Meridian Systems has their Top 10 reasons why you should attend their users conference coming up in a couple of weeks. We have another good reason to add to the list, especially for those who use Meridian’s Prolog construction project management software… so here it is – Reason #11: See a first hand demo of our document management Prolog integration. We’ll be in booth number 10 along with our good friends from The CRAM group.

Our friends over at eCopy sent us a link to their new Document Imaging Wiki. It’s new and just getting started, and over time it will become a more and more valuable resource for imaging-related info.

Speaking of eCopy, if you have not heard of them before or their technology, it’s worth checking out. A bit of a disclaimer here: we are eCopy document management partners, but partnership aside… their technology is just plain cool! In a nutshell, they make it easy to turn paper into digital. Real easy. So easy, in fact, it’s practically fun. With an eCopy machine on board your MFP, anyone can walk right up and quickly scan and route paper documents using an interface that is so intuitive you might think it was developed by the makers of that “other” operating system. Of course, eCopy users rely on document management companies like us for the tools they need to manage the electronic files after they have been scanned (that’s where the partner stuff comes in).

We heard from Ed Fry (Chevron) this morning. He talked about the challenges of managing the development and operation of large, long-lived capital projects. Here are some interesting numbers to think about:

• Chevron currently has 5-10 petabytes of information stored for their existing capital projects. Because of the high current rate of capital development and development process changes (like BIM) resulting in more data being generated, Chevron will double that amount of information in the next two years.
• Each project averages over 100k documents accumulated from activities across the globe. During project development, Chevron is under contractual obligation to respond to external inquiries within 10 days.
• Ed emphasized that regulations and efficient business practices demand consistency in specifications, business processes, and document workflow across all projects to preserve a record of who made what decision, why, and when. It reminded me of some of the implementation work we are doing with larger ColumbiaSoft customers like Burns & McDonnell, who seem to have the same vision.

Here’s an interesting idea that also came up: At the moment an owner decides that a new facility is needed, AEC actually becomes an impediment to the owner’s business. In other words, the faster the owner can get the facility, the better. So the question that AEC firms should be considering is, what is the value to the owner of reducing that impediment, and how can they share in that value? Ed gave the example of the contractor that repaired highway structures damaged in the 2007 California tanker fire. Caltrans estimated cost of repairs at “less than $20M,” but they got a bid of about $900k from C.C. Myers. That bid got the job and C.C. Myers made an extra $5M in early completion bonuses by working around the clock and finishing in less than half of the originally estimated time. In other words, they figured out the value and how to share in it.

Random notes:

• Lots of talk today about ISO 15926, which is the data integration standard initiative for FIATECH. Here’s how FIATECH describes the standard: “ISO 15926 is an International Standard for the representation of lifecycle information for process plants, including oil and gas production facility. This is specified by a generic, conceptual data model that is suitable as the basis for implementation in a shared database or data warehouse.” Wikipedia adds this comment: “This title is regarded too narrow by the present ISO 15926 developers. Having developed a generic data model and Reference Data Library for process plants it turned out that this subject is already so wide, that actually any state information may be modelled with it.” This standard enables a data model for the entire lifecycle of a complex facility, including all its components, so that the owner/operator has complete information at handover. Use of a standard data model also enables sharing, transfer, and migration of data among software systems. This obviously has potential application to document management systems, especially during the operation and maintenance (O&M) phases of a facility.
• I also caught a talk by Bruno Berti on “Visibility and Efficiency across the Project Lifecycle.” Bruno is Sr. Director of Product Management at Meridian Systems. Bruno talked about the need to extend information accumulated in the design and build phases in a useful way through the O&M phase. Later, I talked with Bruno 1:1 about how we are extending Document Locator into Prolog Manager to ensure that all documents related to a Prolog record are correctly linked and available. Since ColumbiaSoft will be exhibiting jointly with The Cram Group at the Meridian user conference in May, Bruno requested a demo of Document Locator and the Prolog Integration Module. I’m looking forward to getting his reaction.

Day 1 at FIATECH, and I thought the most interesting session was by Barry LePatner, who focused on “How to fix America’s broken construction industry.” As you can tell, LePatner argues that Construction is uniquely broken among U.S. industries, and is essentially continuing to do business the same way and with the same technology as 100 years ago. Here are some “factoids” from LePatner that caught my ear:

• In 2007, $1.7T in new construction was contracted, representing 5% of GDP and 10M workers.
• 92% of those workers are in firms smaller than 20 people.
• The U.S. will need to go from 400B sq ft to 827B sq ft of buildings by 2030.
• In that same period, the rest of the world will build 23 completely new cities with over 10M people each – and the U.S. will be competing in the same world market for material and skilled labor.
• A recent meta-study found that 50% of all construction labor in the U.S. is wasted – mostly due to scheduling inefficiencies. This amounts to $120B in waste per year.
• All other industries in the U.S. have increased productivity by an average of 250% since 1964 – Construction has decreased productivity by 25%.
• Across industries, investment in IT returns 3-5 times the increase in productivity as does investment in machinery alone.

LePatner is arguing that this state of affairs cannot continue, and that a combination of new contracting methods and new technology will be required to consolidate and transform construction firms into an efficient and profitable national-scale industry. Some of that technology will be on the design side (like BIM), but improved collaboration has the potential to dramatically improve productivity at the job site.

If you want to read more, LePatner has written a number of articles and a new book on this subject: “Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets.”

Just a brief mention… The Construction Financial Management Association is holding their annual get together this year on May 17 in Orlando, and ColumbiaSoft will be there… exhibiting in booth #518. If you can’t make it to this year’s show, you can always check out our virtual CFMA trade show page.