Sep 18 2012

Asite heads list of collaboration vendors vying for Construction Computing Awards 2012

The shortlists for the 2012 Construction Computing Awards have been published, and reveal many familiar names vying for “Hammers” across equally familiar ranges of sometimes overlapping categories. Voting for the awards is now open (and will remain open until 8 November), the winners will be announced at a London event on 22 November, and London-based SaaS vendor Asite features in no fewer than ten of the 25 shortlists.

As usual, my eyes are drawn to the Document and Content Management Product and the Collaboration Product of the Year categories (as far as I can see, the first includes a finance management product or two, while the latter is mainly focused on ‘extranet’-type platforms). The first, ten-strong list features:

In the Collaboration category, the nine contenders are:
  • 4Projects – 4Projects extranet (2011 winner)
  • Aconex – Online Collaboration
  • Asite – CBIM
  • Autodesk – Buzzsaw
  • Bentley Systems – Projectwise V8i SELECT Series 4
  • Conject – Project Control (formerly BIW Technologies)*
  • Dome Consulting – Dome Connect
  • Union Square Software – Workspace
  • Unit4 Business Software – Business Collaborator

As you can see, six businesses get two chances to win by featuring in both categories, and the majority of both lists – seven and six respectively – were on the same lists in 2011. Browsing the other categories, I see that:

  • if I’ve counted correctly, Asite is shortlisted for ten awards: “Superbrand of 2012”, “one to watch” company, e-commerce product of the year, BIM product (Asite cBIM), mobile product, project planning product, product of the year, IT project of the year (100+ employee category), company of the year, and Editor’s Choice.
  • 4Projects has also been shortlisted for product of the year, and company of the year
  • Aconex is on the list for e-commerce product of the year
  • MPS Docia is again shortlisted in the “one to watch” product category.
  • Sypro is in the project planning product category (is NEC contract change management project planning?) and is a sponsor of the event – along with Causeway, MPS, RedSky IT, NBS and Nemetschek.

* Conject formally completed its UK name-change from BIW Technologies Ltd at the start of September 2012 when the UK-registered company rebranded to conject Ltd.

[Disclosure: I worked for BIW from 2000 to 2009, and have since undertaken occasional consultancy projects for the company; I have also undertaken projects for 4Projects, Asite, Sypro and Unit4.]

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/09/asite-heads-list-of-collaboration-vendors-vying-for-construction-computing-awards-2012/

Sep 17 2012

Collaboration vendors invite votes, and Eneo pitches in

With London Social Media Week fast approaching, I worked late one night last week sorting out the crowd-sourced nominations for the second running of the Be2Awards, which are being held at London’s Building Centre on the afternoon Wednesday 26 September (register here). As with the first running of the Awards last year, the winners are decided by online voting, and I have started to see some Tweets and emails flying out from some of the contenders to get their supporters to vote for them. The candidates in the best AEC collaboration category, for example, are: 4Projects, Asite, Conject, McLaren’s FusionLive, a proof of concept called BIMClouds, and Eneo. The latter is a new name to me (and perhaps many others).

Ene-who?

Eneo describes itself thus:

Eneo is a web service which facilitates easy, fast and effective document distribution in the construction world, to as many parties as required. Upload your project documents, create recipient groups and keep an overview using the distribution matrix. Using Eneo will save time for both sender and recipient. Distributing and printing of documents has never been easier and more under control.

A closer reading of Eneo’s still-rough-at-the-edges website (see about Eneo), however, revealed that it is a new web service developed by Netherlands-based Océ (today part of the Canon group) for distribution of documents in the AEC industry. It is an industry-specific “in the cloud” web service which makes a virtue of its simplicity and ease of use. For integration with third party systems it has an API (application programming interface), and a plug-in for SharePoint 2010 is also available. And as one might expect from a corporation better known for printers and copiers, “Eneo is linked to a network of professional print business who can fulfill any print requirements promptly.” Eneo provides each project 1GB of data space for all documents as standard. Starter packages for up to five projects and 50 project members cost £125 (see pricing page).

It is therefore another competitor in the AEC file-sharing sector which is promoting its simplicity to potential users (last month, in my post about Xpin, I mentioned three other vendors pitching themselves as low-cost, simple, construction-specific collaboration platforms). I would also list Eneo alongside Océ’s rival reprographic hardware corporation HP which launched its own SaaS-based cloud storage service, ePrint & Share nearly two years ago (post), and which is continuing to market itself to UK users (I wrote about its Android app launch in May 2012, and I have been invited to a forthcoming event at the RIBA in London on Monday 24 September, for example).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/09/constructioncollaboration-vendors-seeking-voters/

Sep 11 2012

NBS Contracts survey mute on contract tools

Opportunity missed, I think, sums up my view of the findings from the the NBS National Construction Contracts and Law Survey 2012, at least so far as construction collaboration technologies are concerned.

I was hoping that, following recent years’ growth in the use of web-based platforms to support project team communications – and contract administration in particular – that the survey (conducted among 1000 UK industry professionals) might have revealed how many projects were using collaboration platforms. Also, it could have shown, within that number, how many were using contract change management applications (such as the officially licensed NEC3 tools provided by 4Projects and conject, and rival systems from vendors such as Sypro, MPS, etc – post).

But the survey is largely mute on the whole area of technology, apart from tendering, where the survey:

“uncovered a wide, but not universal adoption of electronic tendering. Fifty-eight per cent of consultants, 58 per cent of clients and 74 per cent of contractors use electronic tendering to some degree, for at least some of their projects. So, while three-quarters of contractors use electronic tender documents (and so, presumably, are able to deal with electronic documents from all of the construction team), over 40 per cent of consultants and clients are still not using electronic tendering at all.”

At least BIM gets some mentions in the report, and my fellow Constructing Excellence Collaborative Working Champion, Nick Deeming, an architect and partner at Newcastle-based FaulknerBrowns, is hopeful of the changes that may result from wider adoption of BIM:

“BIM will change the way we work, collaborate and contract with each other. … BIM requires us to engage with one another in a different way and in a way that is fundamentally collaborative. At last our industry will evolve from a wasteful, inefficient and cost-focused mind set to an IT enabled and enriched, value added, collaborative environment.”

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/09/nbs-contracts-survey-mute-on-contract-tools/

Sep 04 2012

What’s the best AEC collaboration platform?

What is the best platform for construction collaboration?

I have been asked this question twice this week on Twitter, and the answer is usually, of course, “it depends….” Do you want an on-premise solution, or something hosted by a vendor? Do you want a system that is cheap and simple? Something for a small team, or to support 100s of potential users? Or do you need something to manage complex processes (contract changes, financial issues, etc)? Do you need smartphone or tablet access?

Be2Awards nominations needed

A similar question was posed last year in the built environment social media awards, the Be2Awards, and the answer then was BIW Technologies (today known as conject) – ahead of 4Projects, Asite and Woobius.

I am not sure what answer, if any, there will be this year in the 2012 Be2Awards (post), as so far there have been no nominations in this category (nominations close at midnight, Friday 7 September). So, if you use one of the many platforms I have written about in this blog, perhaps you might think they deserve a nomination….

Mobile developments

Mobile collaboration platforms have also featured in this blog increasingly over the past year or so, so you might want to nominate your favourite mobile application – which are enabling an ever-wide range of AEC activities. Candidates here might include, for example:

  • Aconex – launched an iPhone app in May 2011 (post) and, I understand, have a field app optimised for iPads coming soon.

  • Cadfaster – I reviewed Cadfaster’s BIM/CAD application last December. Tuomas Holma recently showed me how the platform could be fine-tuned to the particular needs of landscape architects and stage lighting managers, and the company now offers CAD storage “in the cloud” (MyCadBox).
  • HisTREE.net – deploying QR codes for landscape asset management (post)
  • Snaglist – defects management on the iPhone (post)
  • OpenBuildings.com – not content with crowd-sourcing and “archiving the world’s built environment” (post), they created Clippings.com, a Pinterest-style architectural and interior design scrapbook service (post).

The Be2Awards event takes place on Wednesday 26 September at the Building Centre in central London, during Social Media Week. Registration for places is now open, and sponsorship opportunities remain.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/09/whats-the-best-aec-collaboration-platform/

Aug 30 2012

iSite revenues slip slightly

The Styles & Wood UK-based IT subsidiary, iSite, which “provides clients with technology based property information solutions that store, manage and communicate critical data relating to their property portfolio and associated property activities,” has seen revenues drop in the first six months of 2012, compared to the same period in 2011.

An interim report from the parent group talks about challenging marketing conditions, but highlights: “Our strategic partnership with Tesco for the provision of iSite web based property related business systems has expanded further and we now provide support on an international basis.”

iSite generated revenues of £0.738m, and a profit of £65k in the six months to 30 June, compared to £0.786m and £186k a year earlier – continuing a squeeze on margins that I noticed when the business reported its 2011 results in April (post). This may just be a blip reflecting the volatility of the current market; the business enjoyed a better second half in 2010 (post), but 2011’s second half revenues were lower than the first.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/08/isite-revenues-slip-slightly/

Aug 28 2012

TeamBinder selected for $8.5bn Sydney mega-project

Artist's impression of North West Rail LinkExtranet Evolution rarely reports project wins by construction collaboration technology vendors but the scale of QA Software’s latest TeamBinder project probably justifies this exception. The application from the North Melbourne, Australia-based vendor has been selected to manage document collaboration on Sydney’s $8.5 billion (c. £5.6bn) North West Rail Link.

The project’s first stage is scheduled for completion in 2015, and will include a 15-kilometre tunnel section between Bella Vista and Epping – the longest and deepest rail tunnel section ever to be built in Australia.

QA’s news release hypes up the win with talk of a “stringent search spanning 24 months” and a “rigorous evaluation of several leading Document Control collaboration solutions”. TeamBinder general manager of sales and marketing Rob Bryant sent me a longer news release which said “several other international products were also considered,” and said TeamBinder was now “the elite platform for such large and complex projects.”

The timing is good for TeamBinder, particularly as it comes just days after start-up Project Collaboration ‘soft-launched’ the rival 4Projects platform into the Australian market with a core team comprised of former TeamBinder employees (see previous post).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/08/teambinder-selected-for-8-5bn-sydney-mega-project/

Aug 27 2012

Project Collaboration launches 4Projects in Australia

Through an email in early May, I got news from Australia featuring a familiar UK name in construction collaboration technology: 4Projects.

Milton Walters, formerly at Aconex and general manager of TeamBinder at QA Software, has formed his own Melbourne-based company, Project Collaboration, to sell the 4Projects solution in the Australasian market. Colleagues pre-sales director Josh King and sales director Michael Tonov also worked with Milton at QA Software.

In addition to Aconex and Teambinder, the Australian construction collaboration sector also includes ProjectCentre (post) and Leighton Holdings’ imploding Incite (post), and my correspondent asked: “Is there room for a fifth player in the Australian project collaboration industry?”

I would add that it’s not just five. McLaren Software (post) is also starting operations in Australia, having appointed Michael Cawsey in December as VP Asia-Pacific [Update – 14 October 2012: Cawsey left Idox/McLaren last month to join Sydney-based Active Navigation], and BIW (now conject) is part of a portfolio of products marketed by Sydney-based Zavanti. Like McLaren, this 4Projects partner will be targeting the booming Australasian energy and natural resources markets as well as construction.

Talking to the Project Collaboration team

projectCollaboration websiteHaving previously exchanged emails with Milton Walters when he first started researching potential UK technology partners, I talked to him in May this year and then chatted via Skype to him, Josh and Michael two weeks ago.

Earlier this year Milton and Josh visited the UK to meet 4Projects and learn more about the company and its application. The UK trip, Milton said, had been vital as it underlined how the 4Projects’ culture and philosophy differed from those of other firms they knew. “The 4Projects executive team, led by Richard Vertigan, is experienced, innovative and has been running a profitable company – these are factors that are important to our target customers in Australia.”

From Josh’s point of view, the 4Projects application also differed from the “mainly project- or silo-focused applications” he knew:

“4Projects fills a gap for businesses which want to manage a portfolio of projects…. It helps companies get a global view of their projects, and the folders-style, hierarchically-based interface is attractive to many users we’ve shown it to.”

Josh also liked the 4Projects workflow engine, and the company’s building information modelling strategy – “while BIM is not a big deal yet in Australia, it’s just a matter of when, not if, and with 4Projects we will be at the forefront of BIM functionality and development.”

As part of a ‘soft launch’ of the business, Project Collaboration has been talking to potential customers, including clients in the mining and natural resources market which is booming in Australia. It is still early days, but Milton said they already had two customers using the 4Projects platform on the Australian east coast. These early successes are allowing them to tailor the 4Projects solutions to the Australasian market, and had also accelerated plans to grow the business (they are currently recruiting – something they hadn’t anticipated doing until early 2013). “Being able to provide a full service – consulting, implementation and support – here in Australia is important, and the calibre of people on our front line is very well regarded,” Michael said.

The 4Projects service to Australian customers will be hosted from the UK for the foreseeable future. “We find people are very comfortable with the whole idea of the cloud,” Josh claimed, “and there has been a lot of surprise at how quick the service is – people see better speed from 4Projects than from some locally based solutions. And we can also stress 4Projects’ ISO27001 accreditation, its built-in redundancy, etc.”

I asked about the competition but Milton didn’t want to talk about other contenders in the Australian SaaS collaboration marketplace: “I’m more excited about the opportunity to grow a new, viable business.” In a year’s time, he hopes the company will have expanded beyond its Melbourne base, talking about offices in two other locations, and perhaps regional customers outside Australia.

4Projects partnership strategy

The establishment of an Australia-based partner to sell, implement and support the 4Projects application (see its news release) is part of the Sunderland, UK-based company’s international strategy to grow partnerships in new regional markets. When I met CEO Richard Vertigan and commercial director Steve Spark earlier this year, they talked about the partnership opportunities for businesses with existing SaaS, AEC or related domain experience. Current partners include:

4Projects is not the only SaaS construction collaboration vendor pursuing such a strategy. Aconex has been pursuing a similar approach with sales, integration and product partners (post), and UK-based rival Asite has various north American partners through the ReproMAX marketing network and the efforts of its distributor SaaS North America.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/08/project-collaboration-launches-4projects-in-australia/

Aug 20 2012

BIM in the field? Help this research…

Through my involvement with UK-based membership organisation COMIT (Construction Opportunities for Mobile IT), I have learned of a joint project it is undertaking with US partner Fiatech, focusing on field reporting via smart mobile devices. The research survey aims to collect information about the software currently being used for the application of BIM (Building Information Modelling) technologies deployed “in the field”. If you can help, please complete the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HF2669X.

Previous work on phase one of this project looked at the hardware available and a report is available here. COMIT say opinions from everyone connected with the construction industry matter, so please spare ten minutes to add your own views.

And don’t forget: COMIT is organising a whole conference on ‘Building Information Mobility’ in London on Thursday 15 November 2012 (post).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/08/bim-in-the-field-help-this-research/

Aug 17 2012

Newforma now embraces cloud

US-based vendor Newforma has done a U-turn on its attitude to SaaS construction collaboration.

Some six years ago (June 2006), I wrote my first Extranet Evolution blog post about Newforma Project Center after reading some provocative statements about the merits of cloud-based construction collaboration solutions from Newforma executives Bob Batcheler and Ian Howell.

Former mindset

Condemning project extranets as “digital landfills” and insisting that “the ASP experience has no positive traction in AEC”, they attempted to justify their network-based system by making what I felt were alarmist and inaccurate statements about project extranets. OK, Newforma’s system may appeal to individual firms needing to share information across multiple offices, but, I argued in a point-by-point rebuttal, many AEC project teams are multi-disciplinary, multi-company, highly fragmented, geographically dispersed and often highly mobile. For them, ‘Cloud’-based Software-as-a-Service tools are a tremendous benefit, and had already achieved high AEC traction – a point also supported at the time by Autodesk (post).

Nonetheless, despite their anti-SaaS attitude, I have monitored Newforma from time to time ever since, noting, for example, how the company continued to rubbish SaaS solutions in an Eppstein Uhen case study (July 2007 post), and its 2009 marketing launch in the UK (August 2009 post).

New mindset

However, it seems Newforma’s adamant anti-cloud attitude has begun to evaporate. An April 2012 white paper, “PIM in the cloud” (available here), by CEO Ian Howell presents:

“A pragmatic approach to project information management which recognizes that information needs to be managed both on-premise and in the cloud.” [emphasis added]

And one possible reason by the company’s U-turn: it was acquiring Denver, Colorado-based Attolist, the developer behind AEC-Sync, a web-based construction collaboration application (9 August 2012 news release). The deal will enable Newforma to offer a hosted solution as well as its existing enterprise solution (which in July 2012 had over 54,000 licensed users in 683 companies across 10 countries) so customers can choose either on-premise or cloud-based technologies. The AEC-Sync web-based collaboration offering will become part of the Newforma Project Information Management Solution under a new name: Newforma Project Cloud.

This puts Newforma on similar ground to UK-based McLaren Software, which – following a November 2012 acquisition by parent company IDOX – absorbed the former CTSpace SaaS solution into its portfolio (post), to provide a dual offering of on-premise and SaaS platforms (see Meeting McLaren, talking SaaS and on-premise).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/08/newforma-now-embraces-cloud/

Aug 17 2012

Nominations open for BE2Awards 2012, including best AEC collaboration platform

Be2AwardsIn January 2011 I wrote about the inaugural Be2awards: the world’s first awards for social media in the built environment (of which I am organiser). These are being held again, and remain distinctly social. Nominations for the BeAwards 2012 (which opened yesterday) are being crowd-sourced, and will be voted upon by the same crowd. The intention is to get a wide spread of nominations and then to encourage shortlisted candidates to mobilise their supporters once online voting begins. The 2012 categories include:

  • Built environment blogger of the Year
  • Best sustainability blog
  • Best AEC social media blog
  • Best use of Twitter
  • Best AEC collaboration platform (in terms of votes, this attracted the keenest interest in 2011 with a shortlist of eight providers, with BIW Technologies – now conject – winning ahead of UK-based rivals 4Projects and Asite.)
  • Best AEC community, network or community application
  • Best use of Web 2.0 for construction products
  • Best location-based AEC application
  • Best ‘internet of things’ application
  • Best mobile application
  • Best virtual or hybrid event
  • Be2 media award
  • Best use of social media in an AEC PR campaign
  • Best use of social media in an AEC marketing campaign
  • Best AEC education and learning project
  • Best charity, third sector use of social media
  • Best AEC use of photo / video

SMW_logo_london_web_wideThe Awards website was relaunched last week, and the nominations (via an online discussion forum) will be open until early September. Online voting will then take place, before the awards are announced at a Be2camp “unawards” event in London on Wednesday 26 September – a date selected to coincide with London Social Media Week.

Held at the Building Centre, the awards event will also include BE2TALKs, a learning event featuring some thought-provoking industry speakers on the interfaces between construction and technology, social media and business.

Throughout the planning and implementation process, we have been keen to show the power of social media in spreading word of the Be2Awards. There is, of course, a Be2Awards blog (with RSS feed), and you can follow @Be2Awards on Twitter. If you are interested in helping, please let me know. For example, you can help by tweeting or blogging about the awards, by sponsoring an award, or by nominating someone for an award (yourself, your company, a client, a blogger, a Twitter feed you enjoy, an application that you can’t do without, etc). Of course, awards are great for marketing and public relations, and there are also two categories for PR and marketing professionals. If you work in these fields, this is your chance to be highlighted for your successful use of social media as part of an AEC industry campaign.

(This is an edited, slightly expanded version of a blog post published earlier this week on my pwcom.co.uk blog.)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/08/nominations-open-for-be2awards-2012-including-best-aec-collaboration-platform/

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