The paperless project
There's an interesting feature on Innovative Projects in the December 3 issue of McGraw Hill's Engineering News Record magazine. The project profiled in this issue was a shopping mall and hotel development in New York state, where the developer, Cianbro, is challenging its contractors to go Green to the extreme by using 100% biodiesel fuel, recycling up to 97% of construction waste and being paper-free.
Unsurprisingly it was the paper-free part that interested me the most. On this project, drawings are replaced by whiteboards, wall-panel displays and 47-inch desktop monitors showing models of geometry, schedule and cost as well as architectural models and other modelling software. An online document management tool is used and on site paper is being replaced by pen-sensitive tablet PCs.
Although implementing this practice on all projects is still a long way off, it's a great aspiration. In the mean time, we can see projects gradually moving towards being as paper-free as possible. At the moment, most people still want to use a paper drawing out on site for the final build. But reducing the use of hard copies of drawings during the shop drawing review process significantly cuts the printing volume on a project, reducing cost and waste. This is where online document management tools can play a big part - for example, a client recently told us that they'd reduced printing by 80% on their project.
The paperless project was dismissed as a pipedream when collaboration tools first went on the market. Just like the paperless office, it seems we are not quite there yet, but online document management systems do seem to be helping the industry move in the right direction.
Labels: Good practice, Project profiles
