Built on Collaboration

Following on from Leigh's line of thought, I'm currently doing a bit of globetrotting so that I can attend some Aconex member forums. These are held annually - this year in 13 cities - and are a chance to get together with clients and users, discuss future product plans and hear what they are (and aren't!) happy about. They are also an great way to pick up on stories and experiences from projects around the world: the challenges people are facing, the types of projects they're involved in, and so on. Despite spending most of my trip at airports this annual road show is one of the highlights of the year for me.

What struck me most this year was hearing about the scale of some of the commercial and infrastructure developments, and where they are being undertaken. We hear so much about the mega projects of the UAE and China, but some of the developments underway in North Africa and India, in particular, rival anything else in terms of scale and complexity.

It got me thinking about whether this would have been possible even ten years ago. Just how did people manage to control information on the really big projects when most communication was done using paper documents?

Labels: Global trends