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THE BUSINESS BENEFITS OF HUMBLE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
CONJECT has a lot of experience in this field of course, having been frontrunners in project collaboration/extranets in the early 2000s, when web-based document management and all of the ancillary processes were in their infancy. Since then, every project and process management application seems to have some form of file or document management incorporated within it, providing the ability to save, search for and share files and to maintain appropriate revision levels in documents.

Poor governance over documents and files will most likely mean teams will struggle to deliver their projects on time and to budget. But will great governance over documents and files make a difference in today's competitive world?

MANAGING CONTRACTS, COSTS & CHANGE IMPROVES COMPETITIVENESS
CONJECT has taken simple document and file management and leveraged the data available to manage programme expenditure and quality, enabling users to, in effect, 'manage the business'.

The only way you can go from handling a couple of hundred transactions to efficiently managing many thousands is to do it in a structured manner. That requires setting up and being able to implement robust, repeatable processes within a framework that offers visibility to those that need it.

For example, if an architect needs to set up another floor in a building, for which the contractor needs to guarantee a price and agree a tender, CONJECT can manage all communications and approvals between stakeholders. As the discussions progress the impact of provisional and final agreed changes can be assessed across time, cost and quality - all in one place.

CONJECT hasn't taken over time and cost analysis - this is more than adequately handled by solutions like Primavera - but rather collects the information from this and similar systems and combines it with actual cost and quality data to provide a more accurate picture of current status and future forecasts. Access to real-time data improves the decision making ability of project based commercial teams.

This leads to another real benefit: risk management, where potential risks to profitability can be assessed at any stage in the process, including for orders budgeted but not placed, matching them with key project milestones.

BIM and the benefits of mobile computing
BIM, together with mobile computing, has highlighted the wealth of information contained in many different data sources throughout the life of an asset; from design, through build, and into the operate phases. With the explosion in the amount of information available, there is a consequential need to access and present that data in many different formats. The influx of data comes earlier in the design cycle and continues throughout construction, requiring delegated responsibility across teams for data capture and assimilation.

The industry faces the challenge of working out how to operate effectively with data volumes that could be hundreds of times larger than before. With a wealth of new data at their fingertips, people are starting to want to do more with it. Taking the lead again, CONJECT has started to roll out new technical components within its cloud based solution designed specifically to help customers capture, store and manage large volumes of data easily and securely.

The added complexity is that customers are now demanding that many of these activities are undertaken using a range of smart devices, making best use of their mobile workforces. To meet this need, CONJECT has also begun launching a series of mobile applications to help mobile workers do their jobs.

Asset Information Management
That's good news for the design and construction phases of a project, but Asset Information Management takes us into a whole new area. Having produced handover information, there is a large disconnect between the two parts of an asset's lifecycle. The whole process needs to be turned on its head to suit the owner/operator, which brings three key elements into play; BIM, Mobile and Integration.

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