Integrated Web-based Collaboration in Design-Build

Collaborative Project Management

Project Collaboration, where the efforts of many coalesce in the creation of one, has been essential to the success of construction since the beginning of time. Well before the Internet was ever contemplated, owners, architects, engineers, general contractors, integrated design-build firms, and subcontractors all exchanged information and completed projects — some efficiently, and some not so efficiently.

Over the past five years, we have seen an increased awareness of the benefits of web-based collaboration in the design-build process. What exactly is web-based collaboration as it relates to project management, and how is it being used to improve efficiency?

Web-based or Internet collaboration uses the latest and greatest Internet-based tools to improve the efficiency, timeliness, accuracy, and accountability of the information exchange process. Web-based collaboration can include any and all project participants, including various internal departments such as architecture, engineering, and construction as is common in design-build firms and external parties such as owners, customers, vendors, subcontractors, finance, bonding, and assurance companies.

It has become increasingly apparent among most project management professionals that making effective use of, and managing, the collaboration process is an increasingly important key to success. Forward-thinking companies that aggressively embrace this technology are working smarter, faster, and better — benefits that translate into enhanced competitiveness and, in many cases, bottom-line savings.

Efficiency, Timeliness, Accuracy, and Accountability

Demand for increasing the speed of project delivery contributes to the risk associated with having poor communications and obsolete or bad information. Recent studies identify poor communications within and between companies as the leading cause of problems encountered in the design and construction process. Web-based, real-time collaborative capability improves the ability to cope with the faster pace of projects today.

Since computers and the Internet can’t do anything that we can’t ultimately do using a pencil, a telephone, and overnight delivery, the benefit derives from doing these things better and faster. Although many systems support integrated e-mail and fax capability, true web-based collaborative capability means that a system is designed so that all project participants, including internal staff and third parties, can work directly on project documents through a web browser interface, in many cases simultaneously. Collaborative systems can improve information exchange beyond basic e-mail and fax in four key areas: efficiency, timeliness, accuracy, and accountability. This reduces project administrative costs, reduces the risk associated with bad or obsolete information, and most importantly sharply reduces miscommunication among project partners and stakeholders.

It is a well established fact that profit fade is greatest in the last 10 to 20 percent of the project cycle. Improved communications and accountability throughout the project life cycle, and especially as the project nears completion, dramatically improves profit retention. For example, project closeout has been routinely reported as an area of difficulty among contractors. It is now possible for project closeout lists (punchlists) to be easily and quickly shared online among the responsible parties. This guarantees that everyone will always be working off the same up-to-date information, without the need to create multiple lists, copy lists, manually update lists, and cut-and-paste selected items so that each party only receives its own items. This vastly improves your control, reduces errors and miscommunications, and reduces time spent managing the process.

While not commonly referred to as collaboration, similar benefits occur by streamlining inter- and intra-company communications within departments and between divisions. Examples range from notifying responsible parties of the approval readiness of documents such as timesheets and vendor invoices, to requesting online collaborative conferences complete with CAD drawing markups, to reviewing owner- or site-generated project change orders.

Technology-embracing project managers are better connected to each project. They have the capacity to manage the huge array of project-related issues without being consumed by the minutia. Equally important, project managers, as well as other project partners (security permitting), are capable of drilling down to source documents whenever issue resolution requires retracing the entire audit trail of events. This is made possible though the use of collaborative software, laptops, wireless technology, and the Internet. Technology that affords project managers the ability to manage more projects with greater efficiency and increases accuracy while reducing risks associated to errors, omissions, and miscommunications.

What makes a Project Management System Collaborative?

To provide true usable collaborative functionality a system must have three very important capabilities:

First, the project management system must be browser-based. Browser delivery allows immediate “zero touch deployment” of applications – an Internet connection, a browser, and a login are all that is required to start communicating. No complicated software installation or networking is required. Although Microsoft Windows-based applications will continue to be an important part of our computing environment, browser-based information delivery has had a profound impact in the past decade. Today wireless jobsites with high tech data gathering and dissemination hardware and software are a competitive reality.

Second, a project management system must have “collaborative capable” security. No one is going to deploy a system if there are questions about potential access to proprietary information. The fairly simple menu-driven access controls that we see in most software simply do not provide the level of “granularity” that is necessary for secure and useful collaboration. Role and nested-role based security that delivers field level control within documents coupled with ease of setup and maintenance is essential. Clearly a security infrastructure that is specifically built from the ground up for collaboration is really necessary to instill the confidence in users that their information is secure — a very necessary component of getting project participants to actually use the system.

Third, a project management system must have routing/workflow capability that is up to the demands of collaborative use. Documents may follow an intricate web of circulation back and forth among many parties, many times, before final disposition of a document occurs. System-supervised serial and parallel routing definitions that adhere to approval/rejection rules must easily manage the huge volume of project related documents. With efficient handling of complicated routings user accountability escalates, lag and response times are reduced, errors and omissions lessen.

Integrated Project Management

Beyond collaboration, there also exists the concept of integrating project management with an organization’s other internal information processing systems. These typically include project and financial accounting, project scheduling, materials management, service-management (all fall under the umbrella of ERP), document control, and, increasingly, document imaging systems.

Should an organization take a “best of breed” approach and purchase the project management system and ERP systems that best meet their needs independently and then interface them? Or, does the “one system” integrated approach work best?

Vendors of project management systems argue that a “best of breed” approach, where consumers can choose the project management and ERP systems that best meet their needs, is the way to go. They claim that since they are focused solely on project management, their project management systems are more robust and mature. Furthermore, they provide open system architecture that, combined with the use of XML, allows data exchange and integration with various ERP systems.

On the other hand, advocates of a single integrated system approach claim that, in order for information systems to deliver competitive advantages through greater efficiency or better access to information, the data in all core systems must be natively integrated. Additionally the cost, complexity, and maintenance of interfacing multi-vendor systems is such that it never really turns out as advertised.

Best in class contractors have realized that optimizing the whole enterprise, not just the individual departments, creates a better-managed, stronger, and more competitive company.

The verdict is still out in this area; however, the good news is that the consumer has many options from which to choose, no matter which strategy works best for his particular organization.

Conclusion

The design-build process has been growing in popularity due to its many inherent efficiencies. New Internet-based collaborative technologies are extending these efficiencies by improving project communications among both the design-build team and other project participants. As these technologies increasingly work their way into the design-build project management process, better and more predictable project outcomes can be realized.

Collaborative Project Management, as the saying goes, “is the journey not the destination.”