Global Production through Electronic Communications
The Emerging Frontier

by Juniper Russell AIA

(Based on a presentation given at the American Institute of Architects Conference "The Client Connection" on March 8, 1997 by Juniper Russell AIA, Novi Mundi Corp., Waltham MA, James W. Larson AIA, Larson Architects, Austin TX and Brough Turner, Natural MicroSystems Corp., Framingham MA)

Copyright April 1997 Juniper Russell All rights reserved.

This conference is entitled "The Client Connection". Its subject is the extraordinary transformation that will forever change the way we work. We are facing an opportunity for architects to shape the emerging electronic frontier. Through new technology and innovation we will be able to satisfy "lower" survival needs of all project participants which will allow art and architecture to emerge. So let's begin at the beginning. Just what is this all about? What do architects bring to the party that is unique and special?

Architects are about place making. Architects understand how people use space. Architects understand how art and design enrich the human experience and foster community values. From the utilitarian point of view the design of space is the physical enabling layer of all social and business processes, a fundamental of social engineering that is embedded so deeply that it cannot be readily seen or understood by most non-architects. We live in a media rich society. Art and design are again so embedded that the normal person cannot even see design as an activity. Every person in our society is a sophisticated consumer of commercial art. Just think about the design work involved in packaging. Consider the design of a cereal box. It's not easy.

Think about the last time your friends went on vacation. Where did they go? They either went to a beautiful natural setting to look at mountains or perhaps oceans or they went to visit a beautiful old city and wandered around looking at buildings and art, places of beauty and deep cultural meaning, places with a strong sense of civilization. These places were all created by generations of architects and artists and modified by normal people in the course of their everyday lives.

Now every one of you here in the room, look back for a minute to when you decided to become an architect. Each one of you had a dream, and the dream was not about project delivery. If we allow ourselves to become marginalized, to be shunted aside who really loses? The community loses. As today's architects we have an obligation to the community to protect and enrich our cultural heritage and quality of life. Each one of us has a working life of no more than fifty years, a blink of an eye in the panorama of civilization. During our period of stewardship we must carry the candle forward into the future. Now let's move on and talk about human beings for a minute. Abraham Maslow is a psychologist who did a lot of thinking about human motivation. He came up with his hierarchy of basic needs.

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

1. Physiological Hunger, Thirst
2. Safety Security, Stability
3. Belonging Love, Identification
4. Esteem Prestige, Self-respect
5. Self-actualization

Abraham Maslow tells us that lower needs are closely linked to biological necessities, are narrower in scope than higher needs and appear earlier in the developmental process. He also tells us that a lower need must be adequately satisfied before the next higher need can fully emerge. So what does this mean? It means that a hungry baby crying for food is not worrying about the saber toothed tiger just outside the cave. Now let's take these ideas and make a parallel with project delivery, call it the project delivery hierarchy of needs.

When people think of communications they tend to think of something high tech, like e-mail and cell phones. Well communications have been with us a long time, beginning with behavioral signals in the animal kingdom, evolution of natural language and tribal drumming. Later stories and histories are being passed down and communicated through song and poetry, such as Homer's Iliad. And then finally there is written language. You take a written document into a room full of scribes and have it copied over many times onto say stone tablets or sheepskins. Two dozen horsemen then take the document to towns all over Europe. Perhaps the document is a papal edict or a new law. At each town center an educated individual reads the document aloud to a gathering of people who cannot read, then the document is posted in a public place so others can read the document and communicate the news to even more people. That is the fundamental communication and distribution system. Not much has changed since then. With the printing press and modern modes of transportation everything has just gotten more efficient. And with efficiency communications are faster, more available and more selective. TCP/IP (the Internet protocols) replaces the horsemen as the transport layer of the future.

So we've got contracts and we have communications. Let's talk about the understood past, the paradigm we appear to be about to lose, AIA A201 the General Conditions of the Contract for Construction. In 1979 25% of the professional exam for architectural registration was devoted to how well the candidates understood the roles and relationships as described in A201. There were many questions about what action was appropriate in a given circumstance as mandated by A201. (Back in the 1960s 10% of the exam was devoted to contractual issues.) Understanding project delivery has increasingly become a necessary part of qualifying as an architect with AIA A201 as the ubiquitous process engine.

AIA A201 made it all easy. Everyone knew what their role was and what they were supposed to do. The document was easily customizable via the SGCs, the Supplementary General Conditions. Every large Owner had their own set of SGCs prepared by their own legal council that addressed their issues. And, you could get started on a project even if the final terms of the contract were not set, because you knew that the job was basically an A201 project, an A201 process. AIA A201 is the foundation of the AIA document system. The evolution of all other documents begins with this document, including many documents authored by other areas of AEC. In addition to defining roles and relationships, A201 has a significant body of case law behind it. Everyone has a basic idea of how the courts will interpret the wording in the contract and rule on disputes. Our construction lawyers have confidence when advising clients using contracts from the A201 document family. But, when the contracts become overly complicated,when they no longer sufficiently model reality and take up an existence buried in a drawer and seem to be only about having something to hold over the other guy, these are sure signs of the breakdown of the system.

Recently some of us have seen a complete breakdown of the system. Owners have been preparing their own contracts and arranging non-standard deals for project delivery. Many owners are no longer the experienced real estate and construction professionals we were used to doing business with and have no concept of just what has been lost. And to make matters worse this is all done in the name of Business Process Reengineering and achieving greater efficiencies. The marketplace is no longer satisfied with the old way and in the process of finding a new path is flailing about looking for answers.

Now, though not great, this in and of itself would not be so bad. But, at the end of the day, the licensed design professional is asked to sign off on whatever has been created, under whatever project delivery system. I am sure many of you here in this room have had that wonderful experience of being told, you guys you're all hung up on your liability. And then someone shoves a paper in your direction for signature certifying that as a licensed professional the project is satisfactory, will not endanger public safety and confirming that you have fulfilled your obligations under the state licensing law regulating architectural practice. So with ever decreasing control we are being held personally liable for the outcome. This is going to get worse unless as a community we get organized to meet the demands of the marketplace, while addressing the responsibilities and liabilities inherent in professional practice. The correct handling of emerging electronic tools is a vehicle for accomplishing this objective.

Let's spend a few minutes understanding the importance of standardized contracts and standardized processes. There is an intriguing example from the history of retailing. Recently, I had the occasion to read a book about the adaptive reuse of the Bullocks Department store, the art deco landmark building in Los Angeles. I had not known that the success of Bullocks and the Broadway department stores was aided by the adoption by the founding partners of a seemingly trivial innovation in retailing pioneered at the turn of the century by Aristide Boucicaut of the great Parisian department store, Bon Marche. This innovation was the introduction of the absolutely fixed price. Many of you enjoyed the quaint experience while traveling abroad of bartering in the marketplace of some ancient city. I never really thought about it. Who could have imagined that the notion of a fixed price could be an innovation. So, what's that about?

Well, the introduction of the fixed price made it possible for a child to buy goods in The Broadway Department Store instead of sending the shrewdest member of the family to bargain with the merchant. All that was needed was to tell the child which store to go to and which goods to purchase. Each store came to have its quality and value position in the marketplace set by reputation. The shrewdest member of the family was then free to pursue other interests and activities of benefit to the family welfare.

Okay, now let's have a word about partnering, a hot topic in our industry these day. Just consider for a minute what the morning commute would be like if we used partnering instead of having traffic laws. You'd hop into your car and drive up to the first intersection and there you would encounter several motorists engaged in partnering. They would be discussing which one of the motorists at the intersection had the greatest need to drive through the intersection first. One of the parties is on the way to the airport, another has an injured child in the back seat. This inefficient activity would go on at each intersection. We all have our own opinions about the local traffic laws where we live, about what's fair and what's annoying. For the most part we do not think about the traffic laws and are not really interested in any esoteric discussion about the traffic laws. We are happy to put up with a bit of stupidity and annoyance as long as we can get about our business. If we thought about it we would be glad that there were indeed traffic laws, as these laws allow us to drive speedily about town without colliding with other vehicles. The existence of and the need for partnering in our industry is a symptom of the breakdown of the system.

Both the fixed price and partnering examples are given to illustrate the importance of rules and standardized processes in creating efficiencies in our daily lives. Many of you here manage offices and have the traditional problem of staff turnover. Imagine the future with every firm creating its own Internet enabled tool for managing projects with widely variant forms of project delivery. It's going to create a nightmare for staff training and quality control. All of a sudden a new hire not overly familiar with the proper use of the office's powerful Internet enabled project management tools and liability policies can accidentally put the office at risk.

Construction is a very old industry and it is changing along with the information revolution affecting all industries globally. In construction we now encounter virtual entities, alternative methods of project delivery, new allocations of risk, more international projects and the emergence of online business tools. But in many ways construction is not changing. There is still pressure on costs, thin margins, performance liability and the time/money factor. Business Process Reengineering has come to most industries including retailing, the auto industry, banking and federal procurement. The specific industries just mentioned were the first to be affected because of the adoption of EDI over VANs, electronic data interchange over private value added networks. The incredible contraction in the banking industry is in part a result of EDI. Since EDI came from the main frame world it gets a groan from most people, because anything associated with main frames is considered left over from the dinosaur age. But when you get passed the implementation and look at the basic idea, electronic data interchange across a global network, the concept is completely revolutionary and up to date. Right now the EDI main frame world is being reengineered for the Internet.

What was EDI about? Well EDI involves standards for data interchange. In the banking industry these standards are called the ANSI X12 standards. Each bank involved with financial EDI has translation software that puts information generated internally in the ANSI X12 standards for data interchange across the network to accomplish financial settlement of transactions through the National Automated Clearing House (NACHA). Companies that make EDI data translation software are building Internet gateways for the banking industry that address all of the security issues that formerly mandated a need for the private value added networks. TCP/IP is quickly becoming the protocol for data within the organization on local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs).

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, we need to develop the equivalent of the ANSI X12 standards for our industry as a way of providing the efficiencies for data manipulation and sharing needed in our industry going forward. These standards will emerge as standardized Internet enabled workflow forms, that will take on separate lives as they pass through the firewall and enter the corporate MIS infrastructure within an organization.
Money and Information in the electronic world, it's all the same. A requisition for payment will move through a gateway on the Internet into the banking system. Workflow becomes electronic commerce.

Business Process Reengineering for our industry can be an entry to the dark ages with anarchy, can be a bloody revolution or if properly managed can be a opportunity to create a bright future. Information technology can empower anarchy or can facilitate partnering, cooperation and efficiency through the proper controls. The Novi Mundi business venture is focused on the business to business part of the problem, the reengineering of the AEC industry. The first task of Novi Mundi is to create the virtual workplace for the construction team online, to bring all of the parties involved in a project together in a shared workplace. Novi Mundi is not interested in duplicating in-house tools, but in enabling legally independent companies to work together by bridging islands of internal automation while respecting business practices and needs.

To create a workplace shared by legally independent companies and have it truly work the system has to support partnering and cooperation while respecting each participant's control issues. Control issues exist within the company and between companies. How control issues are handled depends greatly upon the level of trust between the parties. Greater trust tends to be present when individuals and companies have worked together before. Administration of the chain of command or call it chain of contract has to be flexible to accommodate the working style of parties involved. New relationships usually require more formal controls, which become relaxed as the participants get to know one another and build trust. The system must accommodate these different trust relationships and be able to dynamically change as circumstances change.

In the business-to-business setting it is important to define just what should be shared in the virtual workplace, context and access rights, and what information should be "web enabled" for private data interchange between companies thereby facilitating efficient re-use of core project data between companies irrespective of in-house applications. The electronic workplace must be a safe and secure place to do business. Significant implementation of Internet security controls is already in place. BBN has divided Internet security issues into the following components. Authentication is an action where by an individual, organization or computer proves its identity. Next there is confidentiality, the ability to protect the contents of a transmission across a network. After that there is integrity, ensuring that a transmission arrives at its destination in exactly the same format as it was sent. The system must support authorization, the ability of the system to control access to specific resources or transactions. After that there is non-repudiation, ensuring that the sender of an authenticated electronic transaction cannot deny the origin or contents of the communications. And finally there is auditing and time stamping, keeping an end-to-end audit trail of activity for reconciling transactions and resolving disputes. Security is not just about electronic controls. To be secure a wide range of issues must be considered. These include physical, procedural, personnel, operating systems and communications considerations.

Let's talk a bit about this picture. Consider this to be the virtual workplace. What do you see?

Let's move on to talk a bit about Novi Mundi's "aecteam.net" and then walk through some screen shots from our prototype system. The mission is to bring the team members on a project together in the virtual workplace, to facilitate collaboration among members of the team. The initial focus is on inter-company information exchange by leveraging Internet technology. Information technology in the construction industry primarily consists of islands of automation. Architects and engineers have CAD and accounting software. Contractors have accounting, estimating and project management software. Few electronic connections exist between firms. Construction teams communicate on paper via drawings, letters and faxes. File inter-change software is primitive. Information technology utilization lags other industries.

Novi Mundi's "aecteam.net", is a secure, private web site, the virtual workplace for the construction team online. It contains a document repository, project forum (groupware), integrated viewers, full text search, engine. Fax gateway, selective blueprint gateway, distributed administration and inter-company workflow engine to manage construction project document flow are envisioned. A couple of issues with this product include cultural evolution and temporary technical limitations. We are seeing an even greater use of computers but e-mail is really different and data and video conferencing is yet to come. The prototype is for Windows 95 only and in terms of practical use works best with at least basic rate ISDN.

Now let's move on to the next section of this presentation. Jim Larson is going to talk about the aircraft industry as a new paradigm for AEC services and preparation of construction documents for the distributed team with the integrated object model. With that I turn the floor over to Jim.


(This next section of the presentation was prepared and presented by James W.Larson AIA, Larson Architects, Austin TX.)

New technologies are revolutionizing the aircraft industry. New computer and communications tools are cutting production costs, improving quality and helping aircraft manufacturing firms keep production on schedule. The globalization of the aircraft industry and an increasingly competitive environment demanded the industry find new ways to do business. To stay in the post cold war economy aircraft manufacturers had to reinvent themselves. To be one of the survivors in this industry, companies have merged taking advantage of the strengths of certain companies. This has created a synergy in the survivors that allows them to build better planes faster and cheaper.

The aircraft industry is different from the construction industry in that it is totally dominated by a handful (getting smaller everyday) of mega-companies. These large corporations subcontract with a huge number of subcontractors to create the million some parts that go into the airframe of a 747. In the last few years several trends have emerged in this industry which have greatly enhanced this industry's ability to compete on a global scale as follows.

The first trend is the increased use of global communications through intranets and the Internet. A global computer network had allowed McDonnell Douglas and Boeing to work with partners and suppliers all over the world. New software allows engineering teams to collaborate on the same engineering assignment. Electronic models can be passed back and forth across the globe. Another trend is the emergence of the virtual corporation. McDonnell Douglas engineers work with companies in South Korea, Italy, Germany, Japan and Israel. The person in charge of advanced development at Douglas refers to these people and companies as "electronic immigrants".

A significant tool for improving design quality is three dimensional modeling and design. Utilizing three dimensional models, the computer can check whether parts fit snugly together. This can eliminate the need for costly clay or plastic models . Catia and Unigraphics are the CAD programs of choice for this industry. Catia is the program used by Frank Gehry to produce the "fish" sculptural forms. Closely tied to three dimensional modeling and design is the ability (utilizing software) to do stress analysis on parts and test airflow over a plane before anything is built. When the design is complete the parts are milled using computer-aided manufacturing and laser guided alignment.

All of these "high-tech" techniques have shaved up to fifteen million dollars off the cost of building a 747. Analysts estimate that innovations have cut production costs thirty to forty percent. When was the last time production costs in our industry were cut thirty to forty percent? If we apply the model of the aircraft industry to the AEC industry what lessons can be learned?

Many small independent firms dominate the construction industry in contrast to the aircraft industry. The American Institute of Architect reports that eighty percent of member firms have fewer than five employees. Large firms make up only about eight percent. However, this eight percent does forty percent or more of the construction in this country.

Increased communications is a must. The Internet is a conduit that will bind the collaboration of the AEC Team. The firm of Johnson & Crabtree Architects of Nashville report that since deploying Lotus Notes for e-mail and database sharing they have grown thirty-five percent with no required increase in support staff. The construction industry has always been a "virtual" industry, it just did not call itself that. Diverse teams have always come together to do a job. This will escalate in the coming years. The term "partnering" is an important one. More than just bringing together a team that share a common set of tools, partners work well together and share a common goal to achieve success.

Three dimensional modeling and design has always been the "Holy Grail" lusted over by designers, but never achieved. The idea of building a project in three dimensions and creating useful documentation from it is getting closer to reality. Let's consider the simplest, cheapest program available for the consumer market. The program sells for $68 retail, but allows the creation of a three dimensional model complete with roof. From this model you can generate perspectives and elevations. In "Plan Check" mode the program has built-in intelligence which checks for the most frequent mistakes made by amateur designers as well as blatant building code violations. It can also generate fairly detailed estimates of materials and cost. The software though consumer oriented, is a subset of "Chief Architect" a more full featured CAD product. The larger CAD companies have similar concepts in the works. Microstation with its Triforma and Autodesk's "ARX" technology.

One of the major differences between the aircraft industry and the AEC industry is the vast diversity of the AEC industry, which exists on many levels. An architect or contractor can be very successful doing small scale projects such as residential remodeling and custom homes. The same architect is qualified under the registration laws to do a high-rise office building, hospital or bank.

The perception of clients is also very different. Several years ago a perspective client came to me with an idea for a house that he wanted to build, but he wasn't sure how to proceed. The client then handed me a floppy disk with a drawing he had prepared using a home design software package. I was able to open the drawing in my computer-aided design package, and make suggestions on how the design could be improved. In this instance I was able to convey the added benefits that an architect can give to a project. I doubt many clients for airlines attempt their own design, except for choosing the color for the cabin décor.

Since that initial experience I have seen a growing trend in clients coming to me and to other architects with drawings and designs that have been prepared using consumer-oriented design software programs, such as "Home Architect" and "3-D Home Architect". This phenomenon is also no longer limited to the residential design field. Lease agents are using these programs to prepare "schematic designs" for tenants, and more and more clients are demanding copies of projects on disk for their in-house facility managers and maintenance personnel.

This trend is not unique to the field of architecture. The rise of the personal computer has spawned a "do-it-yourself" revolution. If you look at the shelves of any computer store you can find "Lawyer-In-A-Box", "Pharmacist on a CD", and coming soon "Virtual Brain Surgery". Continually, home design software programs appear on the "top ten" list of most copies sold. There are many reasons why people use these products. For many it is the urge to create their dream house, for others, it is just a tool to see if their furniture fits in a room. Some see this "do-it-yourself" mentality as a "democratization" of our society and see it as a way to "empower" the individual in the face of a growing impersonal society.

The relationship of the architect and the client is rapidly changing. Clients are picking and choosing the services they want to pay for. This has created a cafeteria approach with some clients wanting to provide their own design, some only wanting design, and still others not wanting construction administration. If we as a profession are going to avoid just becoming a "seal" on a drawing required by legislation, we must address client's needs.

The next leap is the tougher one for the AEC profession. That is getting the drawings from just being a "blueprint" to becoming a template form which a building is built. With this leap come numerous issues of liability and authorship which have yet to be resolved. But with the increasing costs of construction, pre-fabrication, factory built components and other manufacturing methods will have to be instigated to bring this industry around. The AEC industry must look to other industries and apply the appropriate technologies to solve its unique problems. We have a great opportunity in the next few years to reinvent the industry. New concepts are enabled by new technologies. To quote Marshall McLuhan "A new medium is never in addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace."

Thank you Jim. Next Brough Turner is going to talk about what we can expect to see coming up on the horizon in new technologies for communications and collaboration. But first let's consider a couple of things. Jim has talked a bit about the integrated 3-D model and a 3-D design. As this type of technology becomes more widely deployed there is a real issue of responsibility, liability and assignment of blame across separate legally independent companies. Those of you here that read Engineering News Record follow the saga in our industry about the boundary in structural steel design between the responsibilities of the design engineer (structural engineer of record) and the steel detailer working for the fabricator. We cannot even agree on that. Consider the issue in the context of the dynamic shared 3-D integrated building model. This is going to be a real problem unless we pay attention to the use of this powerful technology across legally independent companies. Remember the collapse of the bridges in the Hyatt in Kansas where 300 people died? This was caused in part by a miscommunication on the telephone between the design engineer and the steel fabricator. Each thought the other was going to re-check the calculation for the support. Now this whole question of tracking responsibility is going to get even more scary with the rapid deployment of ever more powerful communications tools. So as we turn the floor over to Brough Turner keep in mind the use of these new technologies against the backdrop of collaboration across legally independent business enterprises working without standard contracts and with no body of case law to support any litigation should the inevitable problems occur. So, let's turn the floor over to Brough.


(This next section of the presentation was prepared and presented by Brough Turner, Natural MicroSystems Corp., Framingham MA.)

The technology that underlies both computers and communications is continuously evolving. You may have heard of Moore's law, named after the founder of Intel. More than 25 years ago Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors that could be economically placed on a silicon chip would continuously increase at the rate of times two every 18 months, or times four every three years. This has in fact been happening and it is this exponential improvement in the underlying technology that has driven the growth of computers and information technology over the past 40 years. Less well known is that a similar evolution has been happening in communications capacity for over 15 years now. Whether you measure it as the number of bits we can put through a single optical fiber, or the number of mobile telephone callers we can accommodate with a fixed amount radio spectrum, the important thing is that communications capacity is now following the same exponential growth curve as computer memories and computer processor performance. Even more exciting is the fact that when experts argue about when this growth might tail off, they're arguing about whether it will be 20 or 30 years from now! - not in the next few weeks.

Everyone has been affected by the growth in computer capacity. For the first time, in 1996, there were more computers sold than televisions! And now, with the advent of the Internet, there is strong reason to believe that we'll see an acceleration in the development of new applications for that technology. More people with access to technology means more new ideas. Ever improving information technology combined with similar trends in communications promise to impact all human endeavors, certainly including our ability to collaborate. Think about collaborative tools used on construction projects. Obviously we've all used US Mail, Federal Express, telephones and Fax. Increasingly, project teams are getting connected to the Internet and experimenting with e-mail. We've also seen experiments with electronic delivery of drawings and other documents. Initially this took the form of experiments with electronic bulletin boards and now with widening Internet connectivity, FTP sites or private Web sites.

Let's look at some emerging collaborative tools that could be applied in construction, when team members are connected via the Internet. Under the name "groupware", we find several useful technologies. The first is discussion forums. These provide the ability for multiple people to interact with each other without actually getting together. Where e-mail is one-to-one and web sites are one to many, a discussion forum lets multiple people contribute e-mail like messages and displays their resulting comments in a organized form for all authorized users to see. A discussion forum provides many-to-many communication. Discussion groups are supported in several products including Lotus Notes and Netscape's CollabraShare. Next is "workflow". Workflow software provides a way to automate routine business processes. Up until now, it has only been applicable within a single corporation, but increasingly, workflow can be applied within any group that is networked - on the Internet for example. Workflow software is available from Lotus (Notes) and Action Technologies and others. As an example, in the construction process, we could use workflow software to automate the "request for information" (RFI) process. As a workflow process, the RFI could be an electronic document that included drawings, red-line mark-ups, photographs and so on. The workflow could be set up to automatically route the electronic document to the next relevant party and to provide visibility as to where the RFI currently is (and who is responsible for the next step!). Workflow can handle automatic routing, provide digital signatures and provide tracking, reporting and accountability.

What's next. It doesn't stop here. As the technology keeps getting improving, new applications will be come practical. Already firms are working on mixed voice and video communications with shared whiteboards over local area networks and over the Internet. Recently Intel, Microsoft, Netscape and Cisco, among others, have agreed on standards for such conferences. We can expect the PC that is sold in 1999 to come equipped for voice and video conferencing over the Internet.

So, will anyone use all this? Let's look back at some earlier technologies and how they were adopted. Everyone uses Fax today, but Fax had a long gestation period. For many years in the 1970s and early 80s, Fax was slow, expensive, complex to use and not particularly inter-operable between fax machines. Finally, with improving electronics and the "Group 3" fax standards, Fax broke the one thousand dollar mark, became easy to use and worked with anyone else's fax machine. Once this happened, adoption was extremely rapid. In New England construction circles, Fax adoption went from near zero to nearly 100% within one year.

The pattern with e-mail has been a little different. E-mail has also gone through a twenty year gestation period with closed user groups and limited inter-connectivity. Now inter-connections are expanding rapidly, but e-mail adoption still requires cultural change and some greater level of employee training than Fax required. Adoption patterns are similar, but not quite as rapid. Voice, video and application sharing will also take a while as a cultural change is required. On the other hand, we have emerging standards right now. And the technology has real benefits in that it allows meetings at a distance (in fact anywhere in the world).

Collaboration technologies are being driven by broad industry applications (not just for A/E/C). Lotus Notes is in wide use today. It is not simple, usually requiring significant MIS support, but it is available. Internet equivalents are just appearing from Lotus and others. Ease of use is improving. Likewise shared white boarding is emerging (including within the Microsoft NetMeeting product). Voice, video and application sharing across the Internet will be real within the next 18 months.

So in summary, within two years we should expect, widely deployed bandwidth adequate for a variety of groupware applications together with several major competing groupware software packages (like Lotus Notes). Within five years, we should expect to see widespread, useful, voice and video applications on the Internet and an explosive growth in the use of general purpose electronic collaboration tools.

Thank you Brough. Well in summary all I'd like to say is that these technologies and changes in our industry are coming fast. There is an opportunity for us here but only if we get organized. Architects must shape the emerging electronic frontier by building the ubiquitous process engine for managing business to business relationships.

Copyright April 1997 Juniper Russell