Jun 05 2006

Asite CEO change

Less than six months ago, in Asite CEO goes permanent, I noted that Asite‘s Gordon Ashworth had been appointed CEO instead of acting CEO. It seems this move wasn’t particularly "permanent", as last week (see Asite announcement or Stock Exchange notice) Ashworth stepped down to be replaced by former sales director and then chief operating officer Tony Ryan, with effect from today.

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

Jun 05 2006

FMI/CMAA survey

Keeping an eye on US developments, I see AECcafe.com talks of the results of a forthcoming survey to be announced at a conference in November. Thinking this sounded interesting, I Googled the survey and found it can be read at http://cmaanet.org/user_images/sixth_owners_survey.pdf.

When talking about project collaboration, it says:

"Only 45% [of owners] had their own project collaboration system in house that they also required the project team to use. Nonetheless, 82% said that the owner should define the procedures for formal communication between parties on the project. While the subject of project collaboration and communication often centers around choosing and using the best project collaboration software, there are other processes and practices that can have a great impact on a project. When we asked owners to tell us which practices they used to improve project collaboration, three items topped the list with nearly the same level of importance, they were:

  • provide a clear contact for decisions and approval (85%),
  • openly share project information (83%), and
  • assemble the project team early and meet frequently (80%).

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

Jun 05 2006

ITCF 2006 conference (3)

Andrew Coombes at Eat Your CAD gives a delegate’s view of proceedings at last month’s ITCF conference. Pleased to see he rated the day sufficiently highly that he would "definitely" go again.

Whether the same view would be shared by some of the NCCTP members is another matter. As the main sponsor bringing together several vendor businesses (including BIW) with extensive experience of events organised by Emap/Construction News, they carefully and diplomatically ensured that the single session devoted to construction collaboration technology was vendor-neutral (with an independent speaker), only to find that another vendor/sponsor (not a main sponsor), Union Square, had two sessions devoted to its customers – both of whom apparently shamelessly plugged Union Square’s products.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/itcf_2006_confe/

May 26 2006

Extranet E-vacation

There will be no posts to the Extranet Evolution for a few days. I am heading down to the Vendee region of France for a week, hoping for better weather and a chance to do some cycling in the sun for a change.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/extranet_evacat-2/

May 26 2006

MK to go wireless – and free!

Silicon.com reports Milton Keynes to be UK’s first wireless city. Wow!

As the project has apparently been in development for around 18 months, I suspect the central MK coffee-shops, hotels and the like that charged patrons for wi-fi access are already aware of the change, so it won’t come as a nasty surprise when that revenue stream suddenly dies. I rarely visit MK, but often whizz through on a train – will I have time to pick up emails when my train stops at the station, I wonder?

Moreover, if you are working on a construction project in the area, this move is likely to support your mobile working needs – depending on the coverage provided by the wireless mesh network, presumably you could log on to your chosen construction collaboration (aka project extranet) solution from anywhere on the construction site – not just from the site cabins.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/mk_to_go_wirele/

May 26 2006

Deltek in UK

An appearance was made at Wednesday’s ITCF conference by a stand from US accounting and ERP software vendor Deltek. I was aware of the business from monitoring various US-based websites, but I hadn’t appreciated that they were also active on the eastern side of the Atlantic (they have a London office and one in Welwyn Garden City). Still, with none of their potential UK competitors (eg: Causeway, COINS) present, perhaps they reckoned this was a good event to build some recognition in the UK.

Their literature, freely distributed around the conference venue, did expose Deltek’s US origins – I am not sure if UK buyers would be particularly swayed by talk of Federal contracts, etc.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/deltek_in_uk/

May 25 2006

NCCTP AEC collaboration market research (2)

While serving on the panel of the NCCTP-sponsored stream session at yesterday’s IT Construction Forum annual conference at the Oval in London, I told the audience that the NCCTP was undertaking some market research into user opinions and experiences of the leading UK ‘extranet’ systems.

The fieldwork, undertaken by independent market research agency Benchmark, is just about complete (well over 250 telephone interviews completed). The NCCTP members will shortly be reviewing the findings and the marketing group will then discuss how best to publicise the research results to the rest of the industry – options include a series of events with partner organisations such as the ITCF and the parent Constructing Excellence organisation (I talked to CE’s Don Ward about this possibility yesterday).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/ncctp_aec_colla-2/

May 25 2006

eTenderer.com achieves RICS compliance (2)

At the ITCF event yesterday, I asked the Sarcophagus guys about the RICS e-tendering compliance process (see 22 May post). It seems that the compliance mainly involved close reading by Sarcophagus of last October’s RICS guidance (as a result of which they tweaked their system in a few places). I didn’t get the impression that the RICS had been pro-active in reviewing the system.

With the Construction Productivity Network, BIW will be contributing to a half-day seminar on e-tendering in London on 29 June. I will be chairing the event, and I hope to get someone from the RICS to attend; Graham Howarth of Sarcophagus told me yesterday he was hoping to come along.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/etenderercom_ac_1/

May 22 2006

eTenderer.com achieves RICS compliance

I notice from the latest news release on the website of UK construction collaboration technology vendor, Sarcophagus, that its online procurement solution, eTenderer, has been updated to be the first product of its type to comply with the RICS e-tendering guidelines. Version 2.0 will apparently be launched be publicly launched at the ITCF (IT Construction Forum) event on 24 May. "This new version has been carefully designed and rigorously tested, following consultations with the RICS, and existing blue chip clients."

In RICS e-tendering guidance note: a review, I reviewed the RICS guidelines soon after they were published in October 2005, but there was little or no guidance on product compliance per se (maybe the RICS has since published additional guidelines?). I have just had another skim through the document and there are a few recommendations (eg: in Ch.3 "Security": consider the use of the CITE standard; it also talks about digital signatures, and encryption/SSL; Ch.4 talks about the tender structure and file/document naming conventions, etc), but the document otherwise tends to leave it up to the project team to determine the suitability of their chosen tender management platform.

At the ITCF event on Wednesday, I will ask Sarcophagus for more details on their RICS compliance process.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/etenderercom_ac/

May 22 2006

ProjectWise StartPoint

At AECnews.com, Randall Newton – en route to the Bentley BE conference – briefly mentions Bentley’s new product (see my 19 May post), adding:

My old buddy, Joe Croser, formerly a UK architectural consultant and now a Bentley employee, thinks it “bridges a very important gap in the market.” I’ll take a look and see if I agree.

As I wrote last week, the objective seems to be to give users from smaller organisations a simpler and cheaper way to start using Bentley collaboration tools. If the intention is simply to fill a gap, then StartPoint will doubtless find a market among SME organisations which want to collaborate better while remaining loyal to Bentley, but for whom ProjectWise was to expensive and/or complex. Will the experience then prompt them to upgrade to ProjectWise? I’m not sure. Bentley will probably earn some decent revenues from StartPoint, but once it is installed and used, will many SMEs want to invest again to install, configure, get trained in and familiarise themselves with a more complex and expensive solution? From a slightly different perspective, there may be organisations considering the full ProjectWise solution. StartPoint could appear simpler and cheaper. Bentley will get the StartPoint sale, but could miss out on the higher revenues associated with ProjectWise (I think this is called "cannibalisation of revenues" if I remember my marketing correctly).

It is interesting that both major CAD vendors, Autodesk and Bentley, now have two collaboration products of differing levels of complexity and cost. Bentley has ProjectWise and has added ProjectWise StartPoint, while Autodesk had Buzzsaw and has added Constructware. In both instances, the company has sought to extend their web functionality: Bentley’s partnership with Microsoft will see it use more .NET web services; Autodesk partly justified its Constructware acquisition earlier this year on the strength of the latter’s ASP credentials (see my Construction Consolidation (contd) post in February).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/05/projectwise_sta-2/

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