The Shared Project Network

As collaborative methods gain ground among contractors, projects will depend more on innovative software solutions.

Integrated project delivery (IPD) aims to engage all project stakeholders as early as possible in the construction process and leverage their collective expertise to avoid problems later in the project lifecycle. Technology plays an important role in the IPD process, namely to create a platform for the cooperation and coordination inherent to this project management strategy. Knowing how to integrate the right technological support with IPD can result in improved performance and final product for contractors and owners alike.

A large construction project is similar to an orchestra, where several different players—each with unique skills, competencies and deliverables—come together to achieve a unified goal. However, from a software angle, construction often lacks the same unity one sees during a concert performance. Whereas a cello, violin and piano can come together to produce a harmonized, beautiful sound, multiple project partners often operate a disparate patchwork of software systems that have trouble working in unison. Customized data bridges and adapters often hold these disparate systems together, but with difficulties. As a result, custom bridges don’t fully eliminate the need for multiple data entry.

A Patchwork of Systems
There are two main reasons why construction projects feature several software solutions. The first reason is functionality. Given the scope of most large scale construction and capital projects, very few software tools are available on the market that offer holistic support for entire projects. As a result, the majority of existing software tools either focus on specific project functions, phases or players within the project ecosystem.

The second reason for multi-system projects is price. Total software costs—including implementation and licenses—can run from a few thousand dollars to more than a million dollars, depending on the provider and the scope of a product’s functionality. The smaller players on a given project can’t afford to purchase more expensive software systems; they opt for lower-cost systems, even if they are forced to sacrifice functionality that they need. Conversely, large project owners and general contractors often purchase expensive systems that offer functionality they do not require.

The Project Ecosystem
A project ecosystem powered by cloud technology answers the existing problems with project management software. In a project ecosystem, each partner on a project can deploy the same concept-to-asset SaaS solution, in a version that has been uniquely tailored to individual project roles. In addition, elastic cloud hosting empowers users to get new projects up and running within hours. Cloud delivery not only drastically reduces the need for in-house servers, additional hardware and system administration, but also ensures that each project partner is paying for the appropriate functionality.

Real time integration (RTI), the central component of the project ecosystem, resolves the interoperability issues described above. RTI tags data by creating connections between each system. Partners can then transfer data bi-directionally with no loss of information and no need for re-entry. When one system sends project information to another, all databases are automatically updated, ensuring that project data is always up-to-date. This facilitates collaboration among all project partners.

Cloud delivery also gives users an additional dimension of flexibility—the option of per-project licensing. In a traditional silo-based system arrangement, project-to-project flexibility is compromised because existing systems can’t be changed when a user moves from one project to the next. Thanks to the turnkey nature of elastic cloud-enabled software, project ecosystems give users the flexibility to turn their system on and off as projects start and finish. In effect, users enjoy a pay-as-you-go system where no costs are incurred during downtime.

The project ecosystem’s flexible approach stands in stark contrast to traditional arrangements, where software purchases were permanent and, as a result, helped pre-determine future engagements. When combined with lowered hardware and administration costs, per-project licensing gives ecosystem partners the flexibility to get in and out of projects fast.

Securing the Ecosystem
Hosting sensitive project data in the cloud presents several security concerns. For the project ecosystem approach to be successful, a robust security matrix must protect data hosted in the cloud. Leading infrastructure service providers currently offer the type and range of security features required to ensure that partner data is kept secure within the project ecosystem. Instance isolation can be achieved utilizing a hypervisor and customizable firewalls should be deployed to verify all inbound traffic. Secret access keys/X.509 certificates should be requested before calls to launch and terminate instances, to change firewall parameters and to perform other functions.

These security measures will result in a significant degree of protection against traditional network security issues like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, man in the middle (MITM) attacks, IP spoofing, port scanning and packet sniffing by other tenants.

Data differentiation is also important in the project ecosystem. Despite the focus on collaboration, each project partner may own information that he or she intends to keep private. In a cloud-enabled project ecosystem, the absence of a centralized database means that each stakeholder maintains ownership of their data and can differentiate between private data and data to be shared within the ecosystem.

A Contractor’s Perspective
The project ecosystem approach significantly lowers project delivery costs for general contractors, ultimately making them more competitive. General contractors no longer need to manually enter data into a project owner’s system. Furthermore, ecosystem-based software solutions allow general contractors to tell project owner, subcontractors and other third parties what software functionality they really need for a given project. Empowering contractors in this way allows them to lower software costs for project owner, subcontractor and other third parties which ultimately improves the contractor-partner relationship.