4 principles of document revision management
One of the things we like to use this blog for is to share some of the good practice processes that we've identified through working with clients. These can help projects run better and avoid the cost and time impacts of poor information management.
The control and revision of documents is one area where establishing good procedure between participants can really help a project. Areas to focus on include the numbering, revision and status of documents, the control of transmittals, and the maintenance of a document issue register.
Use of an online document management system can ensure a best practice approach to the generation and management of document registers. We've identified four principles of good revision management that should be agreed between the collaborating parties - whether or not an online collaboration tool is being used.
- The document numbering system should be agreed at the start of the project
Clients may insist on implementing their own document numbering system, or participating organizations may combine to create a new system. Whichever way is chosen it is important to make a clear statement about the system and to ensure all parties are aware of it and use it. - The revision coding system should be agreed as part of the above numbering system
The most common revision systems are based on a numeric (1, 2, 3 ...) or alphabetic sequence (A, B, C ... AA, AB, AC ...). In some cases, numbers are used for revisions up to the 'For Construction' issue of documents, with letters used for revisions from that point on. Alternatively, letters and numbers can be combined, with the sequence reverting to a letter at agreed points in the revision process (A1, A2, A, B1, B2, B, C1...). Some organizations develop more complex coding to reflect their own internal review stages (e.g. A1-01, A1-02, A2-01...). - The revision code must continue sequentially from the first issue of a document through its entire life
This allows all participants, including those not involved in the creation of a document, to understand how versions of documents relate to each other. There can be exceptions to this rule if predefined. For example, the revision code may revert back to A or 1 at the completion of each stage of a project. This is a complicated requirement and requires careful management and quality control. - Revisions must be clearly identified within a document
In the case of a drawing, there will normally be a revision cloud around the area of change, with a revision letter placed inside a triangle attached to the cloud. CAD drawings would have this on a revision cloud layer, with a new layer created for each cloud.
We see these four principles as being essential for effective document revision management. Let us know if there is anything you think should be added to this list.
Labels: Good practice
Different industry, same challenges (and same solution)
An article in Middle East technology publication ITP.net highlights an issue in the oil and gas industry that is proving costly, and yet has a tried and tested solution.
It reports that data storage provider EMC held an Energy Solutions Day in Abu Dhabi in June, during which IT management of oil and gas companies talked about managing growing information stores while minimizing downtime and enabling collaboration.
According to EMC, back-up and recovery of data is a key consideration for oil and gas companies due to the amount of information that is distributed around a number of sites or offices. Staff need to be able to store data securely and cost-effectively. They also need to be able to facilitate collaboration between knowledge workers in exploration and production, process safety, operations, and other areas.
To recap, the challenges are that the energy industry involves:
- Complex working structures involving dispersed, multi-disciplined parties
- The need for team members, across several functions, to be able to access and share information in real-time, even from remote locations
- A requirement to maintain a comprehensive and secure archive of data
- A robust, scalable and cost-effective system for data management that includes disaster recovery
Sound familiar? These are exactly the same factors encountered in construction; and the construction industry has been using collaboration tools to overcome them for much of the past decade.
More specifically, the challenges highlighted above all point towards the need for the energy sector to adopt web-based collaboration tools that are delivered using the SaaS model.
Although the resources and energy sectors are progressive users of IT, they are a few years behind the construction industry in their uptake of online collaboration. The gap may be closing, though - we are beginning to see more engineer-led industries (such as mining, oil and gas) recognize the benefit of implementing these tools.
Labels: Global trends, Technology
Collaboration tool leads to 80% reduction in printing costs
I was talking to a project manager at construction firm Hansen Yuncken who said that, by using an online collaboration tool, his project has reduced its printing costs by 80%.
That is really quite an amazing stat. It was easy for him to calculate because they pay a monthly fee to a print centre, so he simply compared his costs to a similar sized project that wasn't using the technology.
If anyone else has tracked how much document management systems save in printing costs, we'd be very interested to hear what you've found.
Labels: Good practice
Not so Excel-lent: six reasons to use a collaboration tool instead
Labels: Good practice, Technology
Venezuela anyone?
Building, the UK's top construction magazine, recently published an article on the merits of doing business in the world's ten fastest growing construction markets, as ranked by consultancy firm Davis Langdon. It's a fascinating piece, and raised a few eyebrows around the office.
Whereas the obvious Top Ten candidates are there - China, India and Russia as the top three, and the UAE (6th) - there were a few surprises, too. Vietnam (4), Poland (5), Egypt (7) and, most of all, Venezuela making it into tenth spot. Although the tip for companies looking at Venezuela to "Go to Mexico instead" might halt any interested parties!
As well as highlighting new opportunities for construction firms, this report also hints at the massive potential for expanding the use of collaboration tools, especially by linking the head offices of firms based in the UK, Europe and the US with their ventures in new markets.
Labels: Global trends
NCCTP: Flogging a dead standard?
The collaboration providers who are members of UK-based industry group NCCTP met on Wednesday to discuss progress towards an industry-wide technical standard to support data exchange between collaboration technology vendors. This was a follow up meeting to that discussed in Paul Wilkinson's blog post last month. The attendees were Aconex (me), Asite, 4Projects, Business Collaborator, Causeway and Sarcophagus. Cadweb and BIW were not present.
The aim of the meeting was to ensure that all NCCTP members were compliant with the data transfer standard (or, at least that they would be by September 1st). As Paul mentioned, there is a difference of opinion on whether the standard is worth pursuing or not. The meeting also discussed whether the standard should be enhanced and whether we should move to one that uses web services to transfer data.
The original rationale for the standard came about several years ago when the collaboration space was relatively new. Vendors were recently established and, in some cases, not yet financially secure. A common question from potential clients during the sales process was "What happens if you guys go out of business? Can I transfer my data to another provider easily?" We simply do not hear that objection any more and this is due to a number of reasons:
Firstly, the collaboration market has matured, and so has the attitude of clients. They have confidence in the delivery of software as a service (SaaS) and now trust that their data is backed up and secure. (In fact, data is almost always more secure under SaaS than if managed using the client's own IT infrastructure).
Secondly, the leading collaboration providers are now established businesses with strong revenue streams and future order books. Financial viability is no longer a major concern. Now the only question a client may have is whether a provider has the leadership and financial clout to continue to invest in product improvement and platform performance (but that is a separate issue).
Thirdly, many providers have already done scores of data transfers between respective systems - and these transfers have been done predominantly without the use of the technical standard. In fact, one of the key objections by members (including me) is that the standard is a "lowest common denominator" and that the richness of data can be lost when the standard is applied to do the transfer.
The technical standard, taking Aconex as an example, touches only a small proportion of the functional and data set. Even if the NCCTP technical standard was available, many collaboration providers would choose to not use it. Aconex falls into that camp and I know of at least one other provider that has expressed the same view. Rather, we would look more closely at the respective data sets involved and come up with a transfer method that maintains as much of the richness and functional utility as possible. We know that if we used the standard to transfer data from our system to a competitor's and then took that imported data and immediately transferred it back (again using the standard), we would lose a large amount of data and utility in the process.
Finally, the technical standard was specified a number of years ago. Even at that point, it suffered from being a lowest common denominator effect. Fast forward three years and the functional offerings of most of the providers have progressed significantly - leaving the standard even further behind.
Improving the standard to be an all-inclusive and (at the same time) a one-size-fits-all data set would in my view be extremely complicated, difficult and costly. It would be like trying to make a single size, cut and style of jeans that would fit a dozen random people and at the same time make it suit all of their fashion tastes. For this reason, I sense the standard is ultimately doomed and destined for irrelevancy.
So, while the NCCTP has an important role to play in educating the market and in promoting online collaboration within construction, I cannot see the value in diverting development resource from improving our respective functional sets to getting a data transfer standard that gives us a poor cousin of what providers are already doing quite well already.
Labels: Technology
New blogger on the block
I recently came across a new blog called Collaboration Corner that was started a couple of weeks ago by Joe Croser from collaboration technology provider Bentley.
Great to see more and more thought leadership in this space (this post by Paul Wilkinson on his Extranet Evolution blog outlines some of the others) and I thoroughly recommend you check it out. Like Connected, a blog by three of Buzzsaw's managers, it appears that it will often focus on his company's products, but Joe is obviously an enthusiastic advocate of how collaborative solutions can enhance the construction industry and so I look forward to reading his thoughts.
Labels: Global trends
Another paper cut
Following last week's post 'Paper cuts', one of my colleagues who used to be a doc controller sent us his thoughts:
"Design documentation is increasingly being managed on an A3 scale with only the co-ordination drawing being larger than that. This allows for drawings to be viewed more easily on screen for markup purposes - with less contained in each drawing, it is easier to review (a comment from Tiago Neves suggests that interactive surfaces, such as the whiteboards commonly used in schools, can further support this process).
"However, this can lead to an increase in the number of drawings, as CAD systems allow the full document to be broken into reviewable elements.
"Drawings are then 'issued for review' in PDF, so that no changes can be made to the underlying document - apart from mark up on a new layer, and the addition of the reviewer's information for approval purposes.
"You will never, not for long time anyway, do away with hard copy documentation 'on site' as there will always be a requirement for user groups to have the plan in front of them for reference during construction/fabrication of the pre-fab units. The only time that I see this changing is when everyone on site is issued with a hand held viewing device (see comment from Paul Harding of Brookfield Construction) linked to central servers beaming the information to them as required. So, until then, document control can phase into electronic document management with the reference copy being issued to site 'for use'".
Labels: Good practice
Booming Bahrain
Just come back from a trip to the Gulf and, as always, feel inspired after seeing some of the innovative and ambitious developments underway. It's easy to get jaded by the extremes being thrown around, as every project tries to out-do the next one, but the Bahrain World Trade Center is quite unique.
Although the UAE gets most of the headlines, Bahrain is carving out a niche for itself and is well on its way to becoming a tourism and financial hub. The small Kingdom has a disproportionate amount of mega projects on its books such as the Financial Harbour, Riffa Views residential-golf development, the Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Bridge, Reef Island and Health Island (yes, it is what it sounds).
But the World Trade Center is a real stand-out and will probably become the 'icon building' of the country in the same way that Burj Al Arab Hotel is for Dubai. Designed by Atkins, it has two towers, each 240 meters high, with 50 floors. No big deal so far. What makes it different is that it's the first skyscraper in the world to integrate wind turbines - it has three 29m turbines built on bridges between the towers. They aren't just for show either; they provide 15% of the power for the two towers. Unsurprisingly, it's already won several awards for sustainability. In a region that generates a sasquatch-sized carbon footprint, the BWTC will be a positive symbol for Bahrain.
Labels: Global trends, Project profiles
Paper cuts
We had an interesting comment from Emmanuel Netter, a senior figure at French collaboration provider Prosys, regarding Leigh's post 'Counting the cost'. Emmanuel highlighted two factors that would make banishing paper on construction projects a tough challenge: 1) A drawing is generally a large document and so is difficult to review on a screen; and 2) People need to use documents in the field.
I absolutely agree that we will never completely banish paper from this industry (although our post 'The Paperless Project' discusses one project's attempt at this), but we can reduce it where possible.
Paper is often necessary during review. While we have many projects now doing review and mark-up online, many still use paper to do mark-ups (while still tracking the documents electronically after each review step). It also does make sense to do reviews using A3 versions of the document - although one needs to consider the scale and detail of the particular drawing being reviewed. This not only saves paper, but makes scanning the document back into electronic storage much easier.
And, yes, the most current document does need to be physically present on site in most circumstances. But there is no need to print or re-print for archiving or wider distribution. That can be done electronically and is where a lot of the savings lie. One of our projects claimed that, compared to a similar project using traditional methods, they saved 80% of their printing costs. Considering that printing costs on a project can easily be in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, this can be a significant saving over the duration of a project.
Labels: Good practice
