Trust is the new gold that makes collaboration work, according to this HBR article. It also makes the point that building trust takes commitment. I can relate to that.

Aconex recently achieved IS027001 certification – the gold star for information security management. This followed a 12-month internal review: of the information security management system (ISMS) and processes at Head Office and used by our tech team, as well as of some of our third party hosted environments.

An ISMS helps determine how information is handled and ours was evaluated for:

• Confidentiality: only those authorized to see the information have access
• Integrity: accuracy and completeness are safeguarded by robust sourcing, processing, updating and storage processes
• Availability: authorized users have access to information when they need it.

But why go through such a rigorous process to prove Aconex offers a higher level of information security than most businesses could achieve in their own right? Because we believe that neutral online collaboration can transform the way people work together on projects, and because we know that exceeding the security needs of even our most demanding clients is one way of helping that to happen.

Our data hosting and disaster recovery centers in the United States are not covered by the first round of certification. They’re already among the most secure in the world and host large volumes of US Government data. Despite this, work is underway to extend the scope of our ISO27001 certification to include these in early 2012.

With this certification, the Aconex collaboration platform has set a new benchmark of trust that clients can rely on.

When you think about working on-site, what are the first thoughts that come to mind?  Is it easy to leave your desk? Is it convenient to be on location? Is your team operating as efficiently as possible outside the office?

It’s no surprise that mobility in the construction industry has been on the rise for quite some time now. Most industries at this point have recognized that to be mobile is to be efficient, and that productivity can stay intact – and even improve – if you have the right tools. Now that smartphone and mobile technologies are steadily improving, the amount of Field Service Automation (FSA) software is increasing as well. Viewing the field now, we see platforms that support automation, documenting, scheduling… in short, all the tools that on-site workers need when they first set foot on the job site, away from their desks.  That being considered, it’s no wonder that FSA software is on the rise.

In a recent feature in Construction Management Association of America’s newsletter, I posed the question, “How Mobile are your Mobile Workers?” to readers. The piece highlights the growing role that FSA software is taking, and draws attention to some statistics that I feel can’t be ignored, including this: A 2011 Constructech survey (of contractors polled) ranked Field Reporting as the most common activity done remotely. If this is the main activity, then I see adoption of FSA software only continuing to rise at this point.

Workers who are mobile, need mobile tools.

If you’re just jumping into FSA software now, here’s a check list of features to get you started on what capabilities you want to look for in your software:

• Can you schedule remotely?
• Is there work order management?
• Are your documents and mail available offline?
• Does it allow you to capture defects/information on-site in a variety of media formats? (i.e. photo, video, note, etc.)
• Do you have access to mapped out project locations?
• Does it feature a program directory you can view and then contact project users?
• Can you track time on your solution?

What other features would you like to see in FSA software?

To learn about Aconex Mobile, check out this platform tour here.

This week we added a Partner Program page to the Aconex website, dedicated to the network of partner companies that we have been building over some time. It has received extra focus this year as we have looked to partnerships to broaden our product footprint and accelerate sales growth. What we are doing with partners complements both our existing product development program and our direct sales model.

So why partner? In the case of Aconex, it reflects the nature of the markets we are in. Many (though by no means all) companies that use our online collaboration platform to manage their project information are also users of other construction or engineering IT tools. We live in an ecosystem made up of technologies and commercial relationships, not in a bubble. Partnering – with a provider of best-in-class cost management tools like Ecosys, or with a successful reseller of complementary products such as IMS – expands the value that we can offer to our clients and will drive further growth for the partner and for Aconex.

We have ten partners in the program today. They include sales, integration and product partners and are in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Aconex is back from the 2011 Constructech Vision Awards in Chicago and we were so proud to see that two of our customers were recipients of a 2011 Constructech Vision Award, an annual recognition given to those who realize the advantages of applying innovative technologies to their everyday businesses. Congratulations to Hill International and Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD)!

For some great 3-minute videos with Aconex award winners, go here.

(L-R), Michael Brothers and Jenny Huang – Hill International, Brian Starck – RTD Denver, Shawn Pressley – Hill International, Lisa Alvarado – RTD Denver, Katie Hall and Doug Schmoe – Aconex

By deploying Aconex, Hill International and RTD created the best-of-breed technology to achieve the benefits that Constructech chose to recognize this year. The only award given in the AEC/Design category was given to Hill International, who took home the Gold Vision Award for their innovative combination of technology and project management practices on the Reconstruction of the 200-Year Old New York City Hall. Meanwhile, RTD was awarded the Team Award, a win given to only one project team that has experienced considerable success with using leading-edge technology specifically on one single project or program.  This particular program RTD won for was the $6.8 Billion FasTracks transit improvement program. Aconex was even honored by Constructech, highlighted as the technology that enabled our clients’ successes.

In addition to being part of the annual awards, Aconex attended and was a proud sponsor of Constructech’s coinciding event, Technology Day 2011.

The two days in Chicago brought together builders, contractors, educators and solution providers to create a forum for identifying and analyzing the most crucial topics in the marketplace today. It gave industry professionals answers and insight into their technology questions. We were surrounded by innovative technologies and inspiring sessions:

Students and construction organizations enjoyed Purdue University’s keynote presentation on how to bring good business processes to future workplaces and the technologies that best support construction project collaboration

Brian Starck of RTD explains the complexity of a $6.7 Billion transit program comprised of dozens of projects.

Thanks again to Constructech for the wonderful event, we enjoyed every moment and look forward to seeing where these celebrated innovations take our industry next year.

Last week we announced that Lori Beedle will join Aconex in the newly-created position of Sr VP of Sales & Marketing. It’s an exciting role, at an exciting time for Aconex, and Lori brings a record of success in senior positions at Dell, Microsoft and Oracle.

The job has global responsibility and is based in our San Francisco office, which supports our strategic focus on the Americas, where we approximately doubled bookings last year.

Why make this high profile appointment now? In short, because we see an opportunity to accelerate growth in our key markets, and across the verticals we target: construction, infrastructure, energy and resources. The construction sector in many countries may not yet have rebounded from the GFC, but the other verticals are strong. And across all sectors, we are seeing more and more companies adopting online project collaboration as they seek to manage their projects better.

I’m excited to welcome Lori to our management team as we embark on the next stage of our growth.

Disputes and extension of time claims average 10.7% of contract price, according to CRC Construction Innovation, an Australian research organization (Guide to Leading Practice for Dispute Avoidance and Resolution, 2009).

A separate survey of 190 projects worth $20 billion (Scope for improvement, A survey of pressure points in Australian construction and infrastructure projects, 2006), identified the issues typically in dispute, including variations to scope (47% of the time), contract interpretation (38%), extension of time claims (33%), and site conditions (19%). In each dispute, there are direct costs for legal arbitration and litigation consultants, and indirect costs associated with delay, wasted effort, lower staff morale, and less trust and confidence among parties.

The good news is that many disputes are avoidable. An online project collaboration platform like Aconex ensures that everyone involved in a project works from the same, up-to-date information, reducing the possibility of work based on out-of-date specifications. In addition, Aconex creates a complete—and completely neutral and independent—audit trail, ensuring that even if a dispute arises, everyone has access to the same set of facts.

The 12,000 projects we have helped manage yield many examples. An Aconex client, a large utility company, was working on a small power project. Very early in the project, the client raised a variation. At a later time, the project owner denied the variation on the grounds that it had not been raised within the permissible window. Knowing that Aconex keeps a complete audit trail, the client easily proved that the variation had been raised within the window, forcing the owner to allow it. Finding this one bit of corroborating data in a single piece of correspondence among thousands of records actually paid for the use of the Aconex platform on the project!

Another client eliminated the 12-month cost of a dispute-resolution team, a saving of $500,000, because they encountered so few disputes on their project.

In the complex, high-pressure world of construction and engineering projects, nothing will ever eliminate any chance of disputes, but by ensuring every team has the latest information and by keeping a complete, neutral audit trail, Aconex clients can slash risks and costs.

The following may sound and feel a bit like a parable made up to convey a warning, but it’s a 100 percent true story.

A major mining company invested several years and tens of millions of dollars on a massive feasibility study of a mineral deposit. When the study was complete, the company decided not to pursue the project. The vendor that conducted the study provided the relevant documents (over 50,000 of them!) to the company on a portable hard drive.

Some years later, the mining company recognized that the mineral deposit did indeed offer a significant opportunity and decided to reinstate the project. There was just one problem. No one in the company could locate the hard drive. No employee had it, and the information had never been transferred to a PC or server.

The company was staring at years of effort and tens of millions of dollars wasted, not to mention a major violation of the company’s data archiving policy and the possibility of missing out on a significant revenue opportunity.

In desperation, the project director began calling former employees and finally located a retiree who thought he might have some of the information…somewhere. After rummaging around his house, he finally found the hard drive in a box in his basement. Fortunately, it was dry and in workable condition, and the mining company recovered all of the documents.

The fact that this is a true story makes the following “lessons” even more relevant:

• Thanks to advances in technology, today’s companies never need to put themselves in such a precarious situation.
• Only by automating the creation of a comprehensive project data archive can companies be sure of meeting their corporate and regulatory requirements for data retention, security, and privacy.
• SaaS solutions enable companies to ensure that all project data is automatically stored in a highly safe and secure environment.
• By investing in the right cost-effective technology solution, you can reduce both risk and long-term costs.
• Relying on former employees to find AWOL hard disks in their basements may succeed on occasion, but of course it is not a strategy to bet the company’s future on.

One of the challenges in a fast-growing business is to get everyone aligned around a common purpose. For Aconex, that  purpose is to transform the way our customers manage their construction and engineering projects. Getting there can involve explaining the value of online project collaboration, communicating what’s different about the Aconex approach and, of course,  understanding the needs of a client and mapping what we offer to those needs. Doing that well, so that the buyer has a positive and useful experience,  takes some thought and effort.

So we’re excited to have been named this week as one of ten winners in the DemandGen Report 2011 Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards.

On one level, it’s recognition of the work our sales and marketing people do to create awareness of our solution, generate demand, and then engage with prospects to bring them over the line. (Much of what we do in that area is with the support of the team at Marketo, whose marketing automation platform, processes and ideas we are big fans of!).

On another level, though, the most exciting thing about winning a DemandGen award is that that it points to the growing demand we’re seeing, in the US and other markets, for online project collaboration. Marketing tools and sales strategies can only be effective if prospects are researching and buying. Although many markets are still climbing back from the lows of the past three years, we’re seeing signs that the leading owners, project managers and contractors are doing just that.

ENR Mountain States reported last week that the team building the 23-mile link from downtown to Denver International Airport expects the project  to come in 11 months early and $300m under budget. It’s one of many Denver, CO, transit projects being managed on the Aconex platform.

The project is being designed and delivered by a team that includes Fluor, Macquarie Capital, Ames Construction, and Balfour Beatty Rail, which will also operate the rail line on completion.

We recently interviewed Greg Straight, Design/Build Project Manager, and Lisa Alvarado, Document Control Manager, at Denver Regional Transit District. In these videos, Greg  discusses how fast implementation, platform neutrality and complete data capture are creating time and cost savings as well as reduced risk for RTD and its stakeholders, while Lisa describes how use of Aconex is dramatically improving information transfer and keeping project team members up-to-date.

The best projects make decisions three times faster than average!

Any project manager knows that the speed at which project teams can make decisions is a major driver of the ultimate success of a project.  Efficient decision making not only helps you meet your project schedule, it also helps you improve the quality of the delivered asset.

We have already seen in a previous blog post how the average RFI turnaround time on the Aconex collaboration platform is eight days compared to 14 days for the industry, and that top quartile projects can turn RFIs around in an impressive 4.6 days, or 43% faster than average.

RFI turnaround time is one measure of the speed of decision making.  Another is the time it takes to complete the approval steps in workflows across the project.

Data on workflows performance, aggregated across all 12,000 projects that Aconex has supported, show that the average project takes just over 4 days to complete a step in a workflow, for a total of 12.5 days for a typical three-step approval process.  Trying to complete this using traditional hard copy processes, email or internal software can take much longer.  Only web-based multi-party project collaboration lets you process decisions this quickly.

What is even more impressive is that the best performing projects (top quartile projects) on Aconex are completing these workflow approvals in just 1.3 days per step (or a stunning four days for a typical three step approval).  These project teams are saving eight working days, or over a week and a half, on each decision they make. For longer, more complex workflows, the reduction in elapsed decision making time is even greater.

Another way to look at it is that top quartile projects, make decisions 3 times faster than the average project.  Imagine the impact this would have on your project delivery times and quality.

If you are already an Aconex client, consider benchmarking your decision making performance across your projects and against industry best practice.

See also previous posts on workflows:

Workflow usage doubling each year on Aconex

Improving project decision making