Steffian Bradley Architects

13.02.2010

Award-winning firm frees up time to focus on design

Newforma project information management software reduces administrative burden and streamlines operations to enable professionals to focus on higher-value tasks and better design.

Steffian Bradley Architects Associate Bevan Badenhorst had much to gain personally from adopting Newforma Project Center software for project information management.

Bevan is the information systems and CAD manager for SBA’s London, U.K., office. Before Newforma Project Center came on the scene, the office kept all emails in Outlook Exchange Public Folders, which Bevan archived monthly.

It was up to Bevan to fulfill requests to find old emails. He got lots of requests.

Fortunately, Newforma software makes email management a simple matter for everyone in the firm. Bevan is free of the chore of retrieving old emails, and everyone in the firm now has ready access to any past project correspondence and the knowledge it contains.

Filing email: just because it’s required, it doesn’t have to be difficult

Another bonus of Newforma Project Center’s email management capabilities: It’s easy to file email and attachments together, as the law demands. Users drag and drop email to the appropriate project folder. Attachments stay connected to the email.

Newforma’s search capabilities make it easy and fast to retrieve information. It indexes text even when it’s deeply buried, such as on an X-reference of a DWG file inside a ZIP file attached to an email!

SBA’s favorite functionalities

After 18 months using Newforma Project Center, Steffian Bradley team members list their favorite activity centers, in alphabetical order:

• Action Items
• Compare
• Custom Activities
• Document Sets
• Markup Sessions
• Newforma Info Exchange
• Project Email
• Snapshot

Project managers depend on Newforma Action Item functionality

The Action Items activity center, says Bevan, is like Outlook Tasks on steroids. Newforma’s Action Items activity center permits project managers to assign tasks, track progress and follow up automatically, all with Outlook email. It’s simple, quick and effective, engaging the power of the team in the solution of success-critical project issues.

Make sure people don’t take reminders as scolding!

Project managers have made Action Items a central topic in their fortnightly discussions of project information management best practices, Bevan said. For example, they love having an easy way to assign, log and track issues, but they need to make sure team members don’t mistake the software’s periodic follow-up emails for disciplinary action!

Do you really want one presentation in multiple folders?

The Document Sets activity center address the clutter and confusion presented by duplicate files created for different purposes, a problem that prompted a project manager to ask, Why do we have the same presentation in so many different folders?

Rather than duplicate the files, Newforma’s Document Sets activity center permit the creation of virtual folders that pull files from different sources for use in specific applications. For example, Bevan put together a set of reference documents for people who needed to implement Codebook Remote on their project.

I also used the Snapshot and Markup functions in the course of creating instructions for configuring Codebook Remote, Bevan said. Newforma Project Center slashed the time to complete that task.

Newforma Info Exchange makes large file transfers easy and secure, and logs all transactions

Newforma Info Exchange is the file transfer and send/receive log component of the Newforma solution. It doesn’t need to be set up by the IT department, as FTP servers do, and it’s essential for large file transfers. I sent a 1 gigabyte transmittal to Vietnam that I couldn’t have done effectively any other way, Bevan said.

Trust, but verify

A contractor’s engineering consultant said he did not complete a task because he’d never been sent key information. The project manager pulled a Newforma Info Exchange report showing when the consultant had downloaded the information in question. The issue was resolved on the spot.

Demonstrating knowledge to prospective clients

SBA is developing a standards project as a source of pre-approved standard details, generic hospital room layouts, and more, to function as a training tool for new staff and a marketing tool to prospective clients, demonstrating how they’ve captured firm-wide knowledge for the benefit of all involved. Newforma Project Center plays a key role in the creation and management of this information resource.

A project does not have to be a structure

You don’t have to be working on a building to take advantage of Newforma Project Center’s ability to streamline operations. SBA has created separate projects for the information technology team, for the marketing team, and for the London office as a whole. Team members file email, transfer files, track action items and more using their department’s project.

Holding together the information that forms the core of the enterprise

Bevan sums up relationship of Newforma Project Center to SBA project information: Project information is at the centre of everything we do, Bevan says. Newforma Project Center is the web that wraps around that nut of information, and holds it all together.

About Steffian Bradley Architects

Steffian Bradley Architects international practice has offices in the United Kingdom, United States, Spain and China. Originally established in Boston, U.S.A., in 1932, the London office opened in 2002. SBA’s design-led practice specialises in public sector buildings that are environmentally and socially responsible, enriching and respecting the communities they serve. SBA’s award-winning designs are imaginative, intelligent and rational, reflecting an ability to interpret complex briefs for both present and future use.

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