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How
to turn IT into a profit center |
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Most
design and construction firms view information technology as
an expense item and don’t capture opportunities to turn
it into a profit center. This is often the result when IT is
not viewed as a strategic part of the firm’s mission.
Consider these ideas for extending and growing your core business
by leveraging your IT investment:
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Electronic
Operations Manuals: At
the end of every project, the owner is handed a stack of
paper: plans, specifications, product cut sheets, shop drawings,
correspondence, schedules, and on and on. Most of this material
was very useful for building a building, much less so for
operating one. What if your clients received a set of CD-ROMs
containing all this information, fully accessible simply
with a Web browser? What if this electronic operations manual
contained live links to the Web sites of equipment manufacturers
and product suppliers, so that facilities managers could
stay up to date on maintenance specs, product recall information
and replacement parts, among many other things? This living,
growing operations manual can provide an income stream for
the life of the facility, and it keeps your firm in the loop
for renovations, tenant improvements and the next time that
client wants to build, you'll be just a click away.
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Project
Information Management: In many ways, information technology
made communication
worse
in AEC, because it focused on automating specific
tasks and
didn’t address the overall process. In the old days,
when information exchange took the form of handing off paper
documents, at least you knew what you were getting. Today,
a typical project involves myriad incompatible tools, file
types, and systems. It’s
a symptom
of the
fragmentation of
the building
industry compared
to other,
more integrated
industries such
as manufacturing.
No one
today is
taking the
enterprise level
view of
information technology
for building
projects. And
that creates
a great
opportunity: project information
management.
The
project information manager is:
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The
IT leader for the entire team: owner, designer, builder
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The
repository of all project information
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The
one who brings standards and coordination
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The
one who builds project communities
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Building
Community with Web Sites: Every
building involves overlapping sets of people with an interest
in the project: the design team, building end users, tenants,
owners, contractors. Be a leader by assuming the job of communications
manager. Intranets, Extranets, Web sites for programming
and user participation, these are all communication tools
easily within the reach of even small design firms.
more
about involving stakeholders in programming
more about community involvement
in planning
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