Abstract
Project managers face increasing pressure to make sure that projects are completed on time and on budget. As a result, project managers must manage teams and resources for optimal efficiency, but managing complex workflows associated with multiple projects can be time consuming and costly. To address these challenges, they must find new ways to manage workflows and create efficiencies in everyday processes to accomplish more with less.
As design teams get bigger and more geographically dispersed, it underscores the need to find better ways to manage information and streamline communication with project team members and stakeholders around the globe. Project managers must replace inefficient processes with streamlined digital approval processes that result in increased efficiencies, enhanced quality, and lowered costs. In this presentation, Jonathan Knowles, Global Collaboration Strategist for Autodesk, will provide insight into how project managers can leverage technology in day-to-day processes to collaborate more effectively with their teams and better manage information and workflows across the lifecycle of projects. Mr. Knowles will explain how project managers, by sharing information more effectively, can reduce the cycle times needed for approval workflows -- particularly from external sources such as customers and suppliers. Mr. Knowles will use real-world examples to outline strategies that project managers can implement today to maximize resources, reduce errors and ensure better project outcomes and help attendees learn how to connect people with ideas and processes without compromising the accuracy, security or intent of project information.
Introduction
Project managers are challenged with sharing design information while preserving design integrity and preventing information loss among a variety of stakeholders, including users and non-users of Computer Aided Design (CAD) software.
To further magnify these challenges, organizational business processes are often disjointed and not secure. Since information needs vary, it is critical for project team members to have access to the right design information, while simultaneously protecting the integrity of designs by ensuring that only the proper design and engineering team members have author-level access to modify design files. Moreover, a partner or supplier on one project may be a competitor on a future project, underscoring the need for project managers to protect the intellectual property associated with project design information.
Design information that project managers need to share can include design intent, file specifications and general information about a project such as the number of doors or amount of concrete needed for a project. For manufacturing, it may be information about a part. The increased complexity of addressing design review processes highlights the need to find better ways to manage information and streamline communication with all project team members and stakeholders.
Finding New Ways to Manage Workflows
Addressing Project Management Challenges
Project workflows today can be best described as managed chaos. Regardless of industry, challenges around the processes for sharing design data remain a frustration of project managers. Typical headaches include lack of clarity, slow, manual, inefficient paper based processes, and files not being properly converted. There is little standardization across the workflow process, and work-arounds are common. In an environment where everyone feels the pressure to accelerate time to project completion, there have been a variety of solutions introduced in recent years to address these challenges.
DWF is an open platform built on industry standards, specifically architected to handle the challenges of sharing complex design data across project teams. DWF files retain all of the intelligence of original design files (typically DWG files), but are far smaller, and faster to transmit, allowing designers, engineers and project managers to securely communicate design information and design intent among team members.
The Evolution of Design Collaboration
The evolution of sharing design information began with tracing paper. With the introduction of the computer, designers began using various computer-aided design (CAD) software applications to create design files. Leading into the 1990s, the introduction of object technology allowed designers to work with a library of objects.
For example, instead of drawing the lines and arcs of a door or circles and lines to represent a gear, standard objects could be selected from a design library. (Exhibit 1) Today, the needs of designers, engineers, projects managers and their colleagues have led to an intrinsically collaborative process resulting in an evolution to a world of information modeling and lifecycle management.
Exhibit 1 – Trends
Design authoring software has evolved to become even more sophisticated with the introduction of three-dimensional technology. New three-dimensional capabilities meant that it was no longer necessary for designers to abstract design objects into a two-dimensional space. Now, what designers see in three-dimensions can be created in a three dimensional space, resulting in the need for a file specification capable of publishing, rendering and printing two dimensional and three-dimensional designs and models.
In the case of major architectural projects like the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site in New York City, designers used sophisticated design tools capable of retaining the original design information. When the initial design for the Freedom Tower was not approved, designers were able to make the necessary changes without recreating the original design files, saving time and lowering costs.
In the manufacturing industry, project managers face similar challenges. Companies like Siemens L&A, the world's leading supplier of logistics and factory automation solutions, leverage digital technology to share complex design information with manufacturing and shop floor personnel, upper management, clients, and many other stakeholders. By sharing information electronically, Siemens L&A significantly reduced the cycle times needed for design approvals.
Securing the Future of Design Information
As projects become longer lived and increasingly complex, it underscores the need not only for project managers and their teams to have access to design information, but also for design information to be viable many years into the future. To this end, standards-based specifications are essential in future-proofing information so that stakeholders can have access to design information well into the future while minimizing errors, costs and information loss throughout the process.
A study from Autodesk found that for each design creator, there are at least ten consumers of that design information within an extended team, both inside and outside the enterprise, who must provide feedback to the original designer. In addition to sharing this information among members of the design team, designers need to share the full scope of their work with many stakeholders including colleagues, clients and partners outside the design profession (Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2 – Example Design Review Process
Moreover, it is important to make sure design information is secure and that it cannot be changed by team members that should not have authoring rights to the design files. A company's design information is its livelihood, underscoring the need to protect the value and intellectual property associated with designs by sharing information more securely. Enabling technologies like DWF help compress design files to help communicate in a faster more streamlined manner.
Autodesk® DWF™ Composer is one of many applications that take advantage of the DWF platform for distributing design data, allowing project team members to share feedback in a secure and efficient way. Informational needs vary among team members – some need to view and print design information, and others need to consume design information from a view, navigate and print perspective in the workflow process. DWF Composer provides an all-digital solution for bridging the design review process between the designer and his or her non-designer team members. Without needing the original design creation software, teams can review, mark up, and revise drawings, maps, and models, improving workflow and streamlining the review and editing process. The Autodesk DWF file specification integrates with all Autodesk applications, and it is possible to create DWF files for free from any design application, even from three-dimensional design applications.
The benefits of leveraging an open platform for the efficient distribution and communication of design information to team members regardless of location are readily apparent in the building, manufacturing, and infrastructure industries. In terms of managing projects from a building lifecycle perspective, designers can turn design files into DWF files and share information quickly over the web. Previously, this information was shared by printing out designs on large format paper and sending it via courier service to extended team members. The ability to leverage web-based collaboration streamlines the design review process, saving both time and money and helping organizations use paper more efficiently. Since project team members can use DWF to electronically review, track and communicate design changes, it reduces the number of paper drawings and blueprints that must be faxed or couriered between offices.
The savings can be significant considering that, on typical large construction projects, costs associated with courier services like FedEx can easily reach as high as $500,000. Leveraging DWF along with web-based collaboration allows project mangers to connect critical design information into workflows without compromising accuracy, security or intent of original design information.
Final Words
To achieve true collaboration and bring all the various pieces of a project together into a unified whole, project managers must find ways to replace inefficient processes and better manage information and workflows across the lifecycle of projects.
Technology continues to evolve to address the needs of project managers challenged to complete projects of increasing complexity such as the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site. Developing and choosing the right collaborative solutions for these types of projects involves careful evaluation. It is important to evaluate the type of information moving through the collaborative process and consider the specific requirements of the information.
Across industries, project timelines have become less flexible. To create efficiencies in everyday processes and make sure that projects are completed on time and on budget, a secure standards-based approach to collaboration is essential to ensure that all project team members have access to design information when and where it is needed.