CU1711

EVENTfocus
individual storage and archival
requirements. When architects and
contractors are subsequently chosen, the
information they create is added to the list
as BIM data.
To make sense of what is happening
within a project at any time - to see whether
it is on time or budget - information has to
be collated from a number of different
sources and applications, in different
formats and in different types of media, in
order to produce an accurate report. IFS
believes that the best way to accomplish
this is to provide an all-embracing
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
document that collates the information from
all sources and uses it to populate reports,
dashboards and other distributable
information templates to keep every
member of a project up to date. This can
require considerable analysis of an
organisation’s requirements and practices,
and you have to ensure all project
members are on board - but you will end
up with an all-embracing, efficient and costeffective
management solution.
REUSE OF EXISTING DATA
Newforma, on the other hand, has taken a
different approach to the problem of
managing the growing information
mountain. The accumulated information
from each project is aggregated according
to the needs of each individual department.
However, instead of requiring massive
changes within an organisation to
accommodate an all-embracing solution,
such as ERP and the various shades of
project, document and other management
solutions currently available, Newforma
proposes to reutilise the data in its existing
formats and locations, using an advanced
search engine to locate, extract and
reformat every scrap of information relating
to every information request.
Paul Daynes of Newforma concurred with
Kenny Ingram that the issue is hugely
complex, but rather than trying to shoehorn
all of a company's processes into a rigid
and proprietary database, which requires
you to migrate project data into the system
before you can search it, you connect all of
your best-in-class solutions, access project
data regardless of where it is stored, and
work the way you want to work. Instead of
breaking and rebuilding xrefs to
accommodate a centralised and uniquely
vulnerable single point of failure, Newforma
Project Center preserves BIM linkages to
reference files.
As Paul explained, no data is stored or
moved - Newforma Project Center simply
connects and creates relationships
between information and file types. This,
when all is said and done, is why we save
information: to understand what has
happened and why, and if there is an issue
to be resolved, to examine how it came
about. Uniting, or even reuniting, people
with information reduces risk, provides
transparency and accountability and
improves the decision-making process - a
simpler and more direct process.
To emphasise the benefits of this
approach, Paul presented a video from one
of the company's clients, SimpsonHaugh
and Partners, who chose the Newforma
platform for London's Battersea Power
Station project. In the video, Dave Moyes,
Information Management Partner at
SimpsonHaug, explained that "Newforma
helps me by just giving me more time to
actually do the things I want to do; to spend
with other people, looking at problems, and
talking about the practice and architecture."
And, as Paul explained at the end of his
presentation - use the recycling bin, don't
waste the information you already have.
GODZILLA!
The final presentation of the morning gave
Stefan Mordu of AECOM the opportunity to
introduce us to the awesome destructive
power of Godzilla! Godzilla is, of course,
the iconic monster from Japanese film and
TV that periodically emerges up from the
depths to destroy urban landscapes -
symbolic of the sort of seismic events that
you can't actually plan for!
Stefan also brought attendees up to
speed on the trends that will affect the
construction industry over the next 20 or 30
years, and which will fundamentally change
the way we design and build our
infrastructure. This is a huge subject in itself,
and proved so popular with our attendees
that we are giving space to Stefan in the
next issue to expand on it further. We will
also explore the issues raised in the Q & A
session in our Jan/Feb edition.
www.constructioncomputing.co.uk/seminar
November/December 2017 19