Seeing and believing

Project correspondence can mount up so much that you spend more time filing and forwarding documents than you do designing. Or you may find yourself on the receiving end – forced to wait for updated drawings to arrive in the post before you can start work.

Columbus allows users to organise files exactly as they choose. Even when files are held on different servers, perhaps located thousands of miles apart or created in different software programmes, Columbus allows designers to sort through and open them.

Thus a services engineer could access all documents for a particular project – architectural drawings, a cost schedule from the quantity surveyor, any variation orders from the client, and group them all in the same place. The designer could rest assured that the drawings and costs would be updated as the architect or qs worked on them, and need worry no longer about losing important files in a counter-intuitive paper filing system.

Columbus can view over 200 commercial file formats – showing a thumbnail view of the document at the bottom of the screen. No great surprise there. The shock comes when you see the thumbnails appear almost immediately when you put the cursor on a file. At last here’s an end to the infuriating wait while your computer opens a new application each time you need to view a document.

Once open, files may be sent to other members of the design team, or printed, and text can be edited. Arup says it’s perfect for projects where teams work in different locations from a shared network – its original motive for building Columbus.

Arup needed something simple enough for anyone to use, and fast enough to display document properties instantly. The firm is now giving Columbus away free, to encourage other construction companies and clients to use it as well – making it easier for Arup to work closely with people outside the organisation.

Columbus in action

A large concert hall in Porto is one of 45 live projects where Arup is using Columbus to improve communication. This building, on 12 floors, consists of two auditoriums, restaurants and shops. All members of the nine-strong design team have access to drawings and files held on Arup’s ftp (file transfer protocol) web site.

Each has a password, so that some team members can change certain drawings, while others have viewing rights only. For example, the Dutch architect may view but not change the services schematics, and the local services engineers in Portugal – who will take on the design work from detailed design onwards – can view but not alter the architectural plans.

Columbus’ e-mail links makes communication between the different designers easy. Arup’s Martin Cooper, who worked on the project, said: “The big advantage is that [people who download files] don’t have to understand how the ftp works. Most engineers can use a file manager and preview documents without technical help from [their firm’s] system support.

“You can see all project files even though they aren’t held in the same place,” he added. Most ftp files can also be uploaded as compressed zip files, which may be viewed without ‘unzipping’. This can save a lot of the time that can be wasted uploading the wrong file.

How much time does Cooper think Columbus has saved? “It’s hard to quantify, but the fast viewing facility could save five minutes on a five megabyte file,” he said. “Having the same file management system from day one is another big upside, and maintaining the file structure for the whole team also makes it easier to find files quickly,” he added.

Andy Hill, cad system manager at Hoare Lea & Partners, trialled Columbus alongside other data management packages. He described Columbus as perfect for entry level document management, and said it compares very well with commercial software pitching at this market. Hill was “very impressed” by Columbus’ front-end: “especially the ability to view [thumbnails] and to link documents together”, which he said is “very robust”.

However, Hill has rejected Columbus for use at Hoare Lea because, as a large organisation, it needs a more sophisticated data management package. Instead, he is likely to plump for Motiva, which he said has greater functionality – but at a price. Motiva costs about £300 per work station.

Back at Arup, the cad development manager, Alec Milton said Columbus has sparked enormous interest in the industry. “We had 68 000 hits in February alone. Many of the big name construction firms have taken copies, and clients are showing interest too.” Why so much interest? Milton said: “Currently only 5% of large construction firms are using a commercial system for electronic data management, because most systems are too formal and rigid for building design.” Arup itself originally wanted to buy an off-the-shelf package, but none of the published software met its needs.

Arup’s generosity in distributing the software free should make complicated circulation lists for international projects a thing of the past. It should free up more time to concentrate on engineering and – by taking printed documents out of the loop – it could save reams of paper into the bargain.