Nov 12 2007

4projects boosts profits

UK construction collaboration vendor 4Projects has lodged its annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2007 with Companies House (the figures were also reported by UK trade newspaper Contract Journal). The results relate to the last full financial year before the management buyout of 4Projects Holdings Ltd (see MBO at 4Projects) in July.

4Projects Ltd’s turnover rose 40% to £3.218m (from £2.291m in the year to 31 March 2006), while pre-tax profit grew from £124k to £721k.

According to Contract Journal, the profit figure understates the real story, as the company paid a £720k management charge to a sister company to minimise the group’s exposure to corporation tax: “Effectively, the two can be added together to give an underlying profit figure of £1.4m (previous year: £850,000).”

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/4projects-boost/

Nov 09 2007

Construction Computing Show 2007

Later this month, I will be presenting a 25-minute seminar at 2pm on both days of the Construction Computing Show 2007 at the Emirates Stadium in north London, 21-22 November.

The educational seminar programme is being run by the IT Construction Forum (part of Constructing Excellence) and several of its IT Partners are involved: BIW of course, plus Asite, 4Projects, Union Square, MPS and Comit – all of whom I know – and Cubic Interactive and CADsmart – with whom I am less familiar. But after a quick bit of online research, I learned that:

  1. Cubic Interactive provides intranet-type solutions and has had some success in delivering solutions to architects’ practices (a field which, I think, positions it as something of a competitor to Union Square), and
  2. CADsmart does CAD skills assessment software.

Any way, for the second year running I am down to speak about “Construction Collaboration Technologies” and will be completely updating the ‘Extranet Evolution’ presentation I used at last year’s event – perhaps trying to make it a little more provocative.

The show itself has, according to the website, attracted more than 30 exhibitors. However, some of last year’s exhibitors – notably collaboration technology vendors Business Collaborator and CTSpace (formerly known as BuildOnline) – don’t appear to be returning this year.

Awards

As some readers will know (see Collaboration vendors on awards trail – 2), the Construction Computing Show has an associated awards event. According to an email I have just received, online voting closes on Monday 12 November at 1pm.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/construction-co/

Nov 08 2007

Laiserin’s latest lucid column

My previous post (Integrated Project Delivery – US guide) talks repeatedly about Building Information Modelling (BIM). For readers interested in learning more about BIM as a process – as distinct from a set of technologies – I recommend Jerry Laiserin’s latest AEC Insight Column at Cadalyst (To BIMfinity and beyond!).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/laiserins-lates/

Nov 08 2007

Integrated Project Delivery – US guide

The American Institute of Architects (AIA), with the AIA California Council, has published Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide. This excellent document explains how project teams might move from a traditional approach to project procurement and delivery to a more collaborative, integrated team model. There are similarities with UK initiatives earlier this decade, but this guide also highlights more than any industry document I have previously seen the detailed role for ICT.

IPD – what is it?

The document defines integrated project delivery (IPD) as:

a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction.

IPD principles can be applied to a variety of contractual arrangements and IPD teams can include members well beyond the basic triad of owner, architect, and contractor. In all cases, integrated projects are uniquely distinguished by highly effective collaboration among the owner, the prime designer, and the prime constructor, commencing at early design and continuing through to project handover.

The guide’s contents will therefore be very familiar to many people in the UK who have been involved with teams that have sought to adopt similar approaches in the years following the 1994 Latham and 1998 Egan Reports. Notable initiatives include the OGC’s Successful Delivery Toolkit (Procurement Guide 05: The Integrated Project Team: teamworking and partnering being the highlight) and the Strategic Forum for Construction’s Integration Toolkit – both published in 2003. (The AIA guide quotes the OGC document at some length.)

The ICT angle

So far as construction collaboration technologies are concerned, both toolkits made fairly general recommendations about “shared IT” and “integrated systems” – the Strategic Forum, for example, talked about:

common systems and open information channels for use throughout the IPT for: design and drawings, project planning and resourcing, safety management, value management, cost planning, cross-disciplinary training

The AIA guide has the benefit of being published more than four years later, with technology continuing to advance and with the benefits of new technology becoming ever more apparent. Technology is highlighted as early as the AIA document’s foreword, which contrasts traditional and IPD approaches. With the former, “communicatitons [sic]/technology” is described as “Paper-based, 2 dimensional; analog”; in IPD, it is “Digitally based, virtual; Building Information Modeling (3, 4 and 5 dimensional)“.

The technology theme is then continued in the introduction, touching on the NIST report (see my post Software incompatibility bar to interoperability last month), and forms one of the nine key IPD principles. Under 3.8, Appropriate Technology, it says:

Integrated projects often rely on cutting edge technologies. Technologies are specified at project initiation to maximize functionality, generality and interoperability. Open and interoperable data exchanges based on disciplined and transparent data structures are essential to support IPD. Because open standards best enable communications among all participants, technology that is compliant with open standards is used whenever available.

The following chapter (4), on setting up an integrated project, then goes into some detail about BIM and its role in supporting the IPD team (section 4.1.4); from chapter 5 onwards, while acknowledging that BIM is a tool to support the IPD process, it says “the full potential benefits of both IPD and BIM are achieved only when they are used together. Thus, the IPD phase descriptions… assume the use of BIM.”

I was pleased also that the document explicitly acknowledged the need for other project-related issues to evolve to support the technology, notably insurance (s4.4.3), for example, where it says:

Using BIM and other tools to construct a building virtually in advance of actual construction substantially diminishes the risk of design errors and omissions. … It is now incumbent upon the insurance industry to develop and offer alternative insurance products that align with the project goals and the specific risk allocation terms established among the IPD project participants.

UK advocates of early supply chain involvement (including my colleagues in Constructing Excellence‘s Collaborative Working Champions initiatives) will find strong support for similar ideas in this AIA document – and the guide goes into good level of detail about how BIM could be employed by firms engaged in different roles within the IPD team.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/integrated-proj/

Nov 07 2007

ICT, sustainability and contracts

I met Building sustainability blogger Phil Clark last week for a coffee, and he was good enough to talk about our conversation on Zerochampion. As well as talking about sustainability, the potential contribution of collaboration technologies and the environmental downsides of ICT, we also talked more generally about collaborative working and contracts.

Being involved in Constructing Excellence in recent years, I am well aware of developments of more collaborative forms of contract (see NEC case study in Building, for example, and my post on Trust and the team). As Phil writes, there are some fascinating possibilities if you begin to look at contracts, technology and sustainability.

With some construction industry customers stipulating use of collaboration technologies as part of their terms of appointment of contractors and consultants, there is already an implicit expectation, I think, that teams will generate less paperwork, reduce mistakes and rework and improve individual productivity. All of these can help reduce carbon footprints, but the actual benefits are not always easily quantifiable (how do you estimate the carbon impact of a problem avoided, for instance?). BIM was a topic we talked about in this context, but – as I’ve said before – we are still some way from widespread adoption of BIM across the AEC sector in the UK.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/ict-sustainabil/

Nov 07 2007

World Architecture Festival

It’s always nice to go somewhere warm and sunny when the weather in the UK can be more than a little unpredictable. This is probably why so many UK property people head down to the French Riviera every March for MIPIM. Next year, architects will get the chance to do the same, but in October, when the first World Architecture Festival is held in Barcelona.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/world-architect/

Nov 05 2007

Project Draw

Have you tried Project Draw? No? Well, Autodesk’s new drawing application is available as a free Software-as-a-Service application from Autodesk Labs, and for the occasional graphic it is excellent.

Last week, I had to send a designer an outline of what I wanted by way of a graphic, and – with my freehand drawing getting more illegible by the year – Project Draw offered a quick and easy-to-use alternative. You have to register (free) to save any output, which can be exported in JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/project-draw/

Nov 01 2007

New kids on the blog

I see that Aconex joint MDs Rob Phillpot and Leigh Jasper have just started a blog, Built on Collaboration, in which they will “discuss some good industry practices and, along the way, share some … stories about running a business”. I look forward to reading future posts. Welcome to the blogosphere, lads!

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/11/new-kids-on-the/

Oct 30 2007

CTSpace shifts India operation

CTSpace, the construction collaboration technology vendor formed last year out of the merger of Citadon and BuildOnline, has moved its Pune, India-based software development operation to Symphony Services. CTSpace engineers will become Symphony employees based in Pune.

Symphony “recently completed work on a new user interface to CTSpace’s collaboration solutions for managing documents and business processes, and will now take on responsibility for more complex product integration and R&D efforts”.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/10/ctspace-shifts/

Oct 30 2007

New CFO at Aconex

The Australian reports that construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex has selected Andrew Eddy to be chief financial officer. He was previously finance group general manager at packaging company Amcor, and corporate treasurer at Orica, a global supplier of explosives and blasting technology.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2007/10/new-cfo-at-acon/

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