Owners face a myriad of challenges in today’s construction marketplace. We struggle with things such as a downsized and reengineered workforce, difficulty in requiring standardization from the AE’s and GC’s, and demands for faster project delivery. All within a construction industry culture that is “fragmented, combative, and not focused on the owner’s interests”. While those in the construction field have typically been slow to adopt new technology, the effective use of this technology is critical to solving these problems.
These key issues were recently discussed by Gretchen Gagel McComb in her keynote speech at the 2002 Meridian Users Conference. Gretchen is the Director of Owner Services with FMI Corp, a national management consulting firm with 50 years of experience in the construction industry.
Gretchen notes that from an Owners perspective what is needed is a “seamlessly integrated environment across all phases and processes of the capital project/facility life cycle. All information is available to whoever needs it, whenever it is needed, and wherever it is needed.” We need to track the project from initial feasibility studies to final operations and maintenance, to assimilate information from a wide variety of sources (often including legacy applications), and to replicate or receive supplier data in a more automated fashion.
It is well known that most of the construction management software currently available has been developed with the AE or GC in mind. However, in recent years an increasing number of owners have turned to products like Prolog to manage their processes. With no application available that is an owner’s “perfect fit” it is to Meridian’s credit that Prolog is so inherently customizable. This allows us the opportunity to redesign parts of the software to meet the needs of our particular and somewhat unique role.
To assist in this adapting process we have created the International Meridian Owners/Developers User Group (located at PrologUsers.com). Its goal is to help owners collaborate with each other on the use of the products, share solutions, and to create a common list of top features and enhancements we would like to see added. This is our chance to contribute to building an application more directed to the Owners needs and begin to address the use of technology to solve the challenges of today’s construction marketplace.
