EDI can take a variety of forms – anything from e-mail between two parties through to full-blown electronic data management systems that allow all users on a project to store, locate, retrieve, publish and track documents on one system electronically.
EDM systems are here to stay because of the savings in time and money. On large projects, the amount of correspondence can be frightening. I know for certain that one client on a £100m job has 2500 Lever Arch files of papers – plus drawings and photographs. Finding your way around this lot is time-consuming to say the least. Designers on traditional projects of this size will have to produce many hundreds of drawings in paper form. Copying, post and courier costs can be enormous.
EDM systems do away with all this.
Drawings are sent by wire and stored for access by all. Documents can be found electronically. Copying is eliminated. The savings are staggering. On one recent (and admittedly, large) project, we reckoned that we saved upwards of £250 000.
So the technology is great. What's the catch? Apart from the problem that clients have in choosing which system to use, the biggest difficulty is that some consultants are hesitant about making the leap into EDM. A couple of consultants' responses on – hopefully, anonymous – projects will illustrate the thinking.
The first company said it did not send information in graphic form electronically as it was banned by its personal indemnity insurer, which feared that others might manipulate the information, changing it from the original. The second consultant said the same but common sense – if you can call it that – prevailed when it was agreed with the insurer that a paper copy of all electronically issued drawings be kept by the consultant.
How sane is it to use an EDM system with all of its savings in time and money and then be told by the insurer to keep paper records? Why not get monks to copy it all on to vellum?
How sane is it to use an EDM system with all of its efficiencies and then to be told by the insurer to keep paper records? Why not go the whole hog and keep a copy transposed on to vellum by a bevy of monks? Or carved onto stone tablets? Surely an effective data backup and off-site storage procedure would be the answer.
There is uncertainty about the legal issues surrounding electronic data. Everyone remembers the old rules about contracts: how, for instance, you had acceptance when the letter was put in the post box, not when it arrived at its destination.
That was an example of the law addressing the new technology of the time. That is happening once again with electronic data. The government is working on its electronic commerce bill, due to go through parliament later this year. This aims, among other things, to put electronic documents on the same footing as paper ones. Until then you had best confirm your e-mail has been received rather than assume it.
EDM systems are also increasingly used in complex litigation and arbitration cases. Immediate access and search facilities are the benefits. The downside is the ferociously long task of scanning documents. The process obviously relies on disclosure of the original documents that rest in a room somewhere, just in case.
What would be interesting, and I am sure will come, is when lawyers catch on to this. They should be whispering in the client's ear that an EDM system would be a great idea that would help avoid problems during construction.
And if litigation were to follow, there would be a ready made document management system in place.
Postscript
Andrew Hemsley is director of quantity surveying at Cyril Sweett.
