The holy grail of killer workflows in the building community has shifted considerably over time. Once thought to be CADD, later it was 3D visualizing, which sort of morphed into building information modeling (BIM), and right alongside it, came integrated project delivery.

Even the people who are the greatest advocates of these panaceas sometimes disagree on what’s what, but often that’s because these systems are somewhat speculative. In other words, it’s hard to find someone who has actually used the thing in question.

As if in answer to that conundrum, a new publication from AIA California Council and AIA Integrated Practice Discussion Group takes a look at real-world, completed building projects that used Integrated Project Delivery (IPD).

According to the AIA website, “The projects studied show the successful application of IPD in a variety of building types and scales and in diverse regions of the country.” They also claim that this is the first installment of an ongoing evaluation of the procedure and it will be supplemented in the future.

Curious? We were, too. You can download the publication from the AIA here.

Over the past 18 months, our sister division, RCMS Group, has conducted strategic planning discussions with many of its clients, partners and analysts with the goal of attaining visibility into both specific markets and business concerns.

Given how closely their BIM services dovetail with productivity, efficiency and workflow in their customers’ businesses, RCMS executives have a unique point of view into architectural firms and how they run their businesses.

Through their ongoing study, they uncovered key commonalities and gleaned insights into how successful architectural firms plan on managing the near future and published their findings in a whitepaper available from their website. (Download the white paper here.)

The key strategies described are all driven by the measurement of costs and flexibility applicable to your own business model. These strategies require little investment of capital, but rather an investment of management’s time and consideration. Firms that are employing these strategies have built businesses that can either take advantage of hyper-growth, or significantly reduce their risks during a stalled economy.

RCMS gathers data from  its clients across a wide spectrum of architectural segments, including large government agencies, commercial developers of all kinds, institutional owners and project managers, as well as a healthy portfolio of industry specific architects in healthcare, education, retail, and residential.

The whitepaper (link) boils their findings down to 10 key strategies to help architectural firms not only weather recent economic storms, but position themselves for growth and opportunity when the market recovers.

The 10 Strategies are as follows:

1.    Focusing on core business competency
2.    Understanding the success-drivers to a firm’s cost and operating model
3.    Aligning vendors with costs and service delivery
4.    Shifting capital intensive IT deployments to “on-demand” services
5.    Understanding prospects by project backlog and building type
6.    Partnering for scale and specialty
7.    Attempting to better-understand unresponsive clients
8.    Benchmarking and tracking core productivity metrics
9.    Crafting compensation plans to drive firm goals
10.    Ranking, stacking and cross-training employees

(Download the white paper here.)

RCMS provides three- dimensional modeling and analysis of construction projects on an outsourced basis to AEC clients throughout the industry. Deeply embedded in the practical evolution of BIM, and relied on for expert opinion, RCMS provides a valuable point of view on managing projects and business practices to reduce risk for design and construction firms, and create more efficient and more competitive organizations.

Looking for more in-depth information on how partnering with technology service providers can improve your business? Contact us to learn more!

London has suffered under the ongoing recession along with the rest of the world but it remains a global hub of finance and business for business and projects of all kinds.

Reprographics Warehouse, the ARC division located in the heart of London’s business district, is playing its part, relaying jobs from around the world to far-flung destinations in Europe, Canada, the U.S., China, and many places in between.

Fast, international turnaround often comes by way of a mistake – the file was produced incorrectly by another vendor, a typo was found, as package was lost or the file was corrupt. In cases like these, our team in London locates and fixes the problem on the spot and sends the project on its way.

In other cases, it’s all about speed. In concert with other ARC companies around the world, Reprographics Warehouse has sent files of fine art from London artists to New York galleries, project plans from Las Vegas to Dubai, and promotional flyers from Belgium to Beijing, all in a matter of hours, with no stops at international distribution centers, or delays in customs.

The key to all these globe-trotting documents is ishipdocs™, our “digital shipping” Web application that allows our customers to send documents to hundreds of print partners around the world.

Rather than printing, packaging and shipping via an overnight or international shipping company, we can send your documents close to their final destination before the documents are actually printed, and then deliver locally. The savings in time are dramatic, and we can often cut your shipping costs by half.

If you’re next job needs to get to London – or cross-country, or anywhere else in the world – drop us a line or give us a call about ishipdocs. We’ll show you how we can save you time, money and headaches by shipping digitally, and printing locally.

Shipping work digitally is becoming easier every day, whether it’s around the corner or around the world. Contact us to learn more about how to improve your project distribution practices.

To get more details, click on the links below:

• PlanWell DataBridge is a new data transfer tool being used to synchronize documents and contact lists between PlanWell Enterprise planrooms and Meridian’s Prolog project management tool
• Our Abacus print cost recovery tool recently went through some significant upgrades that can help you capture more reimbursable revenue, or at the very least, manage your printing costs more effectively.
• Sub-Hub, our web-based planroom and bid notification tool also got a lift in several key areas that makes this self-managed construction document management tool even more…well, manageable.
• If your work requires reprographics products and services to be used in far-off places, business in Shanghai just got a lot easier with our new sister company there called Shanghai UNIS Printing Technology.
• ARC, the parent company of more than 40 different reprographic company brands all over North America, also made its first foray into the BIM space acquiring RCMS, an Atlanta-based consultancy practice that creates building information models on an outsourced basis for a variety of purposes and clients, all from two-dimensional plans.

Finally, we’re not the only ones moving and shaking these days. For those of you keeping track of the digital printing market, Canon announced their intention to purchase Océ in the near future, and Océ appears to be embracing the offer. We’ll let you know more about the deal as we learn about it ourselves.

If you use Prolog® or PlanWell Enterprise® to manage your projects, you’re definitely going to be interested in what follows.

Introduced last month, PlanWell DataBridge automates the exchange of construction information between PlanWell Enterprise planrooms and Prolog® from Meridian Systems. PlanWell DataBridge eliminates redundant data entry, automates project updates, and boosts efficiency and communication within construction project teams.

Kumar Wiratunga is our corporate director of technology and, along with our technology team in Silicon Valley, has been working closely with Meridian to make the two applications speak the same language.

He said, “The great thing about synchronizing project data between document management and project management systems is that it eliminates the manual, redundant and error-prone processes that most of our customers use when they manage project management and document management separately. But when a project manager can enter information in one application, and the information is updated in both systems within minutes, they can realize significant increases in productivity.”

PlanWell DataBridge allows Prolog users to:
•    Share common data between applications
•    Synchronize project information, bid packages and contacts
•    Maintain current document sets and contacts
•    Easily start up projects by leveraging indexed data in PlanWell Enterprise.

We’ve heard estimates from some of our customer that they are saving hours, and sometimes days of time in data entry for a given project or project module. These are managers using the new synchronization application on their projects, all without any investment in additional hardware or dedicated infrastructure to run. Data synchronization occurs entirely over an internet connection and is updated dynamically within minutes of data entry.

Like Director of Business Applications at Adolfson & Peterson Construction told us, “In today’s economy, we are required to do more with less. Planwell DataBridge eliminates the manual entry of data into Prolog, allowing our construction teams to be more productive.”

Using Prolog? Using PlanWell? You owe it to yourself to talk to us about how much you can increase your accuracy, reduce redundant effort, and boost productivity with DataBridge. Ask your local representative or contact us today.

Abacus keeps track of printing activity on a network. When a computer user sends a file to a printer on their own network, or to a printer on a WAN, Abacus asks the sender to assign a billing or job code to the print job. The codes are stored and used to enhance cost recovery when billing jobs, among a host of other tracking functions.

The new release of the software enhances user experience through user interface improvements, upgrades to administrative tools, and close integration with imaging equipment from industry leading manufacturers Océ, KIP and others.
Jon Styrlund is the product manager for Abacus and he told us, “The upgrade is seamless from a user perspective. Most of the enhancements improve specific functions without disturbing the workflow of our clients. Instead of having to navigate screens or learn new procedures, most people will simply find it easier to set preferences, configure devices, or edit usage data.”

By way of an example, Jon told us that several of our larger customers who often manage and print hundreds of thousands of documents during a month can now utilize improved grouping, project searching and updating tools within the Abacus Manager, saving a lot of time and reducing costly data entry errors.

If you are a user of reprographic imaging equipment from Océ and KIP, you can now track walk-up printing and copying from a touch-screen device on Océ Plotwave 300’s, TDS450 & TDS700’s, and the full line of KIP IPS devices including the KIP3100 multi-function system, KIP5000, KIP7000 and KIP9000. Billing data from the on-board interface is automatically integrated with tracking information from other devices on the user’s network, and consolidated accounting reports can be generated quickly and easily.

Everyone’s watching costs today, and Abacus can help. If you’re interested to see how it stacks up against other products, or would like to see how you could integrate it into your existing workflow and machines, contact your sales rep, call our product manager Jon Styrlund at 925-949-5100, or visit www.abacuspcr.com.

In mid-October, our parent company, ARC, announced a corporate addition of a highly-respected technology services provider in the building information modeling (BIM) market. Atlanta-based RCMS specializes in using conventional two-dimensional construction drawings to provide three-dimensional modeling and analysis of commercial construction projects on an outsourced basis. The firm focuses on improving business processes for construction professionals in every segment of the AEC industry.

Not sure what BIM is?

It involves the use of specialized software and analytical expertise to represent buildings and building components in three dimensions on a computer screen. BIM users build their projects “virtually” in a computer model prior to actual construction to increase the accuracy and speed of bidding, plan the workflow of a job, project costs and schedules, and identifying conflicts long before they are encountered in the field.

Given the recent adoption of BIM as a requirement for GSA and other government projects, not to mention a growing number of private projects, the need for BIM is growing quickly. But purchasing the software and hardware require to run it, and learning to use the software applications and analytical packages are often major obstacles to its use.

“Using BIM is becoming a necessity in construction” said K.P. Reddy, ARC’s Vice President of BIM Services . “By offering an outsourced BIM solution, we can dramatically reduce costs, while delivering critical decision support data, risk mitigation, and building process improvement that come from using the technology. For a customers who prefer managing project-based costs as opposed to adding overhead and infrastructure to their business, it’s an ideal way to amortize the adoption of BIM.”

Curious to know more about how we might be able to bring BIM to bear on your projects? Ask your sales rep for more information, or contact us here.

We recently made our DataBridge for Prolog technology available to Maryland construction giant Coakley & Williams, a respected, privately owned firm with roots in the Washington Metropolitan region going back to 1926.

The firm’s “Super User” outlined the benefits of DataBridge in a memo she shared with her team members at Coakley & Williams: “(DataBridge) allows the Project Administrator to more effectively track the history of drawing activity (addendums, revisions, etc.); who received what and when,” she wrote. “This could also provide a more impressive ‘As-built’ package for the owner at the end of the project…”

If you would like to bring the power of Prolog and Planwell together for your office, Contact Us and we’ll call to set up a time to talk.

What would you do?  Alert the mail room?  Put the local delivery company on standby and prepare to pay exorbitantly?  Our client wisely chose to have us send their documents via ishipdocs, a digital shipping system which skirts the security and customs lines and gets your documents where they need to go, when they’re needed.

With ishipdocs we were able to send the needed files to Australia with a keystroke, have them printed there and delivered within hours – 36 hours in all from the moment they were sent from Houston to the time they reached their intended destination in Darwin, Australia.

No flight delays, customs checks, exorbitant shipping charges.  Something to consider next time you’re up against a deadline, wouldn’t you agree?  If you feel ishipdocs might be able to help you solve your next shipping crisis, click the ishipdocs link to learn more.

To learn more, click here and we’ll be in touch shortly.

Most shops would print and ship. We did it the other way around – with a new service we call ishipdocs™.

Six orders for a full set of design drawings arrived in our Atlanta offices on a Friday, with a delivery due date for the following Monday. Rather than printing the drawings, boxing them up and shipping them overnight to six different locations, we simply scanned and shipped them – digitally – to our printing facilities closest to the recipients. On Monday morning, the drawings were printed and delivered before the team members finished their first cup of coffee.

No boxes, no labels, no trucks or airplanes, just a huge network of print partners.

In 350 locations worldwide, there’s hardly a square mile on earth we can’t get documents do when you need them. Ask about ishipdocs for your next print distribution.

It’s easy, it’s earth-friendly, and it’s fast.