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Transparency of the building process is a primary requirement
On October 30th 2000 the motorway agency of the Polish Ministry of Transport and the Autostrada Wielpolska S.A. signed the licence for the building and BETRIEB of the motorway A2 between Swiecko at the German border and Konin, 80 East from Posen. The agreement contains the building of 90 Km of motorway and the rehabilitation of 50 Km of an already existing section of the motorway. To undertake these roadworks the company A2 Development Ltd was established with headquarters in Spittal, Austria. Later the Austrian STRABAG Plc. and the Swedish NCC participated in the project.
Fast Document finding required
In order to manage a building project of this proportion, and to administrate the necessary documents you have to use an appropriate software. Not only innumerable drawings in their different versions have to be managed and to be found, but also all the correspondence and all contracts. Therefore A2 Development Ltd was looking for a software solution – a document management system – with a headword search option. A free filing system as well as free categories were needed and they had to be modified as soon as requirements were changing. The system was going to be installed in the project office in Posen and all relevant parties should have had the opportunity to access the data any time via intranet.
That is how in November 2000 A2 Development Ltd got in contact with Nemetschek Bausoftware (former IBD in Karlsruhe). The software company offers commercial and technical oriented solutions for the building sector. After a detailed analysis of all requirements the software specialists recommended the use of the project information system rivera. The software, based on Lotus Notes supports the user from project acquirement to maintenance. In doing this the system offers the required degree of freedom that allows to reflect even complex and big building projects that last over a long period. An outstanding feature of the software is its communication capability. The exchange of data between different places, or working on a laptop, and the following synchronization of data are basic requirements that rivera can meet at best.
The system offered the building experts in Posen the following advantages: a process oriented project tracking during all project phases, the management of tasks, appointments, correspondence including emails, just to mention some. Info about the project’s state are accessible also from other locations at any time.
Andreas Mang, qualified physicist, Nemetschek Bausoftware project manager, certified Lotus Professional and R5 Designer, explains: “As an object oriented data base Lotus Notes is suitable to process unstructured information. But A2 Development Ltd needs also Notes groupware functions like emails, calendar etc. Only Notes contains data base and groupware mechanisms in one package.”.
Building up the whole system in two steps
In January 2001 the solution to all this was started. In the project office in Posen rivera is running on a R5 Domino-Application-Server. The software specialists built up an intranet system and trained the first 30 users in the use of the system. Being that the project was running until the end of 2004 and the system had been developing more and more in the last phase 75 people were working with this solution.
At first an Electronic Document Management was built. In order to do so Nemetschek Bausoftware was undertaking part of the programming directly at the Posen office, this was allowing continuous contact with the users and allowed to implement their needs in an optimal and fast way. Direct phone dialling on the server was offered through Notes-Clients.
In this way all incoming and outgoing mail, including emails, is managed through the Electronic Document Management. The advantage for civil engineers is that the search text option enables them to look within all documents belonging to a construction like a bridge. This is possible even if the user doesn’t exactly know which piece of paper he is actually looking for. If for example he types in only “bridge 22” he gets all relative documents – and if needed even all correspondence and all saved attachments.
The realisation of the plan management
During stage two the plan management was organized in a data base of its own. This was commissioned to Nemetschek Bausoftware in April 2001. The plan data base contains the different versions of the drawings and the control of the forwarding. Different versions of a plan are the outcome of draft modifications that happen over time. For every version there are copies that have to be distributed. That’s how it comes that for each plan version there is a distribution list that is changing during the project. For example like when a motorway moves from the planning phase to the executive phase.
All drawings like road works, drainage, junctions, green spaces, bridges etc. that are handed from planning specialists to the site supervision have to be forwarded to the relevant supervising engineers first and then, after approval, to the entrepreneurs. Since the drawings are constantly subject to modifications all plans are saved with a version number. The civil engineers need to have a constant overview on what specialist planners have to deliver and until when, what version is waiting for approval and from whom, until when the plans have to be back to the supervising engineer and when they have to reach the entrepreneur on the construction site. The plans exist as paper hard copy too. They can be saved electronically, this depends on the user’s decision and has no influence on the clarity of the overview.
With the plan database it is possible to create a list of plans’ overdue with an exact time specification, this allows the construction management to react appropriately and prevent legal controversies. Meeting the deadlines is a primary requirement, a project has to be carried out in a certain period of time - otherwise high penalties are set.
Transparency on all construction processes including all the relative documentation and their fast tracing are a essential prerequisites for an optimal completion of a building project of this magnitude. The programming of the project information system rivera under Lotus Notes offers A2 Development Ltd the necessary degree of freedom and the corresponding groupware practicality.
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