Here are some interesting web tools, and one thing on the horizon, that promise to make the flow of construction project information quicker and more accurate.
If you’ve been thinking about bringing together all of your communications efforts there are some companies that are making that easier. The idea is to have all of the information about a project readily accessible to all the people who need access to that information. Construction is an especially onerous business to do that with since there are so many document variables. Still, it appears some are taming what would otherwise be a fairly tangled mess.
Projectmates is online project management software that claims to allow internal and external teams to share drawings, documents, meeting minutes, discussions, budgets, invoices and more with just a web browser. This is a seven-year old product that uses 40 different modules and is available to rent on a per-project basis, or with a dedicated server provided by them, or as an in-house solution that you purchase. From a wireless perspective it works with Blackberry, Palm and Microsoft Mobile 5.0.
Embracemobile says that recent reports claim 25 percent of construction costs can be eliminated by the efficient transfer of information. The company uses a platform that combines wireless, web and palm technology (they use that in lower case so I’m assuming they mean handheld devices in general) to enable remote workers to access and supply information in real time. The company claims you will enjoy benefits like the elimination of phone tag; having more accurate and timely data; having fluid items like reports and schedules accessible in real time; admin staff freed from data entry and sending information; and reduced travel to and from sites.
Esquiggles says you can increase productivity by 20 percent per day by incorporating remote data entry that updates things in real time. This company uses modules so you can select the level of sophistication you want. For example you could start out using an electronic data collection and client portal and later you could add the bill of materials module and others. This particular solution appears to have a very robust forms capability that includes form designing options. For creating reports and other documents the data collected can be transferred to a standard company template with the click of a button.
In the field all of these systems require at least one hand free to handle the handheld device. But a research team with the Canadian National Research Council’s Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) is working on a way to enter data using speech. They have created a multimodal field data entry (MFDE) application to help with data collection during concrete inspections. The researchers say that if workers are are using instruments or taking measurements they can use speech to enter data or information at the same time. While background noise was somewhat of a problem the researchers have gone back to the drawing board to identify a better microphone for the application. Even with the noise issue respondents claimed they were able to complete tasks faster while at the same time being able to be more aware of their environment.
