Welcome to Bob’s world

Today’s young construction professionals like Bob Leung envision a future in which project inefficiencies are swept aside in a tide of IT innovation. Elaine Knutt reports. Photographs by James Bolton.

Today’s touch screen smartphones pack the processing power of yesterday’s laptops, so surely they offer construction more than just email and entertainment? That thought inspired architect Bob Leung, one of the entrepreneurs behind online collaboration company Woobius, to develop an “app” for the industry’s iPhone generation.

With WoobiusEye, you can take a photo on site and send it via your smartphone direct to the screens of multiple team members. Highlight an issue on the touch-sensitive screen with a stylus or finger, and the same mark will instantly appear on the laptops of your distributed team.

For site managers struggling to deal with a structure/services clash, or asking how exactly to lap the waterproofing, the communications power in their pocket will allow simultaneous information sharing, rather than the “asynchronous” communication of email. And if you’ve ever been caught up in the paper chase of post-completion snagging, WoobiusEye will also let you tap room-by-room information into your smartphone, from where it will be transferred directly onto the Woobius project database.

So it’s hardly surprising that 60 companies in the sector, among them several national contractors, have registered interest in the beta-version of the product. “It’s obvious, but no one else has done it,” says Leung, who has worked for Make and Foster + Partners. “It fits in with what we do anyway. If we’re explaining something technical, we automatically use pointing and gesture.”

Leung hopes that WoobiusEye will become an example of the “Google approach” – a young start-up creating a product the industry actually needs, then letting its usefulness and simplicity convert the market in a way that no marketing campaign can achieve.

It’s also an example of how construction IT might adopt the ideas and interfaces that have defined the Web 2.0 era: Twitter and Facebook, smartphones and blogs. We’re already updating our contacts simultaneously on social networking sites, so why are some professional project collaboration sites so complex they require dedicated staff and special training?

Skype has brought video conferencing to every laptop, so why are we still booking video conferencing suites? By integrating the technologies and tools we all use in our everyday lives, construction computing could become more efficient, more accessible – and even more fun.

IT nirvana

It sounds like the Great Leap Forward the industry has been waiting for, but one key question is whether it will actually take us closer to the construction IT nirvana of BIM (Building Information Modelling). This is generally seen as a client- or contractor-led shared online project environment, using pre-agreed modelling and management software tools that know how to talk to each other. But rather than BIM being imposed by dictat from the top of the supply chain, Leung believes the industry can build “open-source” BIM from the ground up.

“BIM is a great idea, but it isn’t effective because it isn’t easy to establish a strict supply chain, it’s a constantly moving target,” he argues. “But Woobius could collaborate with other collaboration tools [such as BIW or Asite] as a more united system, in keeping with web 2.0 principles, and then other BIM tools can be used on top. We’ve got to start at the lowest common denominator, and raise it. If you try to enforce a system that makes it too complicated, then people will circumvent it. So we need to make it utterly simple,” he adds.

As the industry collectively tries to squeeze more output from fewer resources, the promise held out by BIM has never looked so attractive. Championed a decade ago by arch-integrator Sir John Egan, the idea is that fully shareable data and 3D CAD drawings will allow design teams to design for maximum efficiency; project managers to programme works in a simulated environment; main and sub-contractors to design and specify with confidence. It can all add up to impressive efficiency savings (see box page 20).

However, the common perception is that BIM presents substantial financial, management and training barriers to entry, leaving it as the preserve of the industry’s prestige projects and top-drawer clients. A CIOB online survey on attitudes to BIM carried out last year points up some of the problems: 46% of respondents said that they were not familiar enough with BIM to use it, with the reasons cited (in order of frequency) including the upfront capital investment; the costs outweighing the benefits; the intangibility of the benefits; and reluctance to retrain staff.

But if the world of smartphones, Skype and social networking-style updates means greater collaboration is there for the taking, then maybe the industry can start to enjoy BIM’s gain without the pain. As well as Woobius, other ambitious young start-ups are creating project communication tools that are accessible, affordable and tuned to the needs of smaller construction businesses. As online solutions, they’re also part of the Software-as-a-Service trend, where companies can break free from the cycle of hardware updates and software upgrades in favour of storing data and accessing software and services in the internet “cloud”.

Paul Wilkinson, the founder of Web 2.0 advocacy network Be2Camp, agrees that a shift is taking place. “Social media and new technologies have dramatically lowered the cost of entry to techniques that used to be the preserve of high-end consultants and contractors.” Wilkinson has identified the top 10 emerging trends (see box right).

Slider Studio, a firm of architects that has evolved into a software developer, is about to launch Sticky World, an online consultation and project review tool. Members of the project team, clients or other stakeholders are invited into “rooms” where they can leave sticky notes on the project drawings, published from CAD.

“At the moment, a lot of work happens on email – people send files and say ‘please give us your comments’. But that’s not very inclusive or effective,” says director Michael Kohn. “Big business shies away from open collaboration, it’s worried about the information getting out of control. But I think the industry has to learn to marry the individual freedoms of social networking with the needs of corporate collaboration.”

Stakeholder engagement

And it seems the message is getting through – contractors engaged in the Building Schools for the Future programme have shown interest in Sticky World. “It’s about getting information in front of clients to get decisions, or engagement from stakeholders. Like Woobius, we’ve realised that the tools we’re using aren’t right for what the industry wants to do,” adds Kohn.

Describing itself as a “low-cost collaboration tool”, Woobius is providing competition for established players such as Asite, 4Projects and BIW. Last summer, it had 1,700 users, but word of mouth “viral” marketing has now pushed that up to 16,000. It aims to appeal to two under-served market segments: the pre-tender design stage, when designers, cost and (increasingly) carbon consultants need to share files; and projects at the lower end of the value range.

“We used it on a single house project where the cost of BIW would have been considerable,” says one construction manager and Woobius user. “It’s not all-singing or all-dancing, but it worked well – we could get the information out to subcontractors as soon as we got it.”

Another new entrant to the low-cost collaboration tool arena is Collabor8online, set up last year by Colin Barnes. It offers a similar customer proposition: the functionality of the market leaders combined with a simpler user interface and a more accessible pricing structure.

“We’re saying to subcontractors and SME contractors ‘look, you’ve seen these mainstream tools, the main contractor might even have forced it on you. But here’s one you can use yourselves’,” says Barnes. He also hopes that larger clients will migrate to Collabor8online to support smaller projects.

While Barnes doesn’t have an application to compete with WoobiusEye, he does believe that apps and tools available in the wider world will soon be adopted in construction project environments. For instance, the Evernote app means smartphone photos, voice notes and scribbles can be linked to the overall project database, and the forthcoming Googlewave project collaboration tool could be the basis of a new project interface. “As an industry, we’re still relying on email, but that’s person-to person communication, it’s no good for one-to-many updates,” he says.

If you’ve logged on to an online collaboration tool run by Asite, 4projects or BIW recently, you might have noticed that they too are opening up to the web 2.0 world. “We’re looking at how to make the experience more social,” says Asite product development director Paul Markovits. “You’re getting a whole influx of people into the industry who expect applications to provide them with a positive feel of the people they’re doing business with. So now we have photo icons on the system, we have a smartphone interface, and we offer web conferencing over WebEx.”

In addition, Asite and 4projects are recognising that their services can never be flexible or fast-moving enough to meet the multiple requirements of all their clients. So they’re offering an Application Programming Interface which allows end users to write their own apps. For instance, a user might want to integrate their own RFI protocol, or a contract management system to issue NEC 3-compliant notices. “Businesses are starting to demand a more integrated approach,” says 4projects’ senior vice-president Nick Graham.

Alternatively, apps can be written to link Asite or 4Projects with real-time weather data from the Met Office or Google Earth. “Asite is becoming a development language as well as a document management system,” says Markovits.

At software provider Asta Development, which specialises in project planning tools, managing director Paul Bamforth believes that smartphones, webcams and apps will change the way construction sites are monitored – and disputes are resolved. “I see the role of smartphones and the web as facilitating the capture of progress information, to update the project plan and as an electronic record. When disputes arise, there are continual issues about what happened when, but soon we’ll be able to capture exactly what took place.”

All the software and services companies we spoke to for this article agree that the past 18 months have brought increased interest in releasing project efficiencies through IT: Asite and 4Projects both say their turnover has grown during the recession.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the future belongs to young upstarts such as Woobius, Collabor8online and Slider Studio, or whether the established collaboration providers will continue to dominate. But if the industry wants to make progress towards BIM – and BIM is all about the collaboration and sharing – we need to adopt good ideas wherever we find them. Even from Facebook.

Top Ten Construction IT trends

By paul wilkinson

Tablet computing

The recent launch of the iPad highlighted the potential of tablet computing, but tablet PCs with construction-specific applications are already here (Motion Computing’s devices support programs by Latista and Vela Systems, for example). But browser-based SaaS (see below) could eventually replace PC-based tools.

Augmented reality

Using GPS, a compass and accelerometers, smartphones can provide users with location-specific information overlaid into the phone camera’s view of the environment. The Layar application provides various sources of data, from Wikipedia to international architecture database, archINFORM.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Analyst Gartner says a fifth of enterprises will hold no IT assets by 2012 as “cloud” computing and mobile working practices become commonplace. Vendors such as 4Projects and BIW will need to be nimble and creative to stay ahead of a new generation of low-cost collaboration companies such as Woobius.

Web-conferencing

Skype has changed the way many companies use telephones, and corporate use of LiveMeeting and WebEx means expensive and time-consuming travel to meetings isn’t always necessary. Seminars and conferences can be opened up to non-attendees through streamed video, slides and CoverItLive or Twitter.

Mobile apps

Construction is not immune from the iPhone app craze. There are concrete calculators and CAD utilities, while some collaboration vendors have downloadable applications for smartphone platforms, and WoobiusEye takes mobile collaboration to another level. But why have a local app for that, when you could access online services via your smartphone browser?

Web 2.0

Alongside new social networks for construction professionals, such as the CIOB-backed Construction Network tCn, expect more acceptance of Twitter-type messaging and other networked collaboration. Controlling the message is so 20th century – it’s now about participating in and shaping conversations about your company.

Virtual worlds

Fancy teleporting to an island to explore and discuss a 3D simulation of your new school or office building? In Second Life you can. Birmingham-based Daden is among the UK leaders in helping clients and designers visualise new built environments. Gaming technologies can also help democratise design – Slider Studio’s YouCanPlan has already been used to help local people review and comment on an urban regeneration scheme.

The ‘Internet of things’

Think bus-stops that relay real-time travel information, buildings that tell you how much energy they are using, appliances that can be controlled via the web. Environmentally-sensitive technologies such as Pachube can help building designers, owners and end-users make better informed decisions.

APIs

Instead of trying to add new features to existing software themselves, some construction IT vendors are creating application programming interfaces (APIs). For instance, SaaS collaboration vendors Aconex and Asite offer APIs, potentially enabling customers and developers to build their own applications and integrate data from other solutions (eg accounting, ERP).

BIM

Most architecture, engineering and construction firms still work predominantly in 2D, but building information modeling (BIM) has the p otential to revolutionise how we work, sharing a single 3D model which can also be used to show the sequence of activities, costs of materials, energy use, etc. BuildingSMART is helping firms apply consistent standards, but the issues are more than technological – BIM also involves rethinking contracts, procurement and other issues. Longer term expect to see SaaS-based BIM: BIMaaS.

A model way of working

Building information Modelling has been held up as construction IT’s promised land since the mid 1990s. In the design stage it allows consultants to collaborate using the same 3D drawings and data, so that a project can progress through multiple iterations to optimum design efficiency. In pre-construction and construction, the delivery team can use the same data to specify and sequence time- and cost-efficiently.

Finally, an “as-built” computer model of the building would be handed over to the client along with the keys, to promote efficient use and maintenance in the future.

To ensure that it’s possible to hold and exchange data between different software platforms, BIM has its own international standard-setting organisation. BuildingSMART (www.buildingsmart.com), formerly the International Alliance for Interoperability, is working with software developers on “Industry Foundation Classes”. Meanwhile, work on a British Standard for BIM-compliant software is also under way.

But the other key variable is people – and their tendency to stick to tried and tested methods. To help shift attitudes, in the past 12 months Constructing Excellence, the UK Contractors Group and the RICS have all set up working groups looking at how BIM can be driven into supply chains. CE is also promoting a demonstration project on a BSF school in Darlington.

For those projects that have used BIM, there have been clear productivity gains. According to Avanti, a research programme run by Constructing Excellence, Terminal 5 achieved a 10% cost saving using BIM, while it brought a 9.8% cost saving on a DTI project, and increased margins along the supply chain by 2-3%.

Don Ward, CE chief executive, believes the industry as a whole should embrace the efficiency savings of building on a foundation of integrated IT. “It’s like energy efficiency – BIM provides great payback, provided you take a project-wide view of costs,” he says.

As Ward points out, the BIM ideology is deeply embedded in the US, Scandinavian and Japanese construction sectors. “The Japanese see BIM as fundamental to their efficiency. If value is created in the design phase, then BIM is about delivering that,” he says.

In the US, some states demand that construction teams on public projects use BIM, and there are similar rules in Norway. “I think that will get recommended here,” says Ward. “The Office of Government Commerce is already making it tougher to work for government in terms fair payment, health and safety and the Construction Commitments. BIM could soon be a requirement on projects over a certain value.”

Architect BDP has discovered the benefits of integrated BIM design. It has created an “exchange protocol” allowing it to link software tools for calculating embodied energy; daylighting; floorplate size; and adding geo-spatial data from Google Earth. “If you make errors in [RIBA design] stages A,B and C, then you spend Stages D and E designing them out. You want to get design teams to work in a 3D way at the beginning of the project,” says BDP director Tim Williams.

But he believes that there can never be an industry-wide BIM standard, as individual firms will always want to innovate. “We aren’t looking for a universal truth – that’s an illusion,” he says.