Apr 05 2006

BIW wins Building award (2)

The Building magazine website now has the full list of winners, plus a photo gallery from last night’s Building Awards ceremony, where you can see BIW CEO Colin Smith with Pat Jennings (middle photo in top row, page 1).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/biw_wins_buildi_1/

Apr 05 2006

BIW wins Building award

In front of a 1500-strong audience of the great and good of the UK construction industry, BIW Technologies last night (04 April 2006) walked away with the "Entrepreneur of the Year" award 2006 in the Building Awards (see previous post) – the UK construction industry equivalent to the ‘Oscars’ – see news release.

I entered BIW in the 2005 awards, but while we were shortlisted, we didn’t win the final accolade on the night. But 2006 has been so different…. When the award was introduced, we had no idea of the result (though the ‘BIW’ shouts from other parts of the audience were very encouraging), and it was a complete surprise when BIW was announced as the winner (indeed, it took a stunned but delighted BIW CEO Colin Smith a while to negotiate the long walk from our balcony table to the awards rostrum to receive the award from Northern Ireland football star Pat Jennings). Cue champagne among the BIW staff and guests!!

I have the award in front of me this morning (it’s about 2am British Summer Time), and you can bet I will be showing it off at every opportunity!

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/biw_wins_buildi/

Apr 03 2006

GNER wi-fi

Silicon.com today reports that UK train operator GNER is scheduled to complete its wi-fi roll-out nine months early; ten trains on the East Coast Mainline service are already equipped with the service. Given the cost of most rail journeys, I had hoped that GNER might offer the service free to all passengers (it could make a critical differentiation, if it did), but, according to GNER’s mobile office pages, the service is only free for First Class passengers. Standard Class users will have to pay from £2.95 for 30 minutes, up to £9.95 for a three-hour session.

Presumably other train operators will be following suit (particularly where they face competition from airlines: BAA is rolling out wi-fi in its UK airports – see previous Silicon.com story). In the past fortnight, I have used Virgin to travel up to Manchester (no wi-fi but at least its table seats were equipped with power sockets to plug in my laptop) and Great Western to go to Bristol (no wi-fi, no power socket, and – coming back – crumbs all over the table).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/gner_wifi/

Apr 02 2006

Autodesk completes Constructware purchase

On Friday 31 March, Autodesk announced that it had completed its $46 million acquisition of on-demand software vendor Constructware.

The latter’s website promptly disappeared and you are now redirected to pages about Autodesk Constructware – sorry, make that "Autodesk® Constructware®" as ‘Constructware’ is now another registered trademark of Autodesk Inc. Among a fairly comprehensive re-branding, just about the only things that haven’t been ‘Autodesked’ are some of the old white papers and case studies.

The Autodesk announcement adds little to what we already know about the rationale for the acquisition. It repeats the same things about the two complementary offerings (ie: Constructware was well established among general and sub-contractors and in the public sector among government and education organizations, while Buzzsaw customers were predominantly in home building and the retail and hospitality segments of the commercial real estate market).

Amar Hanspal, vice president of Autodesk Collaborative Solutions says: “With the acquisition of Constructware, Autodesk now has a more robust offering of collaborative project management solutions …." (an admission that Autodesk’s previous offering wasn’t particularly robust, perhaps?).

The news release goes on to say "Autodesk plans to make significant investments in supporting, enhancing and integrating the Constructware products with Autodesk’s solutions, including Buzzsaw, Revit and Civil 3D."

Shares of Autodesk Inc. edged higher in late Friday trading.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/autodesk_comple/

Mar 30 2006

Wi-fi activism

Peter Cochrane’s blog returns to a favourite theme of his and mine: why do some UK hotels charge an arm and a leg for wi-fi access. His recipe:

"…if enough of us whinge and complain, and refuse to stay in hotels that levy absurd charges, we can change the world – a bit at a time. In about 10 years the EU might just catch up with North America …."

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/wifi_activism/

Mar 29 2006

Cyril Sweett on BIW

In January (see Rok set on in-house capability), I commented on Contract Journal’s regular insight into AEC company’s IT practices. This month’s subject is construction consultancy Cyril Sweett (13 offices and 550 staff in the UK; 52 and 1500 globally). On the collaboration question, IT director John Hadji-Michael responded:

"The project collaboration tools we make most use of are A-site [sic], BIW and Cadweb. We are part of the design team on a lot of large construction projects and most of them operate by way of internet-based collaboration technology. The exact tool depends on our role. We are often able to recommend systems to clients that we have already used, as we have been in the IT collaboration territory for 10 years or so. I’d rank Cadweb and BIW as our two favourites."

This use of multiple systems is a pretty common occurance among many consultancy firms in the UK AEC sector – with different clients mandating different teams to use different systems. It would have been interesting to know why Sweett’s favours BIW and Cadweb.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/cyril_sweett_on-2/

Mar 28 2006

“On-demand vendors: do as I say, not as I do”

Phil Wainewright’s lastest post points out an irony in the offerings of many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers:

"… many of the leading names operate their own data centers. This seems somewhat illogical, if not downright hypocritical. On the one hand, they ask their customers to rely on a third party to provide mission-critical business applications. But instead of doing likewise with their own infrastructure, they host in-house."

Thinking about the leading UK construction collaboration technology ("extranet") vendors, some certainly practice what they preach.

  • Top of the list, of course, is my own employer BIW Technologies, which uses managed services provider Attenda to host its application and data;
  • 4Projects outsources its hosting to BT;
  • Causeway Collaboration, when offered on an ASP basis, was, I think, hosted at Globix;
  • most other providers are somewhat opaque about their hosting providers – remember, too (as I described in chapter 4 of my book), there is a world of difference between a managed services provider and an internet services provider (ISP) – even BuildOnline, which proudly trumpets its ‘On-demand’ credentials, gives no clues on its website regarding its hosting provider.
  • Meanwhile, Cadweb would, no doubt, be regarded by Wainewright as one of the "illogical" vendors: it hosts in-house.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/ondemand_vendor/

Mar 28 2006

The BIM difference

Do you subscribe to the AECbytes.com newsletter? You should (here – and it’s free). Some of the articles are tremendously interesting. The latest is a piece by Autodesk’s Jay Bhatt which, in a few paragraphs, gives a good definition of building information modelling (BIM) and positions it alongside other developments such as 3D modelling.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/the_bim_differe/

Mar 27 2006

Harvard conference, March 2006 (5)

Perhaps my final note on the Harvard Conference earlier this month (see previous link)…. I recently received a post-conference ‘thank-you’ email sent by Burcin Becerik to all delegates to the event; the email includes a useful link to the conference presentations and other information. The same link also gives details of how to acquire a copy of the research booklet ("a very limited supply").

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/harvard_confere_2/

Mar 27 2006

Distant Vistas

Last week, it was Microsoft Delays Vista, Again; days later, it’s Office Delayed, Along with Vista. Randall Newton advises Forget About Vista Until 2007, quoting an Australian website which shouts 60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten. His view:

"If you want to take your AEC IT to the next level, my advice is to look at creating stronger ties with Microsoft’s SharePoint technologies and related web services initiatives, and to spend more money on hardware than on software this year. Buying more powerful hardware will help you take full advantage of existing improvements in AEC technology, and helps keep your options open. … certainly don’t be looking to Windows Vista anytime soon."

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/distant_vistas/

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