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AEC Software by the Clock (AEC Insight Column)
1 Nov, 2008 By: Jerry LaiserinAs time progresses, applications emerge, companies merge, and software gets better.
The technological history of software has been an inexorable march from lower-level functions operationally close to the underlying computer hardware toward higher functions that have become closer to human interaction. Viewed from a business perspective, the history of software development exhibits a similar march from general-purpose tools for horizontal applications such as drafting, word processing, and bookkeeping/accounting to vertical-market, or industry-specific functions, such as architectural CAD, specifications writing, and integrated AEC job-cost and project management.
At the same time, it is a business imperative for software companies to expand and enhance their product offerings for sustained corporate sales growth. This goal often results in mergers between companies that have adjacent or complementary applications or in the emergence of new companies offering previously unavailable mix-and-match functionality.
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Syncopated Clock
To understand how these trends produced the current market landscape for AEC software, envision a diagram like the face of a clock with distinct AEC business functions occupying the spots for each of the twelve hours (figure 1).Collectively, these software functions correspond to the principal business applications used by most design firms. Progression around the metaphorical clock also represents progression of information in a typical project lifecycle.
 Figure 1. The AEC software market is like a clock, with different product functions representing each hour. |
At one o'clock is a time-and-expense program, because most design firms account for employee time as a primary project resource even if the firm does not bill by the hour. In the two o'clock position is a financial-management system (FMS), which is similar to a black box that turns time sheets into invoices and project reports. Three o'clock holds a program for managing project histories and costs. The four o'clock slot contains a contact-management program that records past, present, and future client data. Down at five o'clock, a business-development program helps combine project history data, contact information, and images of past and present projects to generate proposals. Some five o'clock images are photos of completed projects, and others come from CAD software at seven o'clock; various graphics processing and illustration software programs bridge the gap at six o'clock. Beyond CAD are specifications and building product information at eight o'clock, followed at nine o'clock by software for codes, standards, and contracts. Managing project information during construction administration is the role of software at the ten o'clock position, which leads to resource-based scheduling at eleven o'clock. True project management holds the twelve o'clock position, bridging resource management at eleven and timekeeping at one.
Many of the programs around the perimeter of this clockface share — or should share — data with each other; for example, the same client information will appear in financial software, project histories, contact database, past proposals, CAD drawing title blocks, specifications files, contracts, and the voluminous documentation generated by construction administration. Thus, the center of the clock diagram is occupied by one or more databases that record and, ideally, coordinate this data. Progressive firms may have an intranet or web-like internal network as a ring or buffer between the various user-facing software applications and the central data store. Nearly all firms today are metaphorically surrounded by the Internet, e-mail, and other messaging media, which is how design firms and their software communicate with the outside world of clients, consultants, and contractors.
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About the Author: Jerry Laiserin
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