Jul 04 2006

Aconex background

Want some historical background on Aconex? Read this profile, Global team plays it fast and friendly, from the Sydney Morning Herald. Gentle PR stuff about Leigh Jasper and Rob Phillpot’s university careers, playing squash, reading books, and building a customer service ethos.

There is a reference to the first manifestation of Aconex software (though it’s not mentioned by name, I believe Aconex’s original collaboration platform was based on QA Software products):

The only thing the men would do differently now is keep the technology in-house. "We bought a system off the shelf," says Mr Jasper, "but had to rebuild the platform that the software was built on. We ended up bringing all the technology back in-house. We do it all ourselves now."

(QA has some traction in the UK with its Teambinder product.)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/07/aconex_backgrou/

Jun 30 2006

BuildOnline launches programme management ‘heatmap’ solution

BuildOnline has launched what it claims is "the first ‘heatmap-based’ programme management system". Project managers get a real-time ‘pressure gauge’ to monitor progress across their projects. The system was developed in partnership with BNP Paribas, and is described as an "enterprise-class programme management system … targeted at project managers of mission-critical projects, such as the Wembley Stadium rebuild" (bit late for that!).

It is not the first programme management solution offering such colour-coded maps to the AEC space. By chance, I read the latest AECbytes newsletter this morning, and there is a screengrab of a strikingly similar interface from Deltek’s Vision 4 Visualization feature (see also Deltek website here).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/buildonline_lau/

Jun 30 2006

ASP: threat or friend?

Many IT directors and managers regard Application Service Providers (ASPs), On-demand or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a potential threat to their operations, but there are real benefits to be gained from adopting this mode of service delivery. An AECnews article, Easing IT Burdens with On-Demand Software argues the case well:

"… The initial draw of SaaS was that it gave small and mid-tier organizations access to the types of applications that were usually priced beyond their reach. Costs were spread among a broad user base, and customers with small IT staffs didn’t have to worry about maintaining, updating, and securing these complex applications. …"

The article also gives another benefit – customer participation in R&D:

"…customers all participate in making applications better…. While SaaS vendors offer economies of scale to their users, feedback and customization have end users functioning almost like an informal R&D office for the vendor."

Addressing the core concerns of IT staff, the article continues:

"SaaS’ most important incremental improvement may just be its impact on IT. The most basic IT maintenance and support issues are offloaded to SaaS vendors, who typically automate these processes.

"The CIOs we talk to say that 70-to-80 cents of every dollar spent on IT is spent on maintaining applications…. The on-demand model removes that burden, with the SaaS vendor maintaining applications, while also patching, updating, and securing them.

Additional benefits like routine backups and disaster recovery are also now part of the baseline maintenance performed by the service provider, not separate IT headaches.

SaaS vendors don’t get swamped by these maintenance and support burdens because that’s what they do. It’s their core competency, and unlike previous doomed efforts at outsourcing IT and applications, SaaS vendors are succeeding for two basic reasons: One, they focus on specific applications; and, two, they automate many common IT processes.

But won’t CIOs balk at this intrusion into their world? … The truth is that SaaS helps IT become forward-looking and strategic, rather than being forced into a firefighting mentality where they simply respond to problems."

Now, IT managers can focus on higher-level tasks, such as integrating disparate applications or achieving business goals. … highly skilled employees are no longer slaves to IT. Instead, IT is a tool that they use to achieve business objectives."

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/asp_threat_or_f/

Jun 29 2006

TDOC email howler

In my haste to disseminate good news, I have (very occasionally) sent an email to several contacts but forgotten to use the ‘bcc’ field so that recipients’ email addresses remained confidential – but nothing on this scale. Today, one of my colleagues received an email from a Richard Townsend-Rose at TDOC – the vendor of a Construction Engineering Management Document Control (CEMDC) solution – alerting his many contacts (I estimate around 400 email addresses) to a review of TDOC in Construction Computing magazine. Thanks for the list, Richard!

I didn’t need alerting to the article. It is one of several in the May/June issue relating to information management. Two pages are also devoted to Business Collaborator, and a page to Autodesk Constructware, among other articles which I will get round to reading … eventually….

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/tdoc_email_howl/

Jun 28 2006

Newforma (again), plus AGCxml

I wrote at some length about US AEC focused EDMS vendor Newforma earlier this month. Today, courtesy of AECNewsroom, I see that Newforma Project Center has been adopted by US architectural practice HOK. It will, the article says, help HOK staff “to organize and find project information more efficiently, to share and communicate project documents more quickly and easily, and to reuse and enhance project data in ways that streamline critical work processes.” It will also be integrated with HOK’s existing Deltek Vision financial management system.

The Newforma solution will form part of HOK buildingSMART, “a corporate-wide execution of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) buildingSMART initiative”.

Coincidentally, I read this week (in AEC Cadalyst) that the American Association of General Contractors and the NIBS (National Institute of Building Sciences) is to develop AGCxml: “a set of standard industry schemas for exchanging electronic data among AEC business process software applications in order to increase efficiency and collaboration among facility owners and design and construction professionals”. AGCxml will apparently expand on the work already undertaken by the IAI – as Randall Newton at AECnews.com helpfully explains:

“The new schema, dubbed AGCxml, is being targeted specifically for construction-related business-to-business data such as owner/contractor agreements, change orders, and requests for information. The intended emphasis of AGCxml is not on design data; there are already XML schemas and building information modeling (BIM) initiatives available for design data.”

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/newforma_again/

Jun 28 2006

Fon (2)

Back in February, I wrote about Fon, a Spanish start-up aiming to build a network of wireless broadband users. Today, the BBC reports (Wi-fi pioneers offer cheap router) that Fon plans to sell wi-fi routers for just $5 (£2.75) – but on condition that users agree to share their wireless connections with other Fon users for 12 months.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/fon_2/

Jun 26 2006

Géoportail

After writing last week about Google Maps and other GPS related resources, I read in Wired today that France has launched its own satellite imaging service, Géoportail (however, when I tried to look at where I recently went on holiday, the site was unavailable due to too many users trying to access it). Géoportail has been largely developed by the French-government owned National Geographic Institute, and allows users to zoom in on highly detailed satellite images.

If the French can do this, why can’t the UK government agency, Ordnance Survey show the same kind of online zeal? At the moment, OS charges users to re-use its mapping data, preventing developers coming up with innovative solutions of the kind managed by dedicated Google-hackers. The Guardian newspaper has been chundering on about this for a few weeks now (see latest article), and has launched a campaign to make UK mapping data more freely available – see http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/goportail/

Jun 22 2006

Business Collaborator highlights Harvard OCPM research

Business Collaborator‘s latest press release, entitled Harvard Report Shows UK Leads Way in Benefiting from Online Collaboration, gives a vendor-specific viewpoint on the research undertaken at Harvard University into online collaboration and project management (OCPM) technology (see my previous posts, eg: this one, and the most recent one).

BC claims the research found "UK companies are realising more benefit than their US and Canadian counterparts". This is something of a sweeping generalisation as the Harvard research was based on projects run by only five vendors: BC (the sole UK representative), Constructware (before its acquisition by Autodesk), e-Build.ca, Meridian Systems and Primavera. In my view, this statement would carry more weight if the sample had included more vendors from both sides of the Atlantic, including other major players like BIW Technologies and 4Projects from the UK, and Buzzsaw and Citadon in the US (unfortunately, participation required payment of a substantial sponsorship fee, plus other contributions in time, etc, that I know BIW, and presumably other vendors also, were reluctant to pay).

Where do UK firms realise ‘more benefit’? BC says: "The UK participants lead the way in placing more emphasis on the intangible and quasi-tangible benefits that OCPM technology bring to their organisations rather than merely recognising the efficiency savings in monetary terms." The release focuses on two (no doubt carefully selected, and somewhat atypical) UK client case studies, in which the organisations gained business benefits through standardising, learning from, and improving upon their key processes, capturing knowledge and using it to disseminate best practice on future projects, and re-engineering processes.

I do think the Harvard research project was very valuable, not least for creating a framework for assessing quasi-tangible and intangible benefits. But I think BC’s UK-slanted generalisations are a bit over-the-top – IMHO, the release would have been entitled something like: Harvard Report shows BC clients deliver better business processes, perhaps backed up a statement like "BC clients look beyond cost savings to find real business benefits".

Any way, the debate will move on next month when the NCCTP publishes the results of its market research (I have just received another copy of the Benchmark presentation and a ‘supplementary analysis’ giving additional details; the final report report is still in preparation).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/business_collab-3/

Jun 22 2006

BIM nice but DIM

Lachmi Khemlani’s latest AECbytes newsletter talks about a new abbreviation. A presentation on building information modelling (BIM) at a recent American Institute of Architects conference derogatorily referred to current BIM solutions (eg: Revit, ArchiCAD) as DIM solutions – Drawing Information Modelling. "Their rationale was that these products are being used primarily by architects for drawing production at the moment, and that no one is still doing BIM fully yet…."

(PS: Tim Nice-but-Dim was a character created by Harry Enfield in his cult BBC series Harry Enfield & Chums.)

The conference review also discusses a session on new project delivery models being tested in different parts of the world, "which base the compensation of the project team members on the value of the project rather than its cost, and provide tangible rewards for value creation and effective team collaboration. This is in contrast to most project delivery models currently in use in the US where the compensation is based on cost alone, providing little incentive for team members to put in any extra effort to increase value and reduce costs."

Performance Contracting, Shared Savings and Project Alliance approaches are discussed. From a UK perspective, there is nothing new in any of these delivery models. I recall shared savings being employed on the MOD Andover North Redevelopment project four or five years ago (which used the BIW Information Channel extranet solution), and the descriptions of Australian Project Alliance approaches bears a close resemblance to many partnering initiatives undertaken in the UK since the 1994 Latham Report. The focus on value within the UK AEC market was recently sharpened by the 2005 publication of the BE Valuable report by Richard Saxon (see 24 November 2005 post).

Khemlani concludes:

"Project Alliance seems very promising as a model for other countries to follow…. Decision-making is fast, and all the parties have the incentive to achieve the design goals. Instead of each party trying to only optimize their tasks, there is the collective attitude of "sink or swim together" and "let’s do what is best for the project." … While BIM has not yet been used in any of the Alliance projects, there is a natural co-relation between the two, and they will probably come together in the future."

While a natural connection between BIM and partnering-type approaches may still be ‘in the future’, we have already seen technology employed to support more collaborative approaches to project delivery. On many of the most successful UK projects which have adopted partnering, designers, contractors, suppliers and other project stake-holders also opt to use a collaboration platform to share drawings and drawings and manage processes in a more transparent way; even where there is no formal partnering agreement, many other project teams are also using collaboration systems to share information and are achieving lots of the same benefits.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/bim_nice_but_di/

Jun 22 2006

Constructing Excellence

Asite‘s Nathan Doughty attended the Constructing Excellence Building and Estates Forum meeting in Reading on Tuesday (I normally attend these events, but couldn’t go as my wife is in Italy, leaving me to take/collect kids from school, etc). He apparently found it an interesting day, but gave no news on the Avanti project, which was on the day’s agenda. I’ve asked him if there have been any developments.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/constructing_ex-2/

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