http://www.asite.com/community/index.php Blogs en tony@asite.com Copyright 2012 2012-05-17T12:36:02+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/there-is-a-new-movement-taking-shape/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/there-is-a-new-movement-taking-shape/#When:12:36:02Z Major global organisations are recognising the fact that the Cloud is here and that it is here to stay.  We are involved in the next wave of technology, through the evolution of SaaS and Cloud based solutions.  Users now wish to interact with their data through their chosen device from anywhere they happen to find themselves at any time, night or day.  They do not want to be tied to their corporate information by cables and a desktop, with various time constraints, hampering innovation.  Corporations find it difficult to keep up with the plethora of apps and devices that just keep coming and will continue to do so - as it’s not their core business.  It’s easier and safer to put this in the experienced and secure hands of the SaaS/Cloud provider - as IT IS core to their business. Evolution has brought us full back circle to supplier networks since the bubble burst back in 2000.  Asite has not wavered in its believe of the “Extended Enterprise”, effectively it’s supplier network.  We have been busy behind the scenes delivering these capabilities to some of the worlds largest companies and our experience tells us that we are creating this new wave.  We have created a unique offering around our one-one-many approach.  We connect you once and we look after the many and the on-boarding of the many on your behalf.  Oh by the way, the many keep changing and you do not want to be dealing with that.  We deliver to each and every user in the supply chain and we call this B2U, in what ever format or media they require it on. We have seen many others try to break into this space unsuccessfully and a lot of the MBA “have a go brigade”, have gone B2B and B2C (back to banking and back to consulting), we can now concentrate on the task at hand, mass adoption of corporate proof Collaborative Cloud Solutions for a fraction of the cost of traditional models - giving each and every user in the supply chain real benefit. Be part of this new movement - and be part of the successful businesses of the future. 2012-05-17T12:36:02+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/biming-up-practicalities-integrating-bim/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/biming-up-practicalities-integrating-bim/#When:13:35:12Z We hosted a Webinar last week in partnership with Building Magazine - ‘BIMing Up’ Practicalities Integrating BIM.  This was the second in a series of four and if you didn’t manage to attend then be sure to look out for the next two early next year.  Watch this space for further details on that.  The first two sessions are also saved online as recordings you can watch anytime here - http://bit.ly/asitecbim01 I was blown away by the attendance levels (more than 2,000 registered), clearly showing that BIM is a very hot topic in our industry.  There were some really great questions from the audience, sadly we did not have the chance to answer them all, so I decided to answer some of them here.  Hopefully this will further the discussion on this very important evolution of how we design, build and operate our assets in this new BIM world (or not so NEW, some of us have been doing it for years So, here we go: Q. Practitioners have always used different software (CAD, project management tools, etc.). How realistic is it that full (level 3) integration of information will be achieved between all members of the construction team across the industry? How long might it take to achieve this? A. There are a plethora of different products, systems and tools out there that need to talk to one another to achieve Level 3 - it really depends on how far you want/need to take it. Your organisation’s business model, its processes and its capabilities will define this.  At Asite we have been integrating with both internal (inside the firewall) and external systems (outside the firewall) (CAD, ERP, SCM etc..) for the past 10 years in 2D and 3D environments and most recently in the 4th and 5th Dimensions.  We do this with our collaborative Building Information Model cloud - cBIM.  Through our relationships with the likes of Autodesk, Microsoft, SAP, and OpSource to name a few, we have been enabling our users throughout the supply chain to interact with this data from our Cloud - no matter what systems they use.  We work closely with BuildingSmart www.buildingsmart.com and the IFC schema http://buildingsmart.com/standards/ifc/model-industry-foundation-classes-ifc/?searchterm=ifc to enable this interoperability.  This is all happening today, you just need to become a part of it. Q. What is the prospect of subscription based software licensing making more complex BIM software available to smaller consultancies? A. This is a great question and one I hear all too often as a statement - “This is too expensive for smaller consultancies” or “my project is too small to warrant BIM”, a perfectly logical train of thought in both cases.  The reality is that it is not too expensive to get started and it should be used on projects of all sizes, sooner rather than later.  First of all you need to choose the applications that suit your business model, methodologies, processes and capabilities - then you can decide how to get involved and at what price level.  With cBIM you can take data in from any other CAD packages that support IFC and interact with that data for your business needs.  As cBIM is subscription based you don’t need every user in your organisation or supply chain to require CAD licenses.  They may just need to view the model on-line for Comments, Red-Lining and collaboration purposes or they may need to extract data for other uses such as cost estimating or procurement purposes.  For all of these actions and many, many more, they just require a low level subscription to our cBIM service, with the requirement for BIM Authoring/CAD, ERP, CRM and many other unnecessary licenses being taken out of the budget/cost.  Of course as you grow as a BIM shop – depending on your discipline, you may require more BIM Authoring licenses for instance - at which point your innovation in BIM will be paying dividends. Q. What are the benefits to building product suppliers? A. If building product suppliers can get on board early enough in the BIM design process, they can get clear visibility of what products the design teams are using at spec phase and get their product families built straight into the construction design.  This is clearly advantageous from a planning perspective and stock control as an example.  From a procurement perspective, you can buy product straight out of the model file.  You bring this all the way through to FM and you have the holy grail - FM operations now have all of the building supplies as part of the model file to maintain, operate and procure, for the future of that asset.  Imagine being able to fly through the model, click on an air-con unit - then see who specified it, supplied it, fitted it and oh by the way click the basket to procure a new one?  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Q. How does BIM record who changed what and when in the model? (Legal issues, Management, contract)? A. It is not BIM that records the audit trail across a design team – it is the collaborative BIM platform. In Asite cBIM each and every action is fully audited, who did what, why, where etc.  We as an industry have been doing this for years in the 2D space with basic project extranet solutions - the 3D world is no different - we just need to get more co-ordinated on the technical capabilities, through interoperability. The full audit trail doesn’t change – that is why collaboration matters. Q. We speak about collaboration. Is the current Master BIM version a live platform? or is it just various model that is updated by a BIM manager? A. This is very clear in my mind - without collaboration you are simply dealing with what we call the Selfish BIM.  That is various BIM’s (usually with each stakeholder on a project keeping their own autonomous BIM) not being kept up to date by other versions of that BIM and certainly no audit being kept in place.  Through the use of cBIM you have one central secure Master BIM (as you call it).  As participants begin to interact with it and use it to update in their own environments, new revisions and versions will be added to the Master.  The Master will always hold the most up to date information, together with a very powerful audit trail.  So without collaboration (just like we have been doing for ever in the 2D world) you are not realising the full potential of BIM.  At Asite we have an intelligent robot called Adoddle that co-ordinates and synchronises your model files for this purpose. I said in my closing remark at the Webinar - that it is important to get started, however size of bite you want to start off with.  It will make your firm an innovator and differentiate you from your competitors.  Remember BIM is a number of practices, methodologies and technologies that you must integrate into your business - so you can get started with very little or no cost.  The fact of the matter is: if you want to make BIM a reality for your firm - you need to get started somewhere. 2011-11-29T13:35:12+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/bim-as-a-service/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/bim-as-a-service/#When:08:57:05Z Paul Wilkinson’s recent blog post about disruptive ideas in the construction collaboration space prompted some contemplation for me – as I respect Paul’s knowledge of our space and we often share perspectives on where we see software (and particularly Software as a Service) supporting the AEC industry now and into the future. I was surprised to see Paul’s description of the ‘BIM-as-a-Service’ idea without mention of Asite cBIM – although I was heartened to see his subsequent post about the ‘BIM Battle’ recognising Asite’s long-time activity in this space since our announcement and demonstration of cBIM in London and in Washington D.C. in 2006 and our “seeing-is-believing” demonstration with Bentley Systems in 2007. ‘BIM-as-a-Service’ is what Asite does via cBIM – albeit we are not open source as is the BIMserver project that Léon van Berlo is putting together in Holland – we deliver the service along with the software and the globally accredited platform. cBIM is not about being a BIM design platform such as Revit, Bentley, Archicad, Tekla, Digital Project, Nemetschek, etc. We call those platforms ‘processors’ because they are about processing data and allowing end-users to create or change the model. cBIM is about being the library for the model information; indeed, for all project-related information. In real-life projects stakeholders use a wide variety of processors. What they generally don’t have is a central library which allows them to check data in and out and keeps track of it all. Within Asite we talk about the four ‘C’s of cBIM – collaboration, coordination, commercial, and cloud. You give project teams a central database in the cloud to maintain and coordinate the model – built on a proven collaboration platform integrated tightly with their commercial data. (There are at least three more Cs under commercial – i.e. cost, contracts, and construction management – but that just starts to get silly.) I am a fan of the BIMserver project and I believe the intent of the model server they have begun building is to become an open-source offering similar to Asite cBIM – i.e. to host the actual BIM database centrally (allowing for versioning, model merging, etc.). This is very clearly differentiated from the belated steps toward BIM that some of our construction collaboration vendor brethren are now taking – which are very much management of model “files” – basically doing the same thing we in the construction collaboration community have been doing for the last 15 years with electronic file management – except with BIM model files. This has a clear value of course – but is by no means disruptive in 2011. There are other players out there in this same disruptive space – in America there is Horizontal Systems with their Glue platform who have achieved mindshare with several US General Contractors that I’ve visited. They have started up straight into this space as opposed to developing from a “traditional” SaaS collaboration vendor position. There is also Tekla who have made a lot of noise with their BIMSight offering during 2011 – and the Norwegian company Jotne EPM Technology whose on-premise EDMServer system has been in development for at least ten years. Whilst the Asite platform is not open source – it is open data, by which I mean that we allow our users full freedom to bring data into the platform and export data out of the platform in open-standards-based data formats on-demand. In 2008 and again in 2009 we organised the virtual design competitions Build London Live which showed how upwards of 85 different software packages could successfully exchange model-related data using open standards (and across globally distributed teams)! There are a number of examples of industries where a strong open-source offering (for those who want to run their own server and tinker) sits alongside a commercial SaaS offering (for those who just want to work with their data and leave the systems management, infrastructure, support, compliance and accreditation to others) – and the two coexist quite happily with plenty of demand for both. The disruptiveness of the open-source model itself is – I think – a disruption that has already done its disrupting in the enterprise software world. 2011-09-13T08:57:05+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/asite-are-now-using-akamai/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/asite-are-now-using-akamai/#When:14:59:27Z Asite are now using Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator solution to enhance the user experience for its customers wherever they are in the world. Asite has users and clients all over the world and to ensure that we are continually delivering a reliable and superior user experience to and between all of our users wherever they may be working; we made the decision to use Akamai to ensure that our users benefit from the best possible experience. For example, if an Asite user from Rio De Janeiro is retrieving a document that has been uploaded into the workspace by another user based in New York, they will be able to download (and upload) the documents at a much faster rate, giving them speedier access to all the information they need. What does Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator do? It ensures that the optimal route across the internet (fastest, most reliable and least congested route) to the application is utilised, therefore reducing the potential of connectivity problems. Improvements to the service include: Faster uploads and downloads to and from the Asite platform Confidence that you are always using the most optimal connection to the Asite platform Enhanced website responsiveness, so pages load faster and processes are completed faster The real benefits to Asite users are: Saving more time Increasing productivity  An overall improved user experience Greater connectivity to other Asite users wherever they are in the world  An additional value-add at no extra charge!  In addition to implementing Akamai, Asite also has a list of accreditations that include: Cloud Computing – Unlimited Storage On-Demand OpSource Global SaaS Infrastructure Partner UK Government Security Accreditation – Audited HMG IS1 SAS70 Type II and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance - Audited PCI DSS Compliance - Audited ISO 27001 Compliance U.S. Safe Harbour Compliance Microsoft Gold Certified Partner  Salesforce AppExchange Certified Hosting Partner Our list of accreditations means that our solutions also meet the stringent security and compliance criteria of the UK government which has resulted in our recent 5 year framework agreement with the Transport for London (TfL) for the use of the Asite platform. 2011-08-25T14:59:27+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/who-are-the-winners-of-the-uk-governments-new-construction-strategy/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/who-are-the-winners-of-the-uk-governments-new-construction-strategy/#When:12:37:07Z On the 31st May 2011, the government announced a new strategy which is set to reform the entire UK construction industry. You may have embraced this long before the government even realised this themselves - or perhaps you are sitting on the side lines waiting to be guided through the process. Either way, we at Asite can help you and your business with the knowledge you need to sail through these key challenges and stay at the forefront of the construction industry in our upcoming series of BIM 101 steps to success. Why should you care? The UK government want to improve efficiency in the construction industry, value for money to the taxpayer and enable the construction industry to focus on bringing forward innovative solutions. Off the back of this, construction projects over £5m will only be awarded to companies that have successfully proved that they have delivered on the government’s objectives as an organisation. It is a known industry fact* that the government (and the taxpayer) are the industry’s biggest client. So if your business is not up to speed; ultimately, your bottom line will be hit.  On the flip side – if the challenge is grasped - we think this is a clear window of opportunity to increase your bottom line. Who is affected and why? It is likely to be everyone that operates within the UK construction industry. The government want changes to how things are being done now. This means process change to improve efficiency and create greater collaboration, adopting technology at a greater pace and incorporating best practices such as BIM much sooner rather than later. Businesses that have not implemented the new practices run the risk of losing their competitive edge and impacting their long-term profitability. What needs to happen? We know that a few organisations are leading the way and setting benchmarks for how the industry needs to evolve. We want to share how you can join their ranks - go beyond the call of duty and become an industry leader in BIM. We’ll also walk you through each of the government objectives (outlined at the end of this post) to discuss what needs to happen for each criteria so that your business is well prepared. When does it need to happen? These improvements need to happen before the end of this parliament - 2015. After which, all construction projects of £5m will only be awarded to organisations that meet the criteria. It may seem a while yet but as the old saying goes “There is no time like the present” so the question to you is ‘When are you ready to turn your business into a lean mean fighting machine?’  Who are the winners? Act now and you’ll benefit from having early competitive advantage and the opportunity to further increase your bottom line. Look out for our upcoming series of BIM 101 steps to success where we will dive deeper into process change and the adoption of BIM into your business and supply chains and discuss ways in which your business can be ready for and benefit from all the strategic objectives so that it really is a win-win situation all round. The government objectives identified for change and improvement are: Co-ordination and leadership Forward programming Governance and client skills  Value for money, standards and cost benchmarking Efficiency and elimination of waste  Building Information Modelling Alignment of design/construction with operation and asset management Supplier Relationship Management Competitiveness and reducing duplication (whole public sector)  New procurement models  Client Relationship Management Implementation of existing and emerging Government policy in relation to sustainability and carbon In our next post we will be discussing: The 7 top tips for BIM readiness. The 7 top tips for BIM success. Is your business ready for BIM? Read the full Government construction strategy by clicking on the link below. * Cabinet Office (2011) Government Construction strategy (http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Government-Construction-Strategy.pdf) [31 May 2011]   2011-07-14T12:37:07+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/the-end-of-ambulance-chasing-saas-grows-up/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/the-end-of-ambulance-chasing-saas-grows-up/#When:10:01:48Z I was asked to speak at the ICT 4 Construction “Document & Knowledge Management Technology” Conference in London a couple of weeks ago. These conferences are an interesting opportunity to meet prospective clients, meet users of other systems and catch up with our competitors. Unfortunately, and much to most of the speaker’s dismay, in this instance the first two groups were a bit thin on the ground! That being said the day was a useful opportunity to spark some debate amongst the AEC Collaboration providers on the future of the industry, and there was certainly a lively Q&A session after my talk. The initial feedback from those that I spoke to were (generally) in agreement with my sentiments - as well as glad that they didn’t have to sit through another sales pitch! The title of the talk was “The End of Ambulance Chasing - SaaS grows up”. Whilst the title was tongue-in-cheek and intentionally designed to raise a few eyebrows, the message was deadly serious: The historical way providers have sold, and the way clients have purchased, Collaboration technologies in the UK AEC sector is not in either party’s best interests. That’s quite a statement, so let’s look at the argument. You don’t buy CAD and BIM authoring software that can only be used on one project, so why ask to buy software that you collaborate with on that basis? If clients stop only thinking about their next project and start thinking about Collaboration as something that happens across ALL their projects - right across their Enterprise - they will reap even greater benefits. Their data isn’t stuck in different systems, they are using consistent processes and procedures across their organisation and perhaps most importantly they can consistently report across their organisation providing invaluable management information. The providers themselves need to play their part in that too. Of the providers in the room that day, Asite are the only one that publishes prices on their website! If you only have project level contracts - no matter how well you do, that contract is going to end! You have to go and find a new project to replace the revenue you’ve just lost. Having enterprise level contracts in place with clients frees up a huge amount of time for the providers allowing them to focus that time and effort on R&D which in turn ultimately benefits the clients. As SaaS becomes a mainstream option, the smartest organisations are implementing Collaboration technologies as enterprise tools and taking critical business processes into the Cloud. This allows them to deploy Collaboration to address issues outside of simple exchange of drawings and RFIs. By developing systems (using technologies such as Asite AppBuilder) to manage their Supply Chains (the extended organisation), Contracts, Procurement activities and cross project reporting, these organisation are gaining even greater benefit from SaaS and Cloud technologies. Against the backdrop of the worst financial crisis for a generation, these organisations WILL gain a competitive edge. I discussed some of the things the organisations need to look for when trying to take their organisation into the Cloud and gave some examples of organisations, including large government bodies such as Environment Agency and Transport for London, who have implemented Asite’s Collaborative SaaS Platform as an enterprise Application and are reaping the rewards. The End of Ambulance Chasing - SaaS Grows Up View more presentations from pmarkovits It was a lively debate and one that I hope will help drive change in how AEC businesses use SaaS and Cloud technologies for the benefit of everyone. I’d love to hear your thoughts too, via the comments below or on Twitter (@paul_markovits) 2011-04-20T10:01:48+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/aec-is-the-global-leader-in-cloud-computing-adoption/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/aec-is-the-global-leader-in-cloud-computing-adoption/#When:21:33:01Z The 21 February 2011 London launch of a RICS report on “The Role of Cloud Computing in Commercial Property” (RICS news release) indirectly underlined that some sectors have yet to take some concerted steps towards adoption of new ways of delivering software applications and their associated data. For, while some businesses in the commercial property sector are still learning about the potential, numerous owner-operator businesses and companies in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sectors have been working extensively with cloud-based solutions for a decade and more. This is hardly surprising. While some people might deride construction as being “techno-phobic”, its professionals are always looking for tools and processes that will help them do their jobs better. The early adoption of mobile telephones in the UK during the late 1980s and early 1990s was a good example. Workers in a fragmented, highly mobile, often transient industry helped a new technology jump from being a yuppie plaything to becoming a vital tool for keeping in daily contact. Similarly, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, construction professionals needed to overcome another communication challenge: How do you share contract-critical documents and drawings across a multi-disciplinary, multi-company project team working in several different geographical locations, some of whom may be located in temporary offices with basic telecommunications links? The answer, of course, was to use internet-based tools. Even with a just a low bandwidth dial-up modem, authorised users could access remotely hosted project portals via a standard web-browser, and start to interact with their fellow project team members. Construction project teams also welcomed the idea of a single instance of all relevant data being hosted by a third party (it reduced fears that access might be severed if companies got into a dispute, and it released AEC businesses from having to manage the technology themselves). Many of these pioneer “application service providers”  - like Asite - are still around today, although today we are commonly described as Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, businesses. The virtues of SaaS are not just evident to designers, project managers, contractors, etc. The advantages are also clear to industry clients, and - with UK central and local government providing the AEC industry with more than a third of its workload - it is not surprising that government departments and agencies have long been enthusiastic about the potential of SaaS platforms to manage their projects more efficiently, create more certainty and reduce disputes. At Asite, we have developed long-standing and long-term relationships with the Environment Agency, Transport for London and the Greater London Authority, with Health for Scotland and the Welsh Health Estates, and the National Development Finance Agency of Ireland (among others), who now insist their supply chains use Asite for all project delivery. And, of course, once information has been gathered for design, construction and hand-over, forward-thinking clients are also looking to Asite for re-use of that data for operation and maintenance throughout the asset’s lifecycle. Commercial property owners such as Grosvenor (case study and industry award), BAA (case study ) and Canary Wharf and contractors such as Laing O’Rourke (2003 and 2008) have been leading the way, so - if our experiences are anything to go by - the cloud computing cause is already well advanced among many public and private sector organisations. Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, said “...we’ve redefined Cloud Computing to include everything we already do… Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about.  What is it?” Maybe he should have been asking some of these AEC and property organisations. They would surely have told him that there truly is nothing new under the sun - or in the cloud. AppLibrary 2011-03-14T21:33:01+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/eprocurement-a-billion-and-counting/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/eprocurement-a-billion-and-counting/#When:16:56:08Z The Asite Exchange marked its one-billionth eProcurement transaction on April 4th 2010 One of the business-to-business technologies to come out of the late 90s dotcom boom was the idea of online marketplaces for specific vertical industries. This took the old guard technologies of ERP and EDI connectivity based on point-to-point integrations and brought it into the “internet age” based on XML and a hub-based architecture. The vanguard was led by systems providers such as Commerce One (now Perfect Commerce), Ariba (still going), Freemarkets (now part of Ariba), Purchase Pro, and others. Asite was the first eProcurement marketplace to be set-up for the property and construction industry. We started operating in 2001 based on the Commerce One marketplace platform - and have been managing transactions for our trading community ever since. Commerce One was an important part of our platform offering in the early years - but we long ago developed the full eProcurement hub mechanism into our own Asite platform, with no dependency on third-party intellectual property. From day one Asite set out to deliver a platform based on three legs: sourcing (find partners and suppliers, pre-qualify and get to contract), collaboration / project management (document exchange, structured workflow, and contract management), and trading (transactional eProcurement and supply chain integration). In later years we added in the unifying element that pulls this all together - Asite cBIM - and all of it, all the time, has been delivered on a pure utility-compute / Software as a Service model. We have always believed that these are the services that define the successful supply chain hub for construction and other asset-intensive and engineering-focused industries. Observers sometimes group Asite with companies offering much more narrow offerings focused on one or the other areas of the Asite platform. Companies such as Achilles, BiP Solutions or Bravo Solution in sourcing; BIW, 4Projects, or Aconex in project management (frequently called the ‘project extranet’ space); Causeway Tradex, Ariba, or COINS (beware the ERP vendor reaching outside the firewall - more to come on this topic…) in trading / eProcurement. All of these services have their own pluses and minuses of course - but suffice to say here that what they all have in common is they give you another data silo to worry about when what you really need are single views across your business. In order to achieve single views you need a platform which is open, natively extensible, and includes support for your business processes. If your business is project-based, deals with assets, or develops products then the Asite platform fits the bill. So, while we’ve been delivering this platform over the last nine years the piece that started it all off has continued working away behind the scenes, processing millions of commercial transactions per month between our customers - just plumbing really for the business web - mostly invisible but always on and totally dependable. The Asite Exchange processed its one-billionth eProcurement transaction on Sunday the 4th of April 2010 (which, by the way, was an invoice for 72 kiln-dried joists - also known as bandsills in the US). While the Exchange has of course continued to move on and is now looking at its billionth in the rear-view mirror - we’ve taken this opportunity to bring a little attention to the plumbing that keeps supply chains working! In honour of the occasion I’ll share a couple of stats from our learning over the years serving the industry: Average Purchase Order Value     £264.40 Average Invoice Value                   £496.39 Considering that the average cross-industry cost to raise a purchase order for both direct and indirect goods is widely quoted to be about £80 per order (i.e. nearly 1/3 the value of the PO) it is not difficult to understand why electronic trading has seen the take-up it has over the last decade! And here is a quick graph showing the profile of the transaction growth we’ve seen over the years as we went from zero to one-billion. I have a feeling that the next billion will take a lot less than 8½ years!      Check out case studies and other info here…     2010-04-26T16:56:08+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/asite-goes-mobile/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/asite-goes-mobile/#When:11:08:09Z A preview of the forthcoming Asite cMOBThis week I had the privilege of presenting at the IESA conference at Coventry University on the future of collaborative technology in construction. This is probably a somewhat grandiose and certainly an open-ended topic; but through our work at Asite I get the benefit of a lot of expertise in our customer base which I tried to pass on.  Construction IT is a broad remit. However, there is one regularly recurring theme across the breadth of it; and that is the mobile web. This isn’t just specific to the construction sector mind you,  with BBC News reporting a marked increase in usage levels of mobile internet access and the FT reporting that 16 Million UK users accessed the internet from mobile devices in December 2009; averaging 418 page views and 307 minutes per user. Whilst undoubtedly a great deal of the traffic relates to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with an inherently mobile workforce the construction industry has a huge amount to gain from the mobile web! We have seen initiatives such as COMIT which have looked at how the sector could benefit from using mobile devices and the benefits in terms of time and efficiency savings are clear. To my mind, until now the problem has been the cost of development of the apps to run on the mobile, which has held back the take-up. So, with this in mind, Asite is very happy to give you a preview of the forthcoming Asite cMOB mobile application. As you can see from the screenshot Asite cMOB is a completely new way of accessing your Asite Workspaces and sharing information with your teams. This information is then available within the main Asite web application and vice-versa meaning mobile and office workers can seamlessly work together in real-time across the globe.   Where Asite mobile differs from other existing mobile applications, is that you can design your own apps to run on Asite mobile using our AppBuilder functionality. Once again, we’ll be providing some out of the box apps via our AppLibrary (such as Mobile RFIs, Mobile Defects and mobile Goods Receipting for procurement logistics) to get you started, but AppBuilder will allow you to quickly and easily design interfaces to send and receive information between mobile and office based users. Please keep an eye out for announcements regarding the formal launch of Asite cMOB in the next couple of weeks. If you wish to use any of the existing apps or start designing your own apps for Asite cMOB, or would just like a demonstration then please contact your workspace administrator or contact us directly at marketing@asite.com. 2010-04-16T11:08:09+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winners-list/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winners-list/#When:15:27:42Z Well done to all of the teams and especially those that won the Build London Live awards They are: BEST USE OF BIM FOR DESIGN, DRAMA AND EXCITEMENTKindly Sponsored By: SolibriWINNER: Team 4: Ryder Architecture   BEST MULTI-DISCIPLINARY BIM & USE OF INTEROPERABILITYKindly Sponsored By: CADDUCTWINNER: Team 2: 3DMB    BEST USE OF BIM FOR SUSTAINABILITY OR CONSTRUCTABILITYKindly Sponsored By: SynchroWINNER: Team 6: BIM Japan   CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION & COLLABORATIONKindly Sponsored By: ArtrAWINNER: Team 7: Super Team Singapore   JUDGES DISCRETIONARY PRIZE Kindly Sponsored By: OctagaWINNER: Team 3: 3D Blueprint     THE JEFF WIX 2009 BUILD LONDON LIVE AWARD Kindly Sponsored By: TeklaWINNER: Team 6: BIM Japan     2009-12-18T15:27:42+00:00