online project management system 1

Online Project Management System 1

The Development of a Construction

Online Project Management System

Kevin P. Hicks and Jacob D. Whiting

Auburn University


Abstact

Technological decisions have a driving impact on the construction industry. As technology improves and

becomes more economical, contractors find themselves purchasing and implementing it on a frequent and extensive

basis. However, the construction industry continues to find itself as last in the pack for implementing technology.

The aspect of the construction process that has most drastically changed in recent years due to

technological advances is the project management process. Over the past 5 years, the Internet has given birth to the

future of project management by providing online project management systems. These systems are provided as

Application Service Providers (ASP) or by housing the necessary technology within the company to achieve and

manage the same type of system. To date, the vast majority of construction companies subscribe to an ASP for this

service.

The decision of which path to choose is the heart of this study. The company profiled is a traditional

construction company that has made a unique choice within the construction realm by choosing to design, develop,

implement, and maintain their own online project management system. This along with the specific advantages and

disadvantages is portrayed to give light as to why this remains a fairly unexplored option by many construction

firms.

The Company

Brice Building is a general contracting firm based in Birmingham, Alabama. It was established in 1931,

and has expanded to other Southeast locations within the United States. It boasts six hundred and fifty employees

and a low turnover rate. The company claims to be in the forefront of technological advances in the construction

industry providing it a competitive edge (Brice History, n.d.).

Ashley Colburn is the contact person at Brice that has overseen the proceedings of this project. Colburn is

a former project manager for Brice. When the decision to develop an online project management system was made,

the original project manager was an IT Brice employee with little construction experience. Colburn, through

personal interests, had an extensive enough knowledge of IT that he was asked to oversee the management of this

project. This led to Ashley’s current position in the company as the corporate IT administrator.

In approaching this case study, we ultimately decided that interviewing only Ashley was sufficient enough

representation of Brice and the project. Additional research on existing ASP systems would be used to contrast

Brice’s in-house system. The other assumption that justified our decision to only interview Colburn was to view this


problem solely from a construction firm’s point of view and knowing that most owners, architects, engineers,

contractors, and subcontractors are now accustomed to dealing with online project management systems.

The Case Study

The case study has is staged in a timeline approach to fully understand the process that Brice went through

to accomplish the task of developing their online project management system. The timeline below links to the

individual stages. Each stage provides a written, detailed outline of how the story unfolds. Embedded in each page

are pictures, graphics, and streaming video clips of the interviews with Ashley Colburn.

In addition to the timeline, another page evaluates the current online project management scene within the

construction industry. This portion of the project helps understand what the technological and construction trends

are at the moment, and where they are headed. It indicates what companies need to know to be aware of today’s

versatile technological market.

Original Project Management System

In the early 1990’s, Brice made a monumental move in its current project management system that would

later affect an array of decisions within the company’s goals to administer its jobs. The project management system

had limited capabilities that the company wanted to improve.

The main objective that Brice wanted to accomplish was to develop a system that would allow their

accounting and estimating system to communicate with the project management system. Ultimately, project

managers wanted to see the budgeted or estimated costs on one-half of the screen while simultaneously seeing the

real time cost-to-date comparisons. This would allow the project managers to quickly evaluate where a project

stood and where profits and losses could be projected.

The research and evaluations made by Brice produced no current software programs available that had the

capabilities of integrating accounting, estimating, and project management software. There were no all

encompassing software packages.

Eventually, Brice executives decided to create a client based software application that would integrate these

different systems so as to provide the estimate and cost-to-date data on the same screen. They turned to one of their

IT employees that administered to the current IT demands of the company to develop this system.

The project management system, developed with Microsoft Access, eventually accomplished this objective.

This proved to be invaluable for Brice in being able to project their profits and losses more accurately and quickly.


Since there was no alternative for Brice in wanting to accomplish this integration of software to compare

to, there was no way to accurately produce a Return on Investment (ROI) at this stage. However, comparing to the

systems that were available at that time, minus the integration capability, Brice feels that they more than likely paid

in the red for this type of system. It was a price they felt was worth paying.

Online Project Management Research and Evaluation

In the mid-to-late 1990’s, the Internet emerged, changing the way business was done for many industries.

It has done more than that; it has reshaped many aspects of our lives. This impact of the Internet soon began to

affect project management processes.

The first of these was the idea of using a website to track the many aspects of the construction project

management processes. All who had Internet access could access a website, which would facilitate collaboration on

a project. Now, all of the involved parties of a construction project had a meeting point that was constantly

accessible, giving that one only need a computer with Internet connection.

Brice soon found itself at a Y in the road in regards to its own in-house project management system. The

system that had been created in the early 1990’s was not going to be Y2K (year 2000) compliant. This indicated to

Brice that in the near future it was going to need to upgrade its system or purchase a different one. This started the

next stage of researching and evaluating the possible options for their future project management software.

At this point in time, ASP’s had emerged, and were gaining popularity amongst the construction industry to

administer project management over the Internet. Brice also felt that to remain competitive, they too would switch

to online project management.

Additional benefits to Brice were the flexibility and freedom it would give its project managers to access

job information from remote locations. Prior to this, project managers would need to come back to the corporate or

branch headquarters to access the company network where the job information was housed.

Brice soon developed a list of all of the applications that they needed to have included in their online

project management system. This list included the ability to talk or integrate with the accounting and estimating

systems so as to continue to provide the estimates with cost-to-date projections on the same screen.

At the time, only one construction ASP was robust enough to satisfy Brice’s list, which was Constructware.

Constructware actually provided more features than Brice needed. However, the one problem was that


Constructware was not going to be able to integrate with the other systems. This would not allow for projections to

happen in real time.

Brice also had the option of continuing off of the original in-house client software and converting it to an

ASP type system. This option would mean more responsibilities on Brice’s part, but they would be able to

accomplish the necessary integration with their accounting and estimating software.

When asked whether Brice would have even considered developing an in-house system if they had not

developed the original project management system in the early 1990’s, they assumed they would not. It would have

been something too complex to consider.

However, even with the two possibilities available, and the advantage of in-house software customization

to integrate with the other systems, the two options still needed to be evaluated and compared. A return on

investment would need to justify the decision they would make.

Since Constructware is service based software, a company subscribes for its usage. Brice has a large

enough volume they evaluated the cost of attaining an enterprise license. This type of license allows for company

wide usage with unlimited users and projects. The other available options are to buy individual user licenses or

individual project licenses.

Along with the evaluation of the Constructware enterprise license, Brice also received a quote from a third

party software developer for the cost of development of an in-house system. These would provide the cost analysis

for a return on investment.

Without disclosing any numbers, by the request of Brice, the comparison of a Constructware enterprise

license to the in-house development cost was three years. In other words, three years worth of a Constructware

enterprise license in 1999 equaled the cost to develop an in-house system. After that three year mark, the

Constructware subscription would exceed the cost of the in-house system.

With these aspects being evaluated and compared, the executives at Brice made the decision that they

would develop their own project management system. This decision was made for the cost savings that would be

experienced three years down the road and also for the ability to integrate the system to provide real time estimate

and cost-to-date comparisons.

The foreseen risks at this point were many. There was a chance that after getting a ways down the road in

the design and development stage, that the whole project could fall through and Brice be out all of the invested


money as well as time. There appeared to be no predecessors to Brice in the construction industry that had

attempted something such as this. Brice therefore was basing everything on their ability to manage the project to

completion, and foresee any of these risks developing down the road.

At first, the project seemed to be headed directly in the direction of disaster and failure. The in-house

corporate IT employee, who originally developed the client project management system, was unable to properly

manage the tasks at hand, and struggled to fully understand the construction process that was determining how the

system was to be developed.

At this point is where Ashley Colburn, a current project manager for Brice, assumed the role of project

manager for the development of the in-house system. Ashley had worked for the company for a few years working

on a variety of construction projects. He brought with him an understanding of the construction process that was

needed to effectively manage the development of this system.

Colburn also had a fairly extensive understanding of IT, from personal interest. He had experimented with

web design, some data basing, and therefore Brice felt confident in turning the project over to his control. The

project was named BricePM (Brice Project Management). The objectives were revised and the process of

developing and designing the project resumed.

Design and Development of BricePM

Once Brice started into the design and development of their system, it brought to light a wide variety of

aspects to the process. With Ashley Colburn assuming the role of project manager, he had to begin to coordinate

between Brice and a third party vendor on a regular basis.

The search for vendors had already taken place during the evaluation and research stage. This search

actually began in the last quarter of 1999. The quote from the selected vendor was then received in the second

quarter of 2000. So, after the quote was received, the final decision to go in-house was made during the middle of

2000.

The actual work on BricePM began in the third quarter of 2000. One of the main roles of Colburn was to

be in charge of the design of BricePM. All of the design of the system was performed within Brice. The third party

vendor was responsible for the development alone; however, they did contribute by value engineering the design at

times.


Since the development so paralleled that of a construction project, Colburn found himself dealing with an

owner and a subcontractor, himself acting as the contractor, figuratively speaking. The owners group consisted of

senior project managers for Brice. The executives were not involved much, due to the fact that they were not and

would not be the regular users of the system. Senior project managers could represent both the executives of the

company as well as the project managers and superintendents as far as what was needed for the design to be

successful.

Colburn’s role was to then sit in weekly or biweekly meetings with the owner’s group, and interpret what

they wanted in the system. He also helped keep the owner’s requests within the parameters that were feasible in the

development of BricePM. Many times the senior project managers disagreed on the processes by with certain

features would work. Coming to a definitive process that all agreed upon was the major goal that Colburn had in

helping the owners agree upon.

On that same note of weekly and biweekly meetings, Colburn would then meet with the developers to relay

the design of the owners to them. Meetings and contact were frequent with the developers to ensure the proper

development of programming code that would correctly interpret the owner’s requests.

On occasions the developers would return after a period of writing code that would not result in the desired

outcome. This would create setbacks, where week’s worth of code would have to be redone, and the process of

meeting with owners to get their evaluation and opinion and the developers to direct them would increase. This

prolonged the development stage a good deal.

The planned delivery date for the completed BricePM system was in the second quarter of 2001. This

scheduled the project to last about nine months. However, due to the aforementioned setbacks, the actual delivery of

BricePM was in the first quarter of 2002. This prolonged the schedule by more than six months, giving an overall

project duration of about fifteen months.

During this development stage there were additional resources required within Brice for the necessary

infrastructure to launch BricePM. These included the following items: a Dell dual processor, Intel Xeon 700 MHz

Server that cost close to $8000; Sequel Server and Crystal Reports software costing roughly $3000; and finally a

dedicated T1 line that is a repetitive monthly cost for Internet access. T1 lines range anywhere from $650 to $1100

a month (DSL, n.d.).


Once the system was completed, it was implemented into the company internal network and tested before

fully implementing it with the employees and current projects. The security of the system was addressed by hiring

an Internet security agency to try and hack into the system. Fortunately, there were no gaps left open. The

company’s network was already secured with a 128 bit security.

Data was also secured previous to BricePM for the original project management system. Backup tapes

would weekly backup all of the data on the servers. There are four cartridges that contain seven backup tapes each.

The four cartridges are constantly rotated, with one cartridge being taken home every evening by one of the IT staff.

Worse case scenario is that four weeks worth of data could be lost.

These are all additional responsibilities taken on by Brice by housing their own system. This also requires

more manpower for the IT department. Prior to BricePM there was two IT staff that maintained the original system

and network. Now there is four IT staff, including Ashley Colburn. Once BricePM was up and running, about sixty

to eighty hours a week were being dedicated to the system. That consisted of one full time employee’s time and half

of two other employee’s time.

The final delivery of BricePM housed all of the capabilities to perform the necessary tasks for project

managers to properly administer their projects. These included the following: job correspondence; posting RFI’s

and schedules; creating action items; uploading job photos into the job library; writing purchase orders, change

orders, and subcontracts; and most importantly, displaying the estimated costs alongside the cost-to-date that is fully

integrated into the estimating and accounting systems.

Implementation of BricePM

Once BricePM was implemented into the company system and up and running, it was time to implement its

use in the company with the employees. This required extensive training for the project managers. The training

took place prior to the final rollout of BricePM as the company’s only project management system, phasing out the

original system Brice developed in the early 1990’s.

The employee training started in January of 2002 and continued through April of 2002. The employee

reaction to the new system was fairly good. In essence, it was the same system as the original client based system,

only it was now web-based and handled through a browser. The system was not as user-friendly as the employees

had been used to, but the menu systems were pretty much the same, along with the overall look.


The learning curve contributed greatly to the system resembling the original system. If Brice had gone

with Constructware, they would have implemented the system some fifteen months prior; however, training would

have taken much longer due to an unfamiliar system.

Project managers are the main users of the systems. Superintendents also were trained to use the system for

labor time card entry. Owners, architects, engineers, and subcontractors are also able to use the system for

collaboration.

The training for the owners, architects, engineers, and subcontractors was another consideration of

implementation. There have, and continue to be, two options in training these individuals. The overall BricePM

system is robust, but owners, architects, engineers, and subcontractors only use about twenty percent of its

capabilities, so training was somewhat simplified. These parties mainly use it to answer RFI’s (request for

information), look at action items and letters, and a few other simply actions.

The first option is that Ashley Colburn is always available to set up training meetings with any party who

so desires. This can be done at any location where the system can be accessed. The second option, which is the

preferred option, is for the project managers to train these parties. They use the system more than any other

individuals, and are most familiar with it. The training from the project managers is usually handled over the phone

and is about fifteen to twenty minutes of explaining how to navigate the system.

To date, no major problems have arisen in regards to using BricePM. Its simple menu design if

straightforward and easy for owners, architects, engineers, and subcontractors, who are already familiar with other

online systems, to use.

BricePM Evaluation

Following any type of implementation that changes the way a company’s business model works is a second

evaluation stage to gauge the efficiency and areas of improvement. This is a time when the features needing

improvement and debugging can be detected, along with the unexpected, unforeseen items that have yet to be

addressed.

Initially, BricePM was difficult to access from the Brice web homepage. The graphics were eventually

redone, and have resulted in easy access to BricePM directly off of the Brice homepage. Also, BricePM was

designed to comply with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 5.0 and above. Brice has decided to mirror their company

trends to those of Microsoft. In doing so, they do not support other browser types, such as Netscape or Opera,


whereas ASP’s need to support all browser types. Brice figured that most companies, having Microsoft operating

systems, have Internet Explorer.

One unforeseen instance involving the browser is an architect that used an Apple Macintosh computer.

This wasn’t even considered in the design phase. However, minor adjustments to his browser enabled him to access

BricePM, which was fortunate for Brice.

Another aspect of migrating to BricePM was how to handle all of the historical data in the old system.

Once BricePM was implemented into use, all new projects would start on that system, but no current projects would

be dumped over. They would finish the project on the old system. As far as losing the data, that was not the case.

An additional system was developed to analyze the old data, but the need to integrate the old data into the new

BricePM system exists. This plan on dumping the old system data into the new is going to happen at an appropriate

time in the future.

The BricePM system was not, and still is not, as robust as Constructware or some of the other major

construction ASP’s today. They offer more features than the BricePM system. Some are feature that Brice wants,

some are features they don’t need. Brice’s opinion is that they might double what they spent on the development of

BricePM to include the additional features, but that would still account for only six years of an ASP subscription

before the BricePM system would pay off.

The real return on investment for Brice is a system that is able to integrate with the estimating and

accounting systems, and give accurate, real time projections of the project profits and losses. The cost ROI is that

BricePM offers the company limitless years worth of use, along with limitless users and projects.

Future of BricePM

The future of BricePM is hinged on where Microsoft plans on going with their products. Since Microsoft is

currently making a big push to XML (extensible markup language) with its .NET initiative, Brice plans on

eventually migrating the BricePM from an in-house web-client ASP to XML. This change could take place in the

next two to three years, but will not be as large an undertaking as was the development of BricePM.

As far as completing BricePM, it is complete. However, Brice now has a master plan that is based around

BricePM, which includes a wish list of various items to be added into Brice’s overall spectrum of IT applications.

In regards to the wish list, it is about seventy-five percent complete.


These future applications include a plan room, bid solicitation online, and integrating all the historical costs

into the new system. Brice also plans on switching from MC² to Timberline for its estimating system. This is due to

the fact that their current version of MC² is DOS based, and needs to be upgraded to an SQL background.

Timberline provides this and the transition will be a large undertaking, but fairly simple to do.

This is one advantage BricePM has over canned software systems that other companies have bought and

customized by bridging. Bridging is tying different software systems together, such as the estimating, accounting,

and project management systems, so that they can talk to each other. With upgrades or new versions of one type of

software, the bridging can be undone or disrupted. Brice is able to make complex changes without worrying about

messing up the bridging, because it is custom built software.

Conclusions

BricePM is only a little over one year old in terms of being a functioning used system. This is still

sufficient time to draw different conclusions on the choice of developing an in-house system. The success of

BricePM to this point has been more than expected by Brice. Brice is very proud of its system for many reasons,

and now claims it was definitely the right decision for them. BricePM has served as a catalyst in many regards for

the company’s pursuit in implementing IT for competitive advantage.

To review the difficulties allows Brice to better prepare for the future changes it plans to make with its

system. The greatest challenge Brice faced was that of helping their system developer understand the proper

construction process so as to create the appropriate deliverable. The second greatest challenge was to pull all of the

different senior project managers’ ideas together so as to develop a definitive process in the way that BricePM

would work.

These challenges also served as the greatest risks to the project. Trying to interpret many project

managers’ ideas into one was an arduous task that Colburn faced. He also found that the managing of the developer

was difficult. The task of maintaining them on the right track was essential to keep from having to redo work which

wasted both time and money. Just as his concern with a construction project was the budget and schedule, so it was

with this project.

The effect of the system on the productivity of its employees is felt to have not changed significantly.

Project managers now have more flexibility in how, when, and where they administer the projects, but their


productivity still remains relatively the same. The main advantage for them is that they can accurately project

profits and losses in real time, and have easy access to this information.

The other group who has experienced a big increase in productivity is the superintendents in entering in

labor data. Traditionally, the superintendents wrote this information down, passed it on to be entered into a

spreadsheet, then sent on to the accounting department to be entered into the system. That time and effort has been

cut by nearly two-thirds time. Superintendents now enter the information directly into BricePM and it is

automatically in the accounting system.

When Colburn was asked what advantages they have over the existing online ASP project management

systems and construction competitors, he had a variety of answers. He used both examples, real-life and fictional to

make his point.

The advantage of BricePM compared to ASP’s is that Brice can control all change. The ASP’s tend to

make changes at the request of the largest investors, or those giving them the most business. This ability to control

change was a big advantage in Colburn’s eyes. Brice can also control the costs. They can easily know how much

they will spend or need to spend on changes needing to or going to be made. The disadvantage of the ASP’s in this

case is that a construction company cannot control the cost of the service provided to them. Fortunately for Brice,

the cost of many of the ASP’s has gone up in the last two years. Thirdly, Brice can control the data. They house the

data, they control it, and they can manipulate it and do whatever they want with it. The other ASP’s also allow you

to access your data, and even give it to you after a project is completed, but Brice feels that having the data always

in their system is a big advantage to them.

Colburn also gave the advantages that BricePM gives them over their competitors. The scenario that

describes this advantage is this: an owner uses one system, but a contractor is trained in another, if the owner insists

that they use the different system, he will pay for the time and training of those that will build his project in that

system. The same scenario can happen to Brice, but their vantage point is that to use the BricePM system is in

essence free to the owner. There will be no additional cost to train. This scenario can be viewed in many lights, but

Brice feels that the cost advantage of having a “free” project management system is something owners like to hear.

Lastly, at a recent construction IT show, Colburn went to keep up on the current trends in the industry. In

one meeting, the question was posed as to who has achieved total integration in their systems. The majority of the

individuals there were ASP employees and contractors looking for online project management systems. No one


raised their hand. This indicated that no one had a system that allowed the project management system, the

accounting system, and the estimating system to completely integrate and work together so as to never require re-

keying of any data. Colburn resisted the temptation of raising his hand to declare they had done so, and had done so

for nearly a decade. This is a competitive advantage he felt to good to share.

Other Project Management Options

In the current construction market, there have emerged a number of other ASP’s besides Constructware that

are robust enough to handle most aspects of online project management. Below is a list of some of the current

industry leaders (Project Management, n.d.).

• Constructware

• Buzzsaw

• e-Builder

• Bentley

• Citadon

• PrimeContract

• ProjectEdge

• ProjectGrid

• ProjectTalk

These different ASP’s provide more competition, thus creating a more competitive market. In essence, this

should lower the costs and subscriptions to these ASPs’ services. The major advantages of these ASP’s are that

there is a relatively low cost of entry and usually an extremely short setup time, it is pay as you go, and there is

reduced downtime. Other advantages include the eliminating of IT personnel that can be expensive for a company,

also eliminating IT infrastructure (Unger, 2002).

In comparison, self-hosting these services has its advantages, too. The company may have a desire to fully

utilize their current IT staff, they may have security fears in outsourcing vital business functions, and they may

perceive a loss of control. Other reasons are the dependency fears surrounding a potentially unstable ASP provider

and a desire to fully maximize a current broadband connection. Additionally, low cost, easy-to-implement, scalable,

and multi-functional devices now facilitate self-hosting options (IDC, n.d.).

Many of the ASPs now allow for a company to purchase and host its software in-house. This is an option

to explore if a company does not want to invest much in the design and development stage, but prefers to house their


own infrastructure and capabilities. Not all of the ASPs do this, but searching out the different options of each one

will provide the details.

Another aspect of where the technology realm is going that will ultimately affect the problem of integration

and different systems’ being compatible is the development of XML (extensible markup language). XML is the

current future trend of all web service documents and markup languages. Since its inception, it has begun to reshape

the platforms from which major developers of software and Internet applications have based off of (Walsh, 1998).

This trend towards XML is quickly affecting all organizations that do business over the Internet. This inadvertently

affects the construction industry and how it will continue to direct the bulk of its project management operations

over the Internet. In essence, soon all system should effortlessly communicate with each other. Contractors will

then have more flexibility to achieve the full integration that has yet to be achieved by the rest of the industry

(Building, n.d.).

Whether a company decides to subscribe to an ASP, purchase ASP software and house it internally, or

design and develop their own system in-house, the options and possibilities are readily available in the current

market. Whether the company size is large or small, the options are feasible for any construction firm. Nowadays, a

construction firm should not ask which of these options is best, but rather ask which of these options is the most

appropriate to accomplish their company objectives.


References

Building Construction Extensible Mark-Up Language. (n.d.) Retrieved April, 19, 2003 from

http://xml.coverpages.org/bcXML.html

Brice History. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2003 from http://www.bricebuilding.com

DSL Reports. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2003 from http://www.dslreports.com

IDC. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2003 from http://www.idc.com

Project Management. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2003, from

http://www.constructionrisk.com/projectmanagement.htm

Unger, S. (2002). Why ASPs will dominate AEC. Constructech. 4(10).

Walsh, N. (October 3, 1998). What is XML? Retrieved April 19, 2003 from http://www.xml.com/pub

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