Technology firm Aconex has released a white paper outlining three critical challenges government agencies and project managers will experience when managing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects, and how they can be overcome by using an online collaboration system.
The three challenges are: the huge number of documents that will need to be managed; the time pressures; and the need to meet the stringent records management regulations. Drawing on a range of sources, the paper concludes that an online collaboration system should by a mainstay on any ARRA construction project, due to improving efficiency, accountability and transparency.
Collaboration systems allow all project members - from the government agency to the subcontractors - to access, distribute, track and archive their documents and correspondence using a single, common platform. All project data is securely archived and cannot be deleted or accessed by unauthorized personnel.
Leigh Jasper, CEO of Aconex said: "The ARRA projects are expected to help lay for the foundations for a robust and sustainable 21st century economy, and government agencies and their project managers are under considerable pressure to deliver these projects with maximum efficiency and minimal waste.
"Commonly used tools such as paper documents, email and shared network drives were designed to share information within a single company. However, capital works projects typically involve many organizations and stakeholders. What's more, these firms will create and exchange thousands of documents and correspondence items each month. This flow of information is essentially the lifeblood of a project and so needs to be managed efficiently, ideally using a specialized system. The white paper discusses this in more detail and also provides a checklist to help select a system."
The white paper, "Three critical challenges on any ARRA construction project, and how to overcome them with online collaboration", can be downloaded from www.aconex.com.
