We were recently involved in the selection process by a large East Coast municipality of a construction management information system. During the technical interviews, the department’s software Architect wanted to know if data could be transmitted unencrypted to speed up performance.  Our answer was absolutely not, and why would anyone want to do this? His use case was field personnel working on cellular Internet access or public Wi-Fi systems could experience performance problems due to the additional overhead of encryption. We found this question very troubling considering the data our clients move should be protected at all costs. Drawings, photographs, specifications, security plans, and all the other project data of client projects should never be transmitted unencrypted, especially over public Wi-Fi networks. He went on to explain that he did this to improve performance from the end users perspective. This is obviously a case of trying to compensate for a poorly written application and lack of knowledge by the department’s Architect. With today’s Internet and computer speeds increasing every day and the constant threat of hacking and information theft, data should be encrypted at all times. The overhead cost to perform encryption on all communications is incredibly small compared to the cost of compromising or losing your data. Many of our clients operate in rural sites using cellular access, satellite access and fixed line wireless without our security impacting their performance.  To put into perspective the low performance cost compared to the security benefit, even Facebook and twitter encrypt user data being transmitted from the end user back to their servers. And most of this data has no security value beyond celebrity gossip.  This is a classic case of an IT executive having no idea what their end users are doing and protecting their turf at the expense of user productivity and data security.

Today’s projects are increasing in complexity and size with ever tighter budgets requiring teams be more efficient with scarce resources. Whether they are project superintendents working for the Contractor or Inspectors working for the Construction Manager, these highly skilled individuals need to remain productive. Having access to the right information in real time is crucial to completing projects on time and within budget. This means eliminating wasted time walking to and from field offices to retrieve drawings, RFI, Submittals and inspections as well as eliminating the volumes of paperwork they must carry and search through in completing inspections, daily reports, time cards, and quality control procedures. With the advent of tablet computers, teams in the field have real time access to every piece of project information  with the tap of a button.  Field personnel now have instant access to the volumes of information that used to be stored in large filing cabinets. As soon as an Engineer issues a change, the field is notified immediately, allowing them to respond quickly and reducing the potential for delays. Responses to RFIs and submittals are provided directly to the field, eliminating the lag time associated with processing them through field office personnel. Not only can Contractors and Construction Managers improve field personnel efficiency, but they are also able to reduce office staff, office space, and the cost of generating the traditional mountains of paper required to support the field team. With every member of the team accessing EADOC’s collaborative construction project management application, project teams are ensuring that the right information is in the right place at the right time every time.

Evaluation Criteria for Web Based Construction Project Management Applications

EADOC has developed this guide as a way to assist Facility Owners and CM/PM firms in evaluating project management applications. This guide is based on experience evaluating software applications for our own use as well as our experience selling the EADOC project management application. This guide is only intended to be a starting point for organizations looking to evaluate project management applications for capital projects. You can request a pdf version of the guide by contacting EADOC through our website or emailing sales@eadocsoftware.com

Defining The Objectives
Before researching project management applications you need to define your objectives for the software you are looking to procure.
Consider size and types of projects or programs you are looking to use the application on. If you are a CM/PM firm, you need to look at the types of client projects you work on in establishing your criteria. Are you looking to standardize on a single application or select a couple of tools that fit your various types of projects?
Core Functionality Areas
Document Management

• Track and control all your project documents or just some of them?
• Submittals, RFI’s, Inspector Daily Reports, Meeting Agendas/Minutes, Quality Control, Special Inspections, Punch List, etc

Financial Management

• Budgets, Funding Sources, Change Orders, Pay Estimates, Allowance Orders, and Risk items are standard construction management finance module functionality.

Schedule Management

• Integrate with MS Project and P6 or build schedules within the application.

Collaboration

• Are you looking to have project participants actively participate in the system? For example Contractors and their subs are uploading submittals, RFIs, and pay application into the application for you to review.
• Are you looking to have every project participant using the system? Consider Specialty Testing firms, Environmental consultants, stakeholders, and the public.
• Be sure to define your expectations carefully here as many vendors market their software as collaborative but they provide the same level of control and functionality as an FTP site.

Paperless Projects
If you are looking to truly go paperless then you will need to select an application with strong collaboration functionality.

• Also consider support for digital signatures
• Workflow enabled Payment applications and change order process.

Customizable

• Customize standard forms and add new ones.
• Who makes the customizations? If made by vendor, what are the costs?
• Customize form labels, fields, and general UI nomenclature.
• Who makes the customizations? If made by vendor, what are the costs?
• Can users build their own reports? If so, do they require special training? If vendor builds reports, what are the costs?
• Can the workflow be customized? Within my firm? Across multiple organizations? Across the
  entire team?
• Can outside participants add their subs? If so, how is workflow impacted?

Ease of use and Usability

This is highly subjective and depends a lot on your ability to customize the application to meet your requirements. You will also need to balance the need for features with keeping it simple. More features and functionality in your application will typically lead to a more difficult user experience.

Training
Investigate what types of training are offered by the vendor and how long they are. This is typically a good indicator of how easy the application is to use. Training from various vendors can range from a couple hours to weeks.
Training should be done on the application after it has been configured for you. Many vendors will train users on a generic version of the application causing user frustration and leading to a poor experience. You want user training to occur on your configuration

Scalable
Can the application scale from 20 to 5,000 concurrent users? This range depends on whether or not you intend to involve all project participants or just a select few.

Reliability
Vendor SLA should stipulate scheduled down time, system availability and disaster recovery time.
The vendor should also have a hot disaster recovery site, not just tapes stored in a vault.
If you are going to be hosting the application yourself, your IT department should have a hot disaster site. Your team in New York is not going to accept an outage because there is an earthquake in California.
When was the vendor’s last unscheduled outage and how long did it last?

Security
SSL 128 or 256 bit is mandatory in today’s web environment.
Password strength should be configurable. Your team working on a highway repaving project should not have to change their password weakly because you are also working on a military base.
Vendors should provide a security statement outlining their security procedures and protocols.

End of project deliverable and data ownership
How do you get your data out of the software and delivered to the client in a format they can use without having to buy special software? Typically this can be accomplished through PDF.
Whether you buy software or subscribe to a service, you should always make sure you own the data and can retrieve it from the vendor at any time.

Cost Savings
Budgeting for software should be based on the cost savings delivered. For example, going completely digital with a collaborative application saves money by reducing headcount needed to manage project information as well as project overhead costs.
Cost savings also help sell the cost of your solution to the client if you don’t want it in your overhead cost.

Pricing
Software pricing should align with how you bill your clients and do business if you are planning to pass the cost on. There are many different models to choose from. Also make sure the vendors pricing matches your intended use. For example if you are looking for collaboration across your entire project team you do not want to purchase based on users. You want a solution that encourages you to add users and project participants. Below are a few examples:
Lump sum
Per month
Per named user or concurrent user
Per gigabit of disk space
Many other variations combining those previously listed

Selecting a software application follows the same principle of selecting an Engineering or Construction firm:  Start early, define your requirements, and invest the time up front to make an informed decision.

The software solution you select must reduce the costs of managing projects. Gone are the days of spending six figures on an Enterprise software solution that delivers dashboards, charts and gauges without providing any cost savings in labor. Many of these Enterprise class tools require you to hire additional staff to enter the data in the application that drives these reports. If all you wanted were fancy charts and reports, your staff could do this in Excel at a fraction of the cost. Today’s proactive project managers need to be looking at solutions that can be deployed quickly, reduce labor costs associated with data entry and deliver unparalleled accountability. To accomplish this, you need a collaborative project management application that captures data from your project participants. Combing the power of the Internet with today’s web based collaborative tools allows you to eliminate costly data re-entry.

The majority of the data that drives the management reports is coming from Contractors, Architects, and Engineers participating in the client’s projects. Traditionally, this data was exchanged through email, FTP sites, and physical shipments. These methods would require every participant in the review process to manually log this data in excel spreadsheets. They would track the content and transmittal information of what was being sent through their organization. For example, CM firms would track when they received a submittal from a contractor, what the submittal contained and when they sent the submittal to the designer for review. Then when they received the comments back from the designer, they would have to log when they received the comments and when the comments went back to the contractor. These laborious processes are no longer necessary with EADOC’s collaborative construction project management application. By capturing the submittal information directly from the contractor, the comments directly from the Engineers, and automatically recording the transmittal information, the Construction Manager no longer has to waste time logging and tracking this information. EADOC software does it all for them, freeing up resources to focus on the project and not administrative tasks.

When evaluating software solutions, most directors and managers are looking for tools that give them better visibility into how their projects are performing. They need to take into account the productivity benefits of capturing that information. It is expensive to employ an Office Engineer whose sole job purpose is to re-enter data so that the project managers and executives can have dashboard reports. With collaborative project management, the directors get their project performance reports and the project engineers can focus on the project, not data entry tasks.

ENR Mountain States Award of Merit for Civil Work Infrastructure projects has been given to the Provo Reservoir Canal Enclosure team. This $150 million project encompasses 21 miles of 126″ diameter pipe. At EADOC we take great pride whenever one of our clients receives an award and this team has done an excellent job and taken full advantage of our collaborative construction project management application. See the EADOC case study on this project.
The ENR article can be found here ENR Mountain States Article