From the brief online demonstration that Hugh gave to me, Envision lives up to its strapline of “Simplifying construction management” (echoes of UK SaaS vendor’s Woobius’s branding – post). It is also a timely launch insofar as interest in mobile collaboration has been escalating in recent months (I have talked several times previously about AEC-focused smartphone apps), growing attention is also being paid to building information modelling where a major benefit is visualisation of the construction process, and the application of some social media-style communications may also be prescient.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/05/ennova-and-envision/

Apr 23 2011

New era for ExtranetEvolution.com

ExtranetEvolution.com is now running on a new platform (a self-hosted installation of WordPress, which also supports my other sites, pwcom.co.uk and the pwcom blog). I hope you like the new look and feel of the site(s).

The migration of nearly six years’ worth of blog posts (1100 of them!) has not been easy and there is still some considerable work to do to import images and to fix broken links (while TypePad makes it easy to export the basic content, it is still absurdly difficult to manage the insertion of original images and to reconstitute internal links, and I have learned that some plugins don’t work on a network of multiple WP sites running v3.1.1). I have made a start with ensuring the integrity of the most recent blog posts and will be gradually working my backwards through less recent posts. If you came here looking for something in particular that has now apparently disappeared, let me know and I will do some searching.

I have also taken the opportunity to prune the lists of sites I used to link to (some blogs had been discontinued, others had not been updated for months). If I have omitted your site from the blogroll, please send me a link.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/04/new-era-for-extranetevolution-com/

Apr 20 2011

COINS acquires e-Xact Online

A former client of mine, construction industry software solutions provider COINS, recently acquired e-Xact Online, the product information service for building materials (reports BuildersMerchantsNews.com; see also COINS news release).

e-Xact Online was launched in 1999, originally by the Builders Merchants Federation, with the assistance of a DETR government grant that was aimed at removing costs from the supply chain. Its database includes details of over 165,000 products listed from around 130 major suppliers of building materials, including Travis Perkins, Jewson, Buildbase and many leading independent builders’ merchants. It provides a standardised and rapidly updated means to distribute cost information, images, data sheets and other product-specific information for trade counters, sales offices and web catalogues.

COINS business development director Nigel Cope said the aim was to create “the most comprehensive product information service for the construction sector.” COINS says its software is used by 31% of the top 100 UK construction companies and 33% of the top 30 Irish construction companies, so there is signficant potential demand for materials information from professionals within its contractor customers. And COINS also manages one of the industry’s main e-trading communities, COINS-etc, so there is scope for it to add a pre-purchase electronic information dimension to its existing procurement-to-payment capabilities.

e-commerce and e-collaboration back on the agenda?

Back in the late 1990s, there was a rush by various construction organisations to create e-commerce ventures, but many of these businesses disappeared when the dot.com bubble burst in 2000. I recall (post) how several major contractors clubbed together in competing UK and pan-European construction e-marketplaces such as Arrideo, AECVenture and Mercadium, while Asite and BuildOnline (now part of Sword-CTSPace) both dabbled with the e-commerce idea before focusing on construction collaboration technologies.

e-Xact Online emerged around the same time, but weathered the dot.com fall-out partly due to its focus on product information provision rather than providing a trading hub (in much the same way that collaboration vendors largely survived as they were focused on managing design information and not procurement). And this acquisition has set me thinking that the potential integration of design and procurement processes hypothesised by those early ventures may yet happen.

With growing interest in building information modelling (BIM), easy, early access to detailed materials information in electronic formats will become increasingly important as clients and project teams seek to comply with carbon reduction, legislative and economic requirements. And I think there is also scope for such information to be made available to project teams as they design and specify materials and products using construction collaboration platforms (I foresee architects and other designers perhaps being able to ‘pull’ in materials information and share it as part of their interaction with fellow project team members). Maybe, more than a decade after the “dot.com bust”, we may yet see the emergence of integrated design, procurement and e-commerce.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/04/coins-acquires-e-xact-online/

Apr 19 2011

Explorer acquires two Australian businesses

Vancouver, Canada-based Explorer Software has acquired two more construction software firms, both based in Australia: Adelaide-based CSSP and Adelaide/Sydney-based Kensington Computer Services (KCS), a CSSP reseller. Back in 2007, I blogged about Explorer’s acquisition of UK construction accounting software vendor RedSky IT (formerly Ramesys). These latest deals, for which no value was given, will also cause some ripples in the UK; CSSP has four UK offices, in Bromley, Birmingham, Manchester and Northern Ireland.

Explorer’s new Australian division will apparently operate from offices in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Auckland, with former KCS managing director Marc Hemmett as its local MD. Existing staff will be retained to support clients, said Explorer COO Mike Aspinwall. His President and CEO colleague Jim McFarlane said: “We see Australia as an important component of our global market. Acquiring CSSP has given us a significant footprint in Australia and we look forward to steady growth in this region.”

Explorer has made a dozen acquisitions since 2004, mainly of construction accounting software businesses like RedSky IT and CSSP, with the acquisition’s branding often being gradually superseded by Explorer, and staff encouraged to embrace remote working. RedSky’s experience may be worrying for some CSSP and KCS staff; a comment on a Canadian news site alleges:

“When Explorer acquired Redsky in England they sacked over half the employees and closed all the offices – they said that it gave employees a better work/life balance but it was just a cost cutting excercise.”

The group’s technology portfolio has some document management capabilities (see 2004 document imaging news) though these mainly relate to scanning and storage of invoices and related documents (see Explorer ezDocs); it doesn’t, as far as I can see, yet offer any construction collaboration functionality.

Update (28 April 2011): Here is clarification so far as CSSP in the UK is concerned, courtesy of Colin Rule (technical director, CSSP UK):

CSSP UK is a separate company from the CSSP Australian business, and was not purchased by Explorer Software.

CSSP UK develop, market and support RIPAC (a major player in the QS market used by over 500 clients in the UK and around the world ) and EES (a water industry estimating system in use by many of the large UK water authorities). CSSP UK currently support the Cheops product in the UK on behalf of the CSSP Australian business, and are in negotiations to maintain this relationship with the new owners.

The offices of CSSP UK are in Bromley (head office) and Manchester, Blackpool and Scotland; the Birmingham office has been closed for some time. We have updated our website in the light of the purchase of the Australian company to reflect the change to the offices.

For more information on the CSSP UK product and business, please see the website, or contact either myself, or CSSP UK managing director, Barry Hook for more information.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/04/explorer-acquires-two-australian-businesses/

Apr 15 2011

iSite steady

The latest financial results from retail fit-out specialist Styles & Wood include figures for its property management solutions business, iSite – formerly StoreData (post), but it seems not yet “S&W Intelligence” (post; perhaps the rebrand has been quietly shelved?).

Whatever, iSite continues to supply services to UK high street names such as Tesco, Nationwide and B&Q, and in the year to 31 December 2010, the division had a turnover of £1.242m (slightly up – 1.6% – from £1.222m in 2009), generating a profit of £271k, up from £255k the previous year. The business has been consistently profitable ever since I started monitoring it, though turnover had previously been edging downwards (post), so the small uptick must be welcomed.

The turnover figure suggests a better second-half to 2010; at 30 June (post) turnover was reported as £0.582m, so the final six months saw business revenues of £0.66m – maybe evidence of a slight resurgence in the UK market for collaboration services.

Update (28 April 2011): iSite’s Martin Ward has been in touch on the ‘S&W Intelligence’ point, saying “Intelligence is not actually a Business Unit (as with iSite) merely a service stream. The plan is to have the ability over time to provide further offers under the ‘intelligence’ offer – that may sit outside of iSite.”

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/04/isite-steady/

Apr 13 2011

AutoCAD WS for Android

AutoCAD WS for AndroidIn August 2010 (news release), Autodesk released AutoCAD for Mac and AutoCAD WS, a mobile application aimed at users of Apple-based iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices (since downloaded over one million times). Autodesk’s reach out to mobile users is set to grow still further with the release later this month (20 April) of AutoCAD WS for Android 2.2 or higher (industry analyst firm Gartner recently predicted further growth in Android’s share of the smartphone OS market, accounting for 49 percent of the smartphone market by the end of 2012).

A post on AndroidGuys quotes an Autodesk news release which says the Android app includes “features such as a simplified, intuitive set of viewing, editing, and markup tools so users can work on their designs while on the go”.

It continues:

“One feature unique to Android version of AutoCAD WS is the text annotation tool supports integrated voice commands available on devices running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or above. Now Android users can insert comments and notations on a drawing simply by speaking rather than typing them into the text edit box.” …

Additional feature enhancements include ‘Anywhere Storage’:

“… customers can now connect directly to alternate storage folders from their Android, iPad and iPhone devices, as well as through the AutoCAD WS web application. This currently includes: the Autodesk Buzzsaw service, Dropbox (through DropDAV), Microsoft SharePoint, Windows Server 2008, Box.net, MobileMe, and Egnyte, and other cloud storage providers who support the WebDAV protocol.”

Presumably, Anywhere Storage will also allow AutoCAD WS users to connect to HP’s ePrint & Share cloud storage service, launched in October 2010 (see post). Autodesk Buzzsaw is already covered, but I am still waiting to hear if the ePrint & Share service can also connect to other commonly used AEC collaboration platforms (eg: 4Projects, Asite, BIW, etc).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/04/autocad-ws-for-android/

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