News

East Midlands members and students from Loughborough University attended an evening presentation on IT in Construction, given by Stuart Bell of Union Square. The session covered 4 key areas of IT in Construction including:

·         Benchmarking your business against common technology adaption

·         Understanding the business opportunities which new technologies present

·         Delivering process improvements for everyone with the organisation

·         Differentiating your business ahead of your peers

Stuart highlighted that professional workers spend on average 51 minutes per day searching for information and that this inefficiency could be addressed through the implementation of readily available IT solutions. One such solution that was discussed was Union Square’s Workspace software package. Workspace allows users to organise project and organisation data in one place, removing the risk of duplication and improving accessibility.

A demonstration of some of Workspace’s capabilities was then provided to the audience. This illustrated how simple data management tasks, which are rarely carried out effectively by construction companies (such as managing business development contact lists at a company level), can be improved dramatically the use of IT. Another key function of the demonstrated software was the ability to manage project documents such as drawings and generate automatic logs of when documents were viewed and downloaded.

The demonstration was then put into the context of the development of BIM and cloud computing in the industry, rounding off a very thorough and engaging session on the benefits of investing in IT in the construction industry.