It’s common among companies in many different types of industries to have their own particular processes that are unique to their line of business. For instance, construction and engineering companies contend with “change orders“.

In an upcoming 20-minute webinar, solution engineer Dave Howell will be presenting a way to control and document the process in an online change order demo. Dave will be covering the benefits of using a document management system to automate notification and approval steps, and capture a clear history of change order documents. The webinar is free, and all are invited to attend.

In 1981, New Jersey CPA David Casey founded the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) to provide a forum for gathering and exchanging ideas as well to provide educational programs for construction finance professionals.  CFMA has since transformed from a small regional association into a national organization with over 7,000 members including general contractors, subcontractors, developers, construction managers, architects, engineers, and suppliers.

Each year CFMA hosts a conference and exhibition bringing together thousands of like-minded construction finance professionals for several days of education, sharing, and camaraderie.  The conference features educational classes through CFMA’s Schools of Learning in addition to showcased speakers and exhibit booths displaying the hottest products and technologies driving the industry forward.  This year’s CFMA 2009 Conference is being held May 16th through May 20th  at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas – the site of the original CFMA national conference in 1982.

A prevailing theme to this years’ CFMA conference is the need for builders to address the exponential growth in electronic and paper file management involved with construction.  Files include emails, invoices, drawings, insurance records, certification of completions, permits, and more.  The mountain of paperwork required for an average construction project can fill up an entire trailer.   Unfortunately this paperwork robs profits by consuming resources for filing documents, retrieving them, and storage costs.  It also exposes companies to the risk of eDiscovery litigation.

ColumbiaSoft is attending this year’s CFMA conference as an exhibitor demonstrating Document Locator, a paperless office solution for construction companies.  Paperless office solutions, also known as document management solutions, offer construction companies many capabilities.   Document Locator digitally archives paper documents, electronically stores them, and indexes them based on client-specified criteria, and has workflow automation.  In addition, paperless office solutions help facilitate disaster recovery planning and reduce the exposure associated with eDiscovery requests.

Paperless office solutions allow construction companies to amass a central repository containing all of the critical documents typically silo’d by departmental applications.  As an example, users outside of accounting could access all of the invoice documents related to their project without requiring access to the accounting software or directly contacting accounting with their requests.  This type of open collaboration between employees, vendors, and subcontractors provides substantial benefits to project team members allowing them real-time access to the information required to perform their tasks.  If you are interested in learning more about how paperless office solutions could benefit your construction company, please do not hesitate to stop by our booth at CFMA to learn more.

Brava! Desktop is an affordable, easy to use application designed for viewing, printing, and marking-up documents and drawings. Brava! Desktop provides support for most major document formats including MS Office Documents, CAD and other engineering formats, as well as PDF format types. By using a powerful markup/viewer application, users have the advantage of being able to open proprietary file formats such as Autodesk CAD, Bentley MicroStation, and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks 3-D models without owning the original development software or a purpose built viewer for each application.

What truly sets Brava! Desktop apart though, is the ability to markup and annotate files for collaboration. For example, an engineering firm can distribute floor plan drawings for review to the contracted architect and construction company, allowing them to digitally markup each drawing where they have questions. Brava! Desktop is purpose built for this form of paperless collaboration and includes powerful AEC industry features including measurements, drawing magnification, stamping, markup burn-in, save as PDF, and more.

When viewing and digital markup technology are incorporated into an existing document management system that supports metadata searching, workflow routing, notifications, security, records management, remote web access, and email archive – you have a full featured project file management system that will allow collaboration within the organization and to outside vendors, suppliers, sub-contractors, and more. Imagine a system were design drawings (submittals/transmittals) were automatically routed to the necessary reviewers for the project and their responses were electronically captured and returned.

Included in the next release of Document Locator v5.3 will be integration into Informative Graphics Brava! Desktop 2.2 – previous integration support included up version 1.3 of Brava! Desktop. In addition to supporting the latest release, functionality is expanded, allowing users to create and apply dynamic stamps using Brava! Desktop that automatically extract profile property information from Document Locator as the stamp is applied. This means that generic stamps can be employed that will dynamically embed project related information onto drawings including project number, project engineer, or dates by reading the values from the metadata associated with the drawing that is open.

For everyone who missed us at the Autodesk University conference last week, I will be hosting a 20-minute demonstration next week online of our latest CAD integration with Document Locator.

You can register for the WebEx here:

https://columbiasoft.webex.com/columbiasoft/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=573524547

I will be covering Document Locator’s unique ability in the area of project file management.  This is the combined management of CAD files along with all the project documents, emails, and virtually any other type of electronic files organized within a single document management system. The benefits include a unified way to approach the organization of related project information that increases re-use, reduces the amount of information lost or duplicated, and improves efficiency.

I hope you can join me next Thursday, December 18 at 10:30 AM PST > REGISTER <

ColumbiaSoft is exhibiting at Autodesk University this week in Las Vegas at The Venetian resort.  Autodesk University is one of my favorite shows to attend each year.  This will be my third consecutive year at the AU conference, and I am continually amazed by the number of attendees from all over the world.  Autodesk University brings together the best and brightest from countless industries and career paths to showcase the latest technology derived from CAD (computer aided design).

In addition to Autodesk showing off their wonderful products, there are countless other vendors displaying their latest inventions.  I remember my first year at Autodesk University I saw a 3 dimensional (3D) printer build physical models of working ball bearings including the outer rings and internal balls that reduce friction.  The 3D printer technology enables CAD designers to create components electronically and then real-time print life sized prototypes for review – dramatically reducing the cost of CAD/CAM (computer aided manufacturing).

Similar to how 3D printing technology changed the paradigm of CAD/CAM, ColumbiaSoft’s Document Locator with unified storage reinvents how organizations store, manage, and collaborate with their documents across the entire organization.  This year at Autodesk University, I look forward to sharing our successes over the last year with customers that ColumbiaSoft has helped improve productivity while reducing costs and risks.

Each year at this conference we have the opportunity to speak with and listen to CAD users from around the world.  Many of their comments and suggestions find their way directly into Document Locator to further enhance the product.  Please stop by our booth (#375) in the AEC section of the main exhibit hall to share with us your stories of document management, and you can even register to win a new iPod Touch.

In advance of next week’s Autodesk University conference in Las Vegas, ColumbiaSoft made a pre-announcement today about an improved AutoCAD integration that is coming soon in the next version of Document Locator. It uses Autodesk RealDWG technology to offer faster performance of CAD file management within the Document Locator document management system.

Now, Document Locator already connects to AutoCAD, so this is an improvement of things that are already pretty good. The whole point here is to have a unified way to manage design files along with all the other documents, emails and files that make up a complete project in a single system.

For more information about today’s announcement, you can read a copy of the news release at: http://www.documentlocator.com/Company/News/11_24_08/. Te see a sneak peak, visit us at the Autodesk University conference December 2 through 5 in Las Vegas. We’ll be in booth 375 in the AEC area of the convention floor.

For those who want an enterprise-class document management system, but don’t want to deploy and manage the software… a new solution was announced today by ColumbiaSoft and its partner The Cram Group. Document Locator is now available via The Cram Group’s ProjectXnet managed hosting service.

Managed hosting for the document management system is available in two ways:

• SaaS Subscription
  Allows you to use Document Locator as a web-based service on a per seat, monthly subscription basis – ideal for short term or temporary projects.

• Licensed Hosting
  Allows you to purchase and own the Document Locator software licenses in the same manner as a client/server deployment; however, the software is deployed remotely and provided as a web-based solution.

For Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms, there is particular benefit given ProjectXnet’s extensive capability to provide several other leading applications for the industry on-demand. ColumbiaSoft and The Cram Group will exhibit together at next week’s Design-Build conference in Las Vegas to introduce the offering to engineers, construction managers and owners.

You can read more about today’s release about on-demand document management.

We’ll be at DBIA’s Design-Build conference next week in Las Vegas from Nov. 3 to 5, and we are happy to announce that The Cram Group, a well-respected hosting and solutions provider, will be joining us in our exhibit booth there. The Cram Group is particularly well-respected among the AEC industry for their focus on providing a full range of hosting and business solutions for engineering and construction companies. This makes them a great fit for our engineering and construction document management, as well as valued ColumbiaSoft partner… more news to come on that tomorrow.

If you are in town for the conference, or just passing through for other reasons, stop by our booth at #712 at Mandalay Bay.

Have you built a large skyscraper, power plant, or piece of transportation infrastructure lately? Where I just returned from was a gathering of professionals who do just that, and more. And, as they are quick to mention… building big things requires a big amount of “paperwork” and work processes. From the moment an idea is born to the day its doors open for business… everyone from architects, to owners, to vendors, to engineers, to contractors, to project managers, and a multitude of others are busy creating, sharing, exchanging, reviewing and approving all sorts of documents, drawings and communications. The obvious needs abound, from version control software to plain old document searching.

At the recent CMAA conference (short for Construction Management Association of America), we along with Kodak talked about how some effective tools can improve document control and collaboration in construction. Kodak showed how easy it is to capture paper in the process, and we demonstrated how words and data can be digitized from the pulpy medium and put to good use organizing and automating procedures like notifications and approvals.

But the great value to realize is one that has relevance even beyond construction and engineering… A centralized system that extends document control and workflow across the company or division can have tremendous benefits in improving collaboration throughout the organization. While many line-of-business applications do have the capability to store documents (a singular capability that falls far short of ‘real’ document management), an enterprise document management system extends collaboration, notifications, approvals, and more across disciplines. Everyone is using and benefiting from the same system.

Developing software applications that solve real-world problems requires getting to know your market space. For software companies this typically involves aggregating data from a number of sources including customers, support personnel, enhancement requests, sales staff, and post-mortems from consulting engagements. While there is no doubt that normal requirements gathering techniques help, there is no better way to understand your customers’ needs than to “walk a mile in their shoes.” When working with companies in the AEC industry, getting a firsthand glimpse into how your software is being used can be an eye-opening and memorable experience.

Recently Robie Lewis and I had the opportunity to tag along with the lead Quality Examiner at an oil sands refinery construction site near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta (Canada). At this facility, enormous reactors and miles of piping are used to process oil sands rich with bitumen into a wide range of synthetic crude oils. The construction project is part of an overall plant expansion designed to double the capacity of the facility. Luckily for us, our visit was on a sunny, warm day in July. I understand that this area of Canada can see temperatures as low as -40 degrees during the winter – BURRR!

In visiting the site, we were warned ahead of time that certified steel-toe boots were required, along with various other safety gear. Before being permitted on to the job site, a safety orientation program/test was administered which is mandatory for all visitors to the facility. The safety orientation program depicted the various dangers we would encounter. The reality of man vs BIG machine was very intimidating. Imagine staring straight up from the base of a 150 ft tall reactor which resembled one of NASA’s solid rocket boosters while a crane not 15 feet away is hoisting a 20-ton structure in the air.

Spending time with the Quality Examiners on the job site wearing their steel-toe boots, hard hats, safety goggles, and a fluorescent safety vest brought to life how they perform their inspection roles while interacting with a document control process. Taking the time to understanding the people, the process, and the environment is important when implementing valuable solutions. I know the information gathered from this experience will improve the overall solution for this customer and will undoubtedly influence future Document Locator implementations.

Photo: Robie and I suiting up for our tour of the construction site.