Interoperability On Display
December 15, 2008
As budgets continue to tighten for contractors, the need to do more with less when it comes to technology is very apparent. This requires technology vendors to step up efforts to fulfill on promises made on such things as interoperability between disparate applications.
Of course that can often be easier said than done. Interoperability is an initiative that the industry has struggled with for quite some time. Still good progress has been made on this front throughout the past year, and this week the construction industry could get a glimpse into the fruits of these labors.
On December 10, Penta Technologies, www.penta.com, Brookfield, Wis., and e-Builder, www.e-builder.net, Plantation, Fla. will demonstrate the capabilities of agcXML at the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) buildingSMART alliance National Conference, co-located with Ecobuild/AEC-ST Fall at the Washington Convention Center.
Funded and led by AGC (Associated General Contractors of America), www.agc.org, Arlington, Va., and managed under contract with AGC and NIBS, www.nibs.org, Washington, D.C., agcXML involves developing a set of XML (extensible markup language) schemas and standards for the exchange of construction business process and document information. This includes things like contracts, subcontracts, RFIs, submittals, change orders—all the daily activity that takes place between project constituents.
Michael Tardiff, project manager, agcXML, says the group “polished off” final draft deliverables and planned to submit these to the review and validation committee for a 30-day review during December.
“A lot of contractors find themselves in situations where an owner will mandate a particular project management application for a project, but they may have standardized on a different application internally,” says Tardiff. “This should enable anyone in the industry to use whatever application they consider to be suitable for their organization or for their particular tasks and still be able to exchange info with business partners.”
One example involves a general contractor issuing a RFI (request for information) in its project management system. The architect receives the RFI (via Web services) on the dashboard of its portfolio project management system. A workflow gets executed, sent to the appropriate person for action, and then sent back to the general contractor’s project management system. The data is moved efficiently between the two systems because they are both working within the confines of a standard form of transmitting information.
“When I visit our customers’ jobsites, the majority of what they are doing is just a tremendous expediting function,” says Kurt Koenig, executive vice president and cofounder, Penta Technologies. “A superintendent will walk in and say we cannot move forward because ‘x’ did not show up, so we need an answer from an architect, so we issue an RFI, and start juggling coordination efforts. (agcXML) is driven towards making their lives easier and streamlining that information exchange process across the project team.”
Jon Antevy, founder and CEO, e-Builder, calls this an important step towards making interoperability a reality. He says the companies are looking forward to hearing feedback from the industry on the overall process.
Naturally, no one is expecting this to instantly solve all challenges associated with information exchange in construction. It is, however, an important first step in the process.
Of course, any wide-sweeping change will require more and more vendors to adopt these schemas (a few have already announced XML-related products). And the one thing that will continue to prompt other similar types of solutions will be demand—from end users.
One can’t help wonder that if the industry does indeed witness a highly successful demonstration on December 10, how soon will it be before they call up their current technology providers to demand the same functionality?