Jul 05 2012

RICS e-Tendering extends to sub-contracts

After reading a depressing opinion piece by Grant Prior on Construction Enquirer (Contractors need less yacking, more backing), I noticed a news item from yesterday about the RICS eTendering service. The RICS has extended its offering to provide a pay-per-use service for subcontract tenders.

As long-standing readers of this blog may know, RICS eTendering was launched nearly five years ago as a standalone service, immediately facing stiff competition from rival services which were integrated with SaaS document collaboration services. Partly as a result, the RICS service was used just 50 times in the 15 months following its launch (post), with RICS tendering working party chairman Peter Sell forced to defend the under-used solution in February 2009 (post). RICS research later that year confirmed e-tendering was still a minority pursuit, and further businesses began to offer rival services.

For example, SaaS vendor Aconex launched a streamlined tendering solution in June 2010,  soon after Asktobi.com (post), and followed by Darley eTender (post). And, just a few months ago, BIW (now conject) extended its e-tendering services to offer a pre-construction enquiry service (post).

The RICS system is managed by the Building Cost Information Service and it costs contractors £500 to issue up to 10 electronic subcontractor tenders on a single project (£35 will be levied for each additional sub-contractor tender). Peter Sell (Davis Langdon) says this initiative is “forward thinking”, though I can’t really see anything radically new or different from what is already available in the UK market.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/07/rics-e-tendering-extends-to-sub-contracts/

Jul 02 2012

FIDIC – behind the times when it comes to collaboration?

(A guest post by document control manager Edward Surgeon, partly stimulated by my previous coverage of contract change management features on construction collaboration platforms.)

As a document control manager, a big part of my job is to maximise user adoption of our collaboration system across our projects.

This means that my radar is always scanning for anything that might cause people not to use the system. I recently discovered such an example during a FIDIC contract training course I attended.

Most course attendees were contracts people. However, I was more interested in analysing FIDIC from a document management point of view. I wanted to explore the question: how should I/we be tweaking our contracts, document management procedures and collaboration tool configuration to best align with the FIDIC environment?

FIDIC red bookMy first observation was that none of the main FIDIC General Conditions of Contract books we use (Red and Yellow) have been updated since their first editions in 1999.  Not surprisingly, the language used is still very much from the pre-internet paper-based world. One example of this comes from FIDIC Red Book Section 1.8 – Care and Supply of Documents:

…. Unless otherwise stated in the Contract, the Contractor shall supply to the Engineer six copies of each of the Contractor’s Documents.

It turns out that “six copies” is a legacy from the pre-plotter days where that was the maximum number of carbon copies that could be made! This makes sense if you’re living in 1960 when making copies was difficult. Today, however, insisting that the contractor provide six printed sets of all shop drawings is unnecessary. It means there is contractual focus on a redundant hard copy transaction when the focus ought to be on making sure the contractor issues the documents via the collaboration platform.

Then I asked the course facilitator (a FIDIC expert and construction industry veteran) how he expects the increasing use of collaboration tools to influence future editions of FIDIC. To my astonishment, he had not heard of the collaboration vendors I mentioned, and he was completely unfamiliar with the concept of a collaboration tool!

I hope the people at FIDIC are paying more attention to collaboration tools when they write the second editions (whenever that may be).

Meanwhile, am I being unfair to FIDIC? Perhaps FIDIC is being deployed in environments where use of a web-based collaboration technology is difficult? I would also be interested to hear from any vendors who have supported FIDIC processes.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/07/fidic-behind-the-times-when-it-comes-to-collaboration/

Jun 25 2012

Document control takes a vacation?

For a couple of my clients, I have considering the production of various infographics related to the products or services they provide – these are proving popular online as a simple way to summarise various types of data (surveys, system operations, timelines, etc), and good infographics can become quite ‘viral’ on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

In the meantime, I received an infographic from London-based on-premise and SaaS provider of engineering and construction collaboration applications, McLaren Software. Marketing director Tim Taylor tells me they have trying to simply illustrate the value of document control and they came up with this pipeline infographic with “more than a little help” from some McLaren customers. It shows that the value of document control within a major capital project can often be under-estimated – until something goes wrong.

Good to see a vendor trying something a little different, and trying to explain a benefit of their technology quickly and simply. Tim says they may do more….

 

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/06/document-control-takes-a-vacation/

Jun 22 2012

e-Builder launches its own social network

e-Builder, the Florida-based Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration software vendor, has just announced the release of its latest upgrade (e-Builder Enterprise™ 7.13), and e-Builder users “can now join real-time conversations with other users in the new e-Builder Community, the online social network for all e-Builder construction program management professionals.”

The e-Builder Community is the online meeting place for sharing knowledge, discussing ideas, solving issues and recommending new features and capabilities to e-Builder Enterprise. Membership in the e-Builder Community is open to all e-Builder users. Luke Van Santen, with The Metropolitan Council, said “the e-Builder Community is a place I can go to learn more about e-Builder, and also exchange ideas with others on how to improve e-Builder to maximize its functionality, or to get help on specific areas.”

As a keen social media advocate, I have urged collaboration vendors to adopt Web 2.0 approaches in their communications with existing and prospective users. While several vendors started to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other networks as part of their marketing and PR activities, fewer looked at using similar techniques for their end-users, or as part of their application toolset.

UK-based vendor Asite was a notable early exception. It launched its Asite Community three years ago (post), which was slow to start, then faltered, but has been patiently maintained as a  means of engaging with its users, including polls regarding new features. US-based e-Builder rival Meridian Systems launched an online forum in 2009 (post), and Australia-based Aconex also created an Ideas Central feature and user forums. However, many vendors only appear to use Web 2.0 as part of their marketing – Facebook-type “wall” discussions, Twitter-style notifications or location check-ins rarely feature in conversations about future platform functionality, despite their growing popularity in other applications embracing the opportunities for increasingly mobile, real-time collaboration.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/06/e-builder-launches-its-own-social-network/

Jun 20 2012

Construction collaboration vendor news round-up – June 2012

Cadweb launches new website

Founded in 1995, London-based Cadweb still positions itself as the longest-established provider of project extranet services in the UK. It has just launched a new website – mainly a new ‘look and feel’, as most of the written content has hardly changed – while its latest June news release concerns a Diabetes Centre project for Imperial College in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.

Conject appoints new CTO

The Munich-based construction collaboration technology business conject has announced the appointment of a new chief technology officer (CTO). Andrew Wainwright, formerly of Imaginatik plc (a SaaS business that developed its own collaborative platform for innovation), and before that at IBM, will take responsibility for technical strategy, product development and infrastructure on conject’s executive board.

conject CEO Colin Smith said:

“We are delighted Andrew has chosen to join conject. An innovative and strategic thinking IT professional, he has extensive technical knowledge and exactly the experience we need to refine our strategic direction and contribute to the growth of the conject group.”

[Disclosure: I have provided PR and marketing consultancy services to conject, formerly BIW Technologies.]

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/06/construction-collaboration-vendor-news-round-up-june-2012/

Jun 13 2012

QR codes for landscape asset management – HisTREE.net

After writing about ICON and its use of QR codes for asset management in January, I have been contacted by Edmonton, Canada-based Art Maat, who runs two businesses deploying QR codes.

HisTREE.net – as the name implies – is used by suppliers and by landscape, urban forest and parks managers to log details of trees and other plants, plus parks furniture and other ‘hard’ assets (in a video he call it “a Facebook for trees“!). ArcSSET.net is a similar service more focused on mobile asset management in the oil and gas, construction and utilities sectors, and also includes use of RFID technology as well as QR codes.

Art writes:

We have developed a web based asset management product using QR technology for the unique identification and ongoing management of assets in the green, construction, utility and municipal sectors.

We are very near our launch of a full function iOS app as the primary means of asset interaction and mobile data management for literally any asset that requires mobile data collection and realtime retrieval of asset attributes. This includes  task event recording, inspections, GPS locations and document retrieval, web based interaction and reporting, and the ability to share asset data across several users or clients. Currently we are using dedicated Intermec 2D barcode scanners.

We think and have found that what we have created is very ground breaking and innovative in the world of mobile asset management. …

Our product is 100 % designed to accommodate any existing data collection process. This is accomplished by the fact that we have no preexisting menu lists and data management flows.  Using  web based wizards we build and match any data collection process using our web based cloud data base “engine”. …

Art’s businesses aim to simplify data capture, recording and viewing, and offer integration with existing GIS systems, including tools from Autodesk, Bentley, Intergraph, plus Google Earth/Map (below) and OpenStreetMap. The software is delivered on a Software-as-a-Service basis (Art also describes it as Software as a Secure Service), allowing users to interrogate the database through any web-enabled device, including smartphones and tablets.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/06/qr-codes-for-landscape-asset-management-histree-net/

Jun 05 2012

Aconex acquires partner Grazer

Melbourne, Australia-based SaaS construction collaboration specialist Aconex today announced that it had acquired Adelaide-based Grazer, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition – Aconex’s first – was from mid-2011 an Aconex software partner (post), providing digitised operation and maintenance manuals.

I spoke to Aconex CEO and co-founder Lee Jasper and to Chris Dobbyn (general manager, corporate development) in a hastily arranged telephone conference call last week. Lee confirmed that the past 12 months had confirmed to Aconex that there was a real customer demand for Grazer’s services, which complemented Aconex’s core focus on design and construction.

The two companies shared clients before the partnership (HindMarsh, for example – video case study), and Chris said they had since “also been successful with a number of our Tier 1 contractors and owners, across education, health, mining, retail etc.” The intention is now to take Grazer’s technology beyond its core Australasian market and offer the new Aconex service internationally.

A good alignment is vital, Lee said, and Aconex will be looking at other partnerships and alliances which provide evolving, complementary technologies. In October 2011 (post), Aconex announced an international partnership programme including partners in north and south America and Europe.

Aconex will assimilate the 12-strong Grazer business into the main group, it will adopt Aconex branding and form the basis of a new product category within Aconex’s portfolio, I was told. Aconex already has staff based in Adelaide, so it will look to combine its offices.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/06/aconex-acquires-partner-grazer/

May 31 2012

If you really, really don’t want SaaS …

While I am a champion of Software-as-a-Service and I spend a lot of my time looking at SaaS-based solutions for construction collaboration, I appreciate there will always be people for whom keeping things within the company IT infrastructure, or paying once up-front rather than by pay-as-you-go subscription, is preferable. For such people in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector, there are, for example, MS SharePoint-based solutions (eg: Cadac Organice – post), and Union Square’s Workspace (post).

Other on-premise document management solutions are also available, and while not AEC-specific may still be applicable. Last week, for instance, I had a chat with Steve Stevenson of Northamptonshire, UK-based Document Genetics about its infoRouter system. In his words:

infoRouter provides a collaborative document portal which connects information to employees, wherever their location in the world. Whether working in words, pictures, audio, or video, infoRouter can manage any type of document or file including engineering documents such as CAD drawings, change requests, process instructions, etc.

I have highlighted a key phrase. For those involved mainly with internal management of information – say, for facilities management – such a LAN/WAN-based browser-accessed solution might be appropriate, particularly for long-term use. But where, say, a single project involves numerous, geographically dispersed collaborators from multiple organisations, businesses may need to look at extranet-type platforms that enables pan-project team exchange of information for the duration of the project.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/05/if-you-really-really-dont-want-saas/

May 24 2012

Snag List app seeking funding

First Su Butcher tweeted about it, then Construction Enquirer wrote about it, so I had to find out more about the Snag List iPhone app.

The app is being developed by James Crowson of London-based app consultancy Creative Grid and construction project manager Scott Eggleton, and is intended to help users quickly and easily create organised lists of defects and other issues associated with construction projects.

This is not a new idea. I have written before about snagging tools such as SnagR, and SmartBuilder1 is targeting the same market with an Android-based app (post), as is Docia (post). But what potentially may make this app different is its support for voice recognition.

The developers think this will speed up the snagging process, by enabling users to describe the snag instead of typing it or selecting generic descriptions from pre-entered lists as other tools provide, and support will apparently extend to 10 or even 20 languages. But voice recognition support isn’t straightforward, and the developers need to license some third-party tools. In an effort to fund this, they have just launched an appeal to donors to ‘crowd-fund’ the $3,500 cost of the license (similar to the crowd-funding approach Pachube successfully used recently to fund manufacture of its Air Quality Egg sensors – post). Donors will get free downloads of the app once it is available on the Apple Appstore. No great enthusiasm yet, but there are 29 days to go….

Updates (25 June 2012) – The crowd-funding effort fell short, raising just $200. (3 August 2012) – The app becomes available on Apple’s Appstore on 5 August.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/05/snag-list-app-seeking-funding/

May 21 2012

Document Control Essentials

Melbourne-based Aconex has been looking to dominate the Australasian market in more than just provision of SaaS construction collaboration software – it also wants to dominate delivery of document control training. I have written before (December 2010) about its training programme for document controllers, but this now appears to be delivered by a dedicated business, Document Control Essentials (DCE). This has just announced that it has become:

“… the first provider to offer a recognised qualification in document control in the Australian market. The Australian Skills Quality Authority has granted approval to Aegis Aspire, the registered training partner of DCE, to run the Certificate IV in Document Control in a Project Environment course as a vocational qualification.”

The course has apparently now been provided in “over 16” countries since early 2011, and now all participants will be entitled to the qualification directly after completing the course.

Regular readers may recall that in February I blogged about Perth, Western Australia-based neXadyne who had launched what it said were the world’s first accredited training courses for document control.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2012/05/document-control-essentials/

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