Standardizing Ohio
April 10, 2007
Who says public owners aren’t pushing for the use of technology on construction projects? Contractors working on public projects in the state of Ohio will endure some new standards going forward, in the form of using collaborative technology.
The state of Ohio, http://das.ohio.gov, Columbus, Ohio, announced an enterprise agreement for a statewide license of Unifier, a suite of collaborative capital project management technology from Skire, www.skire.com, Menlo Park, Calif. All state-funded and state-administered agencies, including schools and universities, will now use the technology on projects. All state employees, as well as contractors and designers working on these projects will use the Skire product.
Satisfied with the financial and human resource capabilities of its existing ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, the state of Ohio went on a search for a capital project management application that would easily integrate into that system. Skire was able to integrate Unifier into the ERP system, via XML (extensible markup language), without compromising the functionality of the system.
The Unifier system will also provide all state agencies with advanced tracking, recording, monitoring, and management of capital project related data via a standard Web-based interface.
One of the caveats the state of Ohio had with implementing standardized technology for capital projects was that the system had flexibility to adapt with changes to its construction processes over time.
“One of the unique aspects (about the technology) is we are able to show users how they can make changes without any the need to know custom code or by relying on the vendor,” says Sateez Kadivar, vice president of business operations, Skire. “The one thing that is inevitable with the State of Ohio is that they will want to change things—whether it is the RFI process, change orders, or design review, for example—over time. The technology can support any type of change (in processes) downstream.”
As far as public owners implementing standard technology across projects, the state of Ohio remains in the minority. That may change, however, as the need for better cost control and visibility across projects continues to increase.