Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition

It was almost exactly a year ago that I reviewed Newforma Project Center for the first time in AECbytes, providing a detailed overview of this relatively new project information management and collaboration application specifically developed for the AEC market. It had already gained a lot of traction with implementation in leading firms such as HOK, SOM, and BNIM Architects, which was remarkable given that the application was only three years old at that point. Since then, the application has continued to gain in momentum and is now used by over 20,000 users in over 200 companies, 60% of which have deployed it enterprise-wide. In addition to US firms, its international presence is growing with users in Canada, UK, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand. It also has a growing partner and reseller group to respond to increased market demand. A new version of the application, Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition, has recently been released which includes several major enhancements and introduces some new capabilities for contract administration and project monitoring. Now that we have a good idea of the application as a whole from the last review, we can focus on exploring the new capabilities in detail in this review.

Improved Project Management and Monitoring

Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition has added several new features to improve how project information is organized and accessed. The Project Activity Summary section for a project, accessible from the opening Project Center screen, has been expanded to include many new features contained in different tabs, the first two of which are shown in Figure 1. The Open Items tab allows you to quickly see the list of currently open items for the project. This list can be narrowed down by using filters such as Type, Team Member, and so on, allowing individual users to easily access their open items in a project and project managers to quickly review the activities of their project teams. The second tab, Activity Chart, provides a visual overview of the project history using color codes for different types of information. You can specify the date range for the chart as well as the type of information that should be displayed. This again is very useful for project managers to get an immediate understanding of the various activities happening within the project and identify problem spots if any. The other tabs in the Activity Summary include Project Files, which lists recently saved and added files showing what has been changed in the project; Project Review, which allows access to information stored in other systems such as Deltek Vision; and Quick Links, which lists information about action items (formerly referred to as “issues”), RFIs, submittals, Info Exchange transfers, project files, transmittals, project email, and markups for the selected project and provides access to the selected category in the item's activity center.

Another new feature is the ability to create reports that can combine information from multiple projects. You can see the option to create a multi-project report listed in the Tasks panel on the left of the Project Center interface in Figure 1. Once you select the projects to be included, you can specify the type of report, the kind of information it should have, and choose from among various formatting options. An example of a sample multi-project report listing all the action items from selected projects is shown in Figure 2. This provides yet another tool for the project manager to quickly get information on specific activities happening across multiple projects as well as share this information with others in the form of a report.

The ability to connect relevant information together has been improved in Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition by the introduction of the “related items” concept.  Any item created in Project Center can be linked to another Project Center item, creating a relationship. The linking can be done in various ways such as: adding a file to a document set or takeoff set; adding files to the Supporting Documents or Associated Items tabs of submittals, RFIs, transmittals, or action items; creating a markup session from a source file; and so on. All the related items for a document can be seen by selecting it, as shown in Figure 3, and going to the “Related Items” tab. You can also see the new “Related Items” column in the file listing, which allows you to get quick idea of which document has related items associated with it.

Another major new feature that has been introduced in Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition is Project Timeline, available in the form of a new activity center that enables the team to view, add, track, and manage project phases, milestones, holidays, and events in a calendar timeline. Project events include phone calls, client meetings, contractor meetings, conversations, conference calls, tasks, site visits, and any other custom events that may have been added to the project. Events can be associated with supporting documents and related items such as Action Items. An example of a project calendar for a sample project is shown in the top image of Figure 4. The project timeline can also be viewed in a Journal format, as shown in the lower image of Figure 4. It can be set for viewing by day, week, or month.

The Project Timeline activity center can be used alongside a project planning tool such as Microsoft Project, but is not meant replace it. It provides a way for project managers to share project schedules with the entire team, as many of these users may not have access to project planning software. Not only does the Project Timeline allow the team to quickly see what’s happening to a project in any given time range, it also improves accountability and visibility as all critical events can now be recorded and reviewed at any time. The Project Timeline calendar can be integrated with applications such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 through the ICS calendar file format which can be exported from Newforma. Thus, it is possible for a project manager to bring in all the individual project calendars from Newforma into Outlook, providing a consolidated view of all project calendars if required (see Figure 5). Also, these stay synchronized with the Newforma calendar and are automatically updated when changes are made to the individual project calendars in Newforma.

Support for Contract Administration and RFIs

Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition introduces a new module for contract administration (CA), a task that typically involves constant monitoring, coordination and follow-up and becomes very tedious and time-consuming due to the manual handling of information. A new activity center has been introduced for the logging and tracking of requests for information (RFIs), similar to the activity centers for document sets, transmittals, submittals, action items, project timeline, and so on. It can be seen and accessed from the Project Home interface, shown in Figure 6.

Recall that Newforma Project Center has an Outlook plug-in for email management that allows both incoming and outgoing emails to be quickly saved with their respective projects. In addition to filing general project emails, they could also be filed as a submittal, transmittal, or an action item. This capability has now been expanded to allow an email to be filed as a new RFI or as a response to an existing RFI. Figure 7 shows an incoming email being logged as a new RFI for a specific project. Most of the information in the dialog is completed from the information in the incoming email, and you can update it or add more information. You can additionally associate the RFI with a specific discipline and any keywords that would help the RFI to be located easily in the future (the list of disciplines and keywords can be edited in the Project Settings). Finally, you can specify what the next action should be before clicking on the Log RFI button. As the next step, you can select any files to be included with the RFI. If you have chosen the Assign option as the next step, you can proceed with the assignment of the RFI to a team member within Outlook itself. The assignment also gets automatically logged as a transmittal. The team member receiving the RFI can respond to it via email and this message, when received, can now be filed as an RFI response and sent to the author of the RFI. This again is also automatically logged as another transmittal.

RFIs can also be received via the Info Exchange, Newforma’s external collaboration module, or simply entered from the RFI activity center. You can forward the RFI to an external consultant and track the progress and due dates of all open RFIs from the RFI activity center, which also tracks any related email correspondence or supporting project files and provides a searchable audit trail for each RFI in the project.

In addition to the new RFI capability, Newforma Project Center provides further support for the CA phase by improving the submittals management process. Similar to RFIs, submittals can be created from an incoming email in Outlook, as before, or now can also logged via Info Exchange and subsequently managed in the Submittals activity center. A specification section drop-down list allows specification section codes to be easily added to a submittal, a sender ID can be associated with it, and it is now possible to group individual related submittals together into a submittal package. Expected submittals appear in the bottom of the Journal view of the Project Timeline activity center on their scheduled date.

Other Improvements

The Fifth Edition greatly expands the ways in which external team members can collaborate via Newforma Info Exchange. Previously, it was used primarily for file transfers, but it now supports most of the workflows. In addition to allowing submittals and RFIs to be logged, as mentioned in the previous section, Info Exchange has been enhanced to support external team involvement with action items and the exchange of updated project documents via the Project Files activity center. For example, once a project folder or document set is published to Info Exchange, designated external team members will be notified of the availability of new files, and can also upload their own related files to it, as shown in Figure 8. As work progresses, internal and external team members can re-publish and receive future revisions, ensuring that all members of the design team are working from a common, up-to-date set of drawings and models. The project calendar can also be published into Info Exchange, allowing it to be shared with external team members and include their time-related data as well. Essentially, the Info Exchange now allows external team members to participate more extensively in the project workflows, without requiring them to have a copy of Newforma Project Center.

Several other aspects of the application have also been improved. For example, markup sessions are no longer created as separate files with an extension of .NMU. They are now created as Project Center items, similar to submittals, RFIs, action items, etc., and are managed through the Project Markup Sessions activity center, shown in Figure 9, making them more visible and easier to manage. The ability to group markup sessions and relate them to specific drawings or models was developed primarily in response to those customers using BIM, who were looking for better ways to record the review sessions and decisions that were happening at a much faster and more real-time pace with BIM.

Enhancements to the Newforma Viewer include a new free-hand Revision Cloud tool and the ability to electronically stamp drawings. A new feature for making record copies of Project Center transactions in ZIP format has been added. These record copies can be created manually and can also be automatically created whenever files are transferred to Info Exchange; project folders or document sets are published to Info Exchange; or transmittals, submittals, or RFIs are created with associated files. All record copies are logged in the Record Copies activity center, shown in Figure 10, which can be used to browse and compare record copies to other record copies and project items.

One of the most compelling features of Newforma Project Center has been its ability to effectively manage the proliferation of project-related email, and this capability has been even further enhanced in the Fifth Edition. In the Outlook plug-in, you can now file more than 248 email messages at a time. Email messages support multiple tags, which means they can now be filed to multiple project items, and by multiple companies using Project Center. There is an option to add a category called “Filed by Newforma” to email messages when they are filed from Outlook, which can then be used to sort messages by that category. Other categories assigned to email messages in Outlook are also carried over with them when they are filed in Newforma, making it easier to sort and search them. There is also an automated email filing option, which when active, allows all email messages dragged and dropped in the “Newforma - Items to File” folder in Microsoft Outlook to be filed automatically by the Project Center Server. Sub-folders for each project are automatically created in the “Newforma - Items to File” folder, and all the email messages placed in these sub-folders will be automatically filed in their respective projects. The filing will happen in the background and at the time interval specified in Project Settings shown in Figure 11. As you can see, the automated filing option can also be turned off and then items can be filed manually as in previous versions of Newforma Project Center.

Support for keywords is another one of the major new features in Newforma Project Center. These are words that you can add to project items to use for filtering and searching, as was demonstrated for RFIs in Figure 7. Keyword lists can be created in the Global Project Settings tab of the Project Center Administration activity center. When keywords are added, they appear in the Keywords column of the corresponding Project Center activity centers and dialog boxes. You can then filter the list of items using the keywords to quickly find the items you are looking for, as well as do a project search for items containing the keywords. The Search feature itself has also been enhanced by providing the standard column filters found throughout Project Center in the Search Results window, making it more familiar and easier to use. Figure 12 shows the search results for the word “concrete” which have been further filtered down to only show Outlook items. It is also possible to now search a SharePoint site from within Newforma, if SharePoint is being used.

Other Fifth Edition highlights include improved integration with Deltek Vision, allowing project financial and planning data to be co-related with the technical project information contained in Newforma; the ability to publish files directly to Océ Publisher; and integration with Sepialine, a cost recovery software provider, which will allow better tracking of reimbursable expenses within a project. The quality of the Help documentation has been improved; there are more video tutorials available now to explain how to use different aspects of the application; and a new community website and blog called newformant.com has been launched which brings together software usage tips, best practices and discussions, and serves as a great resource for users.

Analysis and Conclusions

The new version of Newforma Project Center includes a whole slew of new features and enhancements. Given that the application is sold on a subscription basis, all of these improvements are immediately available to its customers and will be greatly appreciated, as many of them were developed in direct response to customer feedback. Project managers will benefit from the new project monitoring features such as Activity Summary, Project Timeline, the ability to create reports spanning across multiple projects, and connecting relevant information together using the “related items” link—they can gain increased visibility into their project, which in turn will better equip them to identify when project activities threaten to diverge from what is planned and take the necessary corrective measures. The new support for RFIs extends the reach of the application to the process of contract administration, which is not only an important step for the growth of Newforma but will also serve its customers better—the more disciplines the application can cover, the larger the proportion of the project team that can use it, making collaboration easier and more convenient. The greatly expanded capabilities of Info Exchange will help users to continue to reap the benefits of using Newforma Project Center even while collaborating with external team members, and allow those team members to participate in a much more streamlined collaboration process than they would otherwise do. The improved integration with Deltek and increasing integration with other solutions such as SharePoint, Océ Publisher, and Sepialine are also important, allowing information to flow from one process to another without needing to be recreated. The improved documentation, video tutorials, and in particular, the new community website should be extremely helpful to both new as well as existing users of the application.

I was a little disappointed that the new version of Newforma Project Center did not have much more support for BIM and the model-based way of working than the version I reviewed last year, when I anticipated that the application would have to adapt to technological changes such as BIM going forward. While the markup sessions enhancement was inspired primarily by its BIM customers, there have been no additional enhancements in this direction, and Newforma’s 3D capabilities are still limited to being able to search for object-based data in file formats such as DWF, DWG, and IFC and being able to mark up a 2D snapshot of a 3D model. It would be terrific if the Newforma Viewer had the capability to view 3D models (if not in their native file formats, then at least in published formats such as DWF, PDF, and IFC), mark them up, and associate those markups with RFIs, action items, and so on, and I hope to see this capability in a future release. Given that the application bills itself as a “project information management” (PIM) application, it seems that it should focus on being able to work effectively with the “information” in a “building information model.” It will eventually have to transition anyway to supporting BIM-based project management when model-based processes become more commonplace and replace the current drawing-based processes in AEC—so why not make a start as soon as possible and better support those firms who are already well into their BIM implementations?

It is also my hope that BIM will do something to simplify the entire process of project management itself, which technology seems to have made only more complex. While Newforma Project Center has done a terrific job of bringing order into the chaotic world of project management, we need to ask why the business of designing and constructing a building has become so complicated. Creating digital documents has become so easy that we are constantly creating more of them rather than less, under an ever-increasing list of categories such as submittals, transmittals, RFIs, change orders, action items, markups, and so on. For every document that is sent or received, a new document is created as a log, adding to the number of documents that have already been created. Email, for all its efficiency, only exacerbates the problem, as information is sent and received among various team members in a highly unstructured manner, adding one more level of complexity to the project management process. In the absence of a solution to this problem, an application like Newforma Project Center becomes indispensable for streamlining existing processes and workflows. But going forward, we really should be finding a way to mitigate the problem itself, by avoiding the creation of an avalanche of documents and drawings that has to be constantly kept track of and sent back and forth. If Newforma Project Center can devise some smart ways to work with a building model, it could go a long way towards reducing the number of documents that need to be created, making project management a lot easier and the process of designing and creating a building a lot more fun.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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