Apr 27 2008

Sword Group acquires ViaNovus

The Sword Group – parent of CTSpace, the construction collaboration technology provider that used to be known as BuildOnline and Citadon (see various posts) – has announced (see release) its acquisition (no transaction value given) of US-based ViaNovus and its Paragon suite of construction management products.

Another version of the release adds ViaNovus will be operated as a unit of CTSpace. It continues:

PARAGON Program Management System(TM) is the premier owner focused cost management solution for construction and engineering programs available as Software as a Service (SaaS). The PARAGON solution complements the SWORD’s CTSpace SaaS collaboration and business process management solution. In fact, the two products have already been installed for a common client. Customers of other SWORD products including project document control will no doubt also be excited by the addition of this leading cost management capability to the SWORD portfolio of products.

CTSpace Director, Howard Koenig, stated, “We are pleased to satisfy our clients and prospects requests for an integrated cost management solution. This will accelerate our market growth and adoption of CTSpace.”

I have argued for a couple of years now that document collaboration has become an increasingly commoditised market which offers little scope for differentiation even in the highly specialised architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) market. CTSpace UK rival, BIW Technologies [my employer] has already expanded its portfolio of services to cover additional functions such as project cost control and contract administration, so CTSpace appears to be pursuing a similar strategy, albeit by acquisition rather than internal development of new functionality.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/sword-group-a-1/

Apr 25 2008

Styles & Wood management seek MBO

The management of fit-out contractor Styles & Wood, which includes construction collaboration technology business StoreData, is looking to take the company private via a private equity backed management buy-out (see 16 April Stock Exchange announcement). The 125p-a-share bid for Styles & Wood is on the low side, says an analyst with stockbroker Panmure Gordon in this week’s Contract Journal.

Related posts: StoreData stagnating in 2007 (28 February 2008)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/styles-wood-man/

Apr 24 2008

IT in Construction conference, London

I’m at the 4th annual conference organised by Construction News conferences on IT in Construction – an event that used to be organised in partnership with the IT Construction Forum (now part of Constructing Excellence). There are around 70 delegates from across the industry in the room at the Earl’s Court conference centre in west London, with a fair sprinkling of IT vendor representatives.

0945am BST: Perhaps recognising the previous role of Constructing Excellence, the opening presentation is from CE’s Peter Cunningham, putting IT into context alongside other post-Latham and post-Egan industry changes such as partnering – a collaborative working approach that is slowly growing. He says “frequent informed clients” are today increasingly engaging main contractors at project inception (though there is still a time lag before specialist contractors and suppliers are brought on board). Collaborative working tools (including extranets, mobile IT, even BIM) are becoming part of the array of common processes that are deployed by such teams.

Peter has also talked about the Uniting Construction Information initiative (see post), set for launch shortly, he says.

Looking forward, he has also covered in some detail the ICT and Automation working group of the National Platform – an initiative with which I was involved (see post). He explained that this was a starting point for industry inputs to developing new products and services, and addressing the related cultural issues.

11.00am BST: Interesting descriptions of rapid set-up of IT and telecoms on-site by Neil Pawsey of Jackson Civil Engineering and Zoe Turnbull of Shepherd Construction (both participants in Comit), covering a new, rapidly deployed package (‘Project Cheetah’ – yet to launch) from BT, a competing system called Project Greenbox (a day one, fixed price solution delivered in a Portakabin, from – I think – Private Mobile Networks) and EMS’s i-MO.

12.30pm BST: Tim Cole of Causeway talked about collaboration at the transaction processing or structured data level, using Causeway Tradex as an example.

Simon Lawrence (today of Llewelyn Davies Yeang Architects, but formerly of Chapman Taylor Espana) talked about the sharing of information on a Panama scheme: Los Faros de Panama – a massive residential tower project. The scheme was being designed by a multi-national team involving staff spread around the world, including people from CT, Arup and Gleeds, among others. Having experienced problems with FTP in the past, CT and Arup reviewed different solutions and chose the 4Projects collaboration platform, and then persuaded the client, contractor and others to adopt the system.

So it was a case study of the use of 4Projects collaboration platform – pretty predictable in its outline of benefits, limited need for training, revision control, etc. The capacity of drawing viewing tools was raised as one issue as some in Arup were using ‘See & Share’ – a tool that allowed people to share and mark-up a drawing live online (something that wasn’t available in the viewer used by 4Projects). Statistics: 21,000 uploads, 45,000 downloads, 11 organisations, 95 users, 10,200 drawings, 500 documents.

13.15pm BST: Afternoon session includes Mace’s Rob Owen (one of several industry figures who participated in this week’s CN debate on How can IT work for the industry) looking at BIM, Glyn Jones of Bovis Lend Lease focusing on IT and sustainability, and, finally, Arup’s Darshan Ruikar looking at achieving innovation through use of ICT.

15:15pm BST: Afternoon session has looked at different dimensions (literally in the case of Rob Owen’s discussion of 4D: time, 5D: cost and 6D: FM) in the use of ICT. Kicking things off, Rob looked at use of BIM on projects, illustrated with some fascinating examples of use of modelling on projects, including development of the London 2012 Olympics site, mentioning developments in Europe (PSI Bouw, Stand Inn) and suggesting the UK is lagging behind work in the US and Scandinavia.

Glyn Jones focused on how construction organisations might address sustainability issues (social, economic and environmental). His points about up-skilling staff (eg: document controllers to information managers) seemed to attract most interest (Glyn was also kind enough to credit me as the source of some of the information he used – drawn from the ICT and sustainability paper I wrote late last year for BERR, acknowledged here). Harking back to earlier comments about engaging main contractors at project inception, Glyn also said there was still a danger that such involvement wasn’t whole-hearted with contractors “silo-ed” away from input to the design.

Darshan had a detailed look at the nature of innovation and outlined how ICT needed to be adapted to suit people and processes (not vice versa), particularly when looking at major complex projects – he is involved in Land Securities‘ Ebbsfleet Valley project, a scheme with a 15-25-year time span.

[18.30pm BST: updated to add a few links, tags, etc.]

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/it-in-construct/

Apr 23 2008

BuildOnline France: making heavy losses

I am indebted to occasional correspondent Emmanual Netter (see Une étude intéressante… (deux)) for providing me with some figures on the financial performance of the French arm of construction collaboration technology provider BuildOnline (part of CTSpace since December 2006) for the years 2003 to 2007 inclusive – based on information from the French equivalent of the UK’s Companies House (see http://www.societe.com/societe/buildonline-france-429982945r.html). The figures confirm that BO’s French operation was making substantial losses for most of its existence.

Turnover in 2002 was just €33,000, rising to €319,000 in 2003, €397,000 in 2004 and €398,000 in 2005. It finally topped a million in 2006 reaching €1.26m, before falling back last year to €960,000 (at today’s exchange rate, approximately £760k).

Each year, pre-tax losses topped €200,000, growing in recent years: in 2005, losses amounted to €445,755; in 2006, losses reached €721,350, and in 2007 (after the merger with Citadon), the loss exceeded €1.125m (around £0.9m).

Related post: BuildOnline revisited (4 March 2008); BuildOnline investors nurse losses (12 June 2007)

Update (25 April 2008): Review the comments (from a BO/CTSpace supporter, Emmanuel Netter and myself).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/buildonline-fra/

Apr 22 2008

Incite – update

Two months ago (INCITE = ThinkProject!), I wrote about Australia-based construction collaboration provider Nexus Point and the Incite product. I have just received a helpful email from Sean Kaye, Nexus Point’s managing director, updating me on a few details.

First of all, Nexus Point Solutions never had an agreement of any sort with Baulogis; the minority shareholder in Nexus Point originally was actually AEC/Communications itself. Baulogis is a similar project collaboration vendor to Incite … in Germany, but they also happen to own a majority shareholding in AEC/Communications (now called “think project! Solutions”, … or TPS…). This arrangement came to an end back mid-2007 when TPS ceased to be a shareholder in Nexus Point Solutions and Mr. Boelter has returned to Germany and is no longer involved with Incite.

Secondly, the assessment that “Incite = Think Project” isn’t necessarily correct either. Nexus Point is the exclusive distributor of think project! for ANZ and has certain rights throughout Asia – so effectively we license the technology. The differentiator with Incite is the level of service provided – Incite host on very high-end environments that are custom integrated to fit Incite and provide maximum availability and service to customers. Incite provides 24/7 manned helpdesk services out of Australia, dedicated fixed/leased line access to our data centre facilities for customers with high bandwidth requirements and we offer very extensive consulting services to ensure that projects are engaging with the product to best fit the customer. So, think project! is a software product, Incite is a business that delivers “software as a service”.

We’ve recently established a new custom-built hosted environment in Dubai to go along with our environments in Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne. While I can’t obviously get into the financial details of the business, I can say that Incite is a profitable business and is self-funding all growth from cash and operating expenses. We believe it is imperative that a business like this is self-sustaining and we are in no way interested in repeating the mistakes of the dotcom era.

In the coming months we will be making a number of announcements about the future of Incite and how we are working hard and investing heavily in turning it into more of a “platform” rather than a product.

Collaboration works well in the construction and engineering industry, we now believe it is time to extend that collaboration out into our customers and allow them to more tightly integrate with Incite and utilise many of the features available in ways that people probably don’t envision so clearly today.

So, to clarify matters, Nexus Point Solutions is today a 100% controlled entity of Leighton Holdings (this is confirmed in Leighton’s 2007 financial report) and is a value-added reseller (VAR) of think project!.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/incite-update/

Apr 22 2008

CTSpace – minor update

Further to my February post, the CTSpace website has still not been updated, although there is a good-looking link page from the parent group Sword site, listing CTSpace locations in the US, UK, France, Germany and Austria.

In the meantime, I read here that former CTSpace (and before that Constructware) executive Gary Greenberger has left the business and joined Vela Systems, a developer of mobile software for field administration in the AECO (Architecture-Engineering-Construction-Owners) industry, as vice president of sales (Vela release). I also understand that CTSpace CFO David Lapter is currently transitioning out of that role.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/ctspace-minor/

Apr 20 2008

Getting Won Over

There is a good case study on the use of ‘extranet’ technologies (aka construction collaboration technologies) in the latest issue of UK industry weekly Building magazine. Getting Won Over, by Stephen Kennett, details the experiences of UK-based property developer Hammerson, supported by Gleeds Collaboration Services, in using the collaboration platform from BIW Technologies [my employer].

Hammerson’s previous experiences with project extranets had been ‘patchy’, not least because of people’s resistance to new technology. However, major new mixed-use projects involving multi-national, multi-disciplinary teams could not be supported by using email, so it focused on making a success of the implementation process rather than the technology itself.

Echoing my own previous observations on the subject (here, for instance), Gleeds’ Peter Dampier says: “It’s 20% about the technology and 80% about getting people to use it and getting the processes right”.

I like the use of key performance indicators to gauge how the platform is being used:

“A ‘wall of shame’ is generated of everyone who has a user name and password but hasn’t logged on to the system. At the end of the month those on the “wall” are asked to explain why they aren’t using the system. …

“The next phase will continue to gather information on things such as the number of documents rejected for having the wrong naming format, but it will also be extended to areas such as the length of time needed to approve drawings and submit revisions and changing the status of drawings.”

Gleeds also surveyed users opinions of the system, and the main gripe has been over speed (ie: nothing to do with the software, simply a reflection of many organisations’ inadequate ICT infrastructure):

“The system is totally reliant on the IT infrastructure in the office that is being used,” says Gleeds’ Jasper Singh. “A lot of companies still see email as the main reason for having telecoms, the internet is still seen as secondary and they don’t dedicate enough bandwidth to it.” But armed with the feedback Gleeds is now giving advice to the supply chain on how speed can be improved.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/getting-won-ove/

Apr 20 2008

Asia Pacific SaaS market

 

Springboard Research has provided me with some useful background on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market in Asia and the Pacific Rim in the past (see here and here, for example). News of its latest research was published last week. It says:

Local ISVs and smaller global vendors offering Software-as-a-Service solutions have captured an estimated 54% of the market in the Asia Pacific region during 2006-07…. The rest of the market is dominated by established SaaS vendors, with Salesforce.com and WebEx taking the biggest market share.

Springboard added that local ISVs are expected to emerge as an important force in the Asia Pacific SaaS market as the presence of these vendors will trigger adoption of SaaS among SMBs. These players are expected to play a key role in the region’s competitive landscape as many of them offer compelling niche solutions. …

CRM and collaboration are the largest SaaS application segments by revenue in the Asia Pacific market. …

This underlines just how the SaaS movement has begun to challenge the domination of traditional software vendors, and it is happening in markets around the world.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/asia-pacific-sa/

Apr 20 2008

UK bid-rigging scandal

Before I went on holiday, there was speculation about how many companies would be identified by the UK’s Office of Fair Trading as being involved in construction bid-rigging (see Contract Journal for some background). On Thursday, it was revealed that 112 companies had been accused of rigging thousands of public sector contracts worth billions of pounds, including some well-known names such as Balfour Beatty and Carillion (see Guardian article).

One thing this investigation highlights is the risks associated with lowest price tendering, rather than looking at longer-term partnering arrangements or frameworks, ‘best value’ or ‘whole life costing’ approaches, etc. As UK membership organisation Constructing Excellence argues: “collaborative working is a major part the solution”:

  • Collaborative working and the selection of integrated project teams require more rigour and scrutiny at selection and award stages than traditional, historic approaches of lowest price tendering, which unduly emphasise lowest price in selection without giving enough attention to, for example, capability and capacity.
  • The use of open book accounting, and other commercial techniques of collaborative working, when established at the outset and even during the bid stages, reduce any risk of cover pricing and collusion.
  • One-off clients are arguably more likely to be vulnerable than experienced, regular clients. Past demonstration projects by Constructing Excellence have shown that such one-off clients also benefit from collaborative working, but they need to follow published guidance and the best approach is to engage a client advisor with strong experience of collaborative working.

(While on the subject of Constructing Excellence, I see that a CE employee has just started a blog – one of the first articles concerns the OFT investigation; and, having mentioned the Guardian, I got a very short letter – about a Crewe footballer’s name – published in Saturday’s edition, sent via my smartphone from Italy.)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/uk-bid-rigging/

Apr 15 2008

Extranet Evolution on holiday

 

Wondered why there have been no posts recently? Well, I am in southern Italy for a few days holiday (trying to ignore the incoming emails until I get back).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/extranet-evolut/

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