Article from NCEPlus, 18-05-00
USE OF PROJECT
EXTRANETS
by Lisa Russell
E-mail has had some justifiably bad publicity of late with the havoc caused by the Love Bug. So it is a fortuitous time for Arup to be launching a system for improving the communications on a project, including cutting down on the adhoc emails that fly around.
The firm launched Integration on 11 May. The idea is to capture every form of information on the project within an extranet - a closed internet site dedicated to the project and accessible wherever there is internet access.
Integration will allow all members of the project team, wherever they are located, to access project drawings, programmes and reports. Project messaging, memos, requests for information and discussion forum facilities will ensure communication takes place rapidly and transparently.
Arup will host the data for its clients, and the Integration system can be customised to suit the needs of individual projects.
One aspect is to serve as a repository for drawings, project documents, procedures and so on - typically amounting to 5 Giga-byte on a £20M building. But the system will also act as a communications hub, playing an active role in managing the information.
Leading the Integration team is associate director Stuart Cowperthwaite, who points out the difficulties of keeping on top of the mixture of information on a project, coming in on paper, by fax and electronically.
Getting project teams to work better together has of course been of concern to the industry for several years, brought to prominence by the challenges set by the Latham and Egan reports. Latham was ahead of his time, certainly in the use of the internet, believes Cowperthwaite, but now the time is right.
Adoption of specific software has held back the take up, but here the current widespread use of the internet and web browsers can really help as they allow easy access to all information, without being dependent on a specific package. "It's simple enough for a 45 year old to use," is how Cowperthwaite likes to put it.
First and foremost, Arup's intention was to develop something to suit its own way of working. And part of its reasoning is rather altruistic, in much the same way as it makes its Columbus document management software available free - the firm wants to improve the flow of information on projects it is involved in.
But it also sees a business there, and from today is targeting other firms with the service which typically might cost between 0.05% and 0.1% of construction cost on a major scheme. Clients already signed up include CIT Markborough, Stanhope and Sainsbury's Egypt.
An extranet can immediately wrap up some 60% to 70% of the communications in a project into a single medium believes Cowperthwaite. Not only does this make it easier to access the up to date information, but it saves costs. Distribute all the information via the internet, and couriers would be virtually eliminated, with travelling, post and photocopying all reduced too.
Each project will have an administrator from among its own team, who will tailor the structure and decide who can access the various levels of information. This can be cut in many ways - the client or the project director might not want to get bogged down by knowing every decision being considered, or some commercial details might not be for all to see.
Someone without access privileges won't even know a file is there - avoiding information overload. Members of the public could even be given access to a subset of the data. Design competition and tendering information could also be made available through the system.
One thing is sure - the client will have a very good overview of what is going on - which might be a little nerve wracking for everyone else.
Our thanks to NCEplus for their permission to reproduce this article.