Engineers Australia
Weblogics announces new Transmittals management software.
Parkview Developments have been using new software called ‘Blueprint’ to manage transmittals and subcontractor collaboration for the development of the new Hamilton Island Yacht Club. Blueprint enables Parkview to coordinate drawing and document revisions/updates with sub-contractor teams working on this iconic new building, recently opened by Qld premier, Anna Bligh.
The software is developed by IT company Weblogics Australia, which specialise in knowledge management, document management and business process automation.
Parkview had major input into the design of Blueprint, as it was already using Weblogics’ Intralogic to manage internal document, administration and workflow, and liked the way that system organised their information assets and staff access. The new Blueprint system is based on Intralogic but focuses on external collaboration, ensuring partners are ‘on the same page’ with drawing and document revisions, and that all transmittals and communications are auditable.
As the need for effective transmittal management arose Parkview wanted a system they could purchase one-off, rather than pay-per-project or pay-per-month, and also a system they could install on their servers. The only alternatives required Parkview to move large volumes of drawings off-site. Parkview already had a sophisticated drawing management system, with Weblogics Intralogic software overlaying a server infrastructure in Sydney and ‘virtual’ servers in other states and Northern Queensland. The ‘virtual’ servers allow fast local access using Microsoft’s Distributed File System, with source copies of all files held in Sydney.
Other users of Blueprint include EPM Projects and the Tasmanian Irrigation Development Board.
Weblogics’ Jon Harris believes that intranet (web-based) document management and control, along with business process automation (electronic forms integrated with workflow processing) is set to explode because engineers need access everywhere, staff need full access to systems in remote locations, at home on weekends or even on holidays.
With geographically dispersed organisations, staff located around the globe must have controlled document accessibility and business processes as if they were all in the head office. Providing knowledge management to these virtual teams ensures the organisation is getting full value from its people. ‘Its not just those information assets, documents, drawing libraries, etc, it’s also the value of correspondence and audit trails e.g. when you are exposed to litigation, an all too common end game in any building project’ says Harris.