How A Real-Estate Development Company Avoided Cost and Time Overrun with Cloud Based Alfresco Collaboration Server
A Real Estate Developer save $10 million and more by avoiding Cost Overrun and avoiding Deadline Penalty
A Real Estate Developer in Canada was in the process of developing a shopping mall complex in Canada. The shopping mall was a complex development and communication and coordination was of key importance. The list of departments that was involved in the project approval are large and diverse. The list below is a partial summary:
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City Council
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City Planning Department
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Water and Sewer Department
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National Highway Department
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Provincial Highway Department
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National Cemeteries
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Environmental Planning Council
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Real Estate Brokers
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Anchor Tenants like Big Box Stores
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Design Architects
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Civil Engineers
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Construction Companies
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Plumbing Sub trade
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Electrician Sub trade
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Carpenturs Sub trade
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Electrical Engineers
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HVAC Engineers
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Banks and Financial Investors
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Mortgage Brokers
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Investors in Public Traded Stocks of the Company doing Development
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Taxpayer for the City
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Aboriginal Groups
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Land Title Office
As the company doing the real estate development was located in a city 3500 KM away, added extra dimension to the problem. The follow of information and various revisions that came with it became a nightmare. Other than the secretary, most of the people were at site or at various offices during business hours. You can reach them by phone and mobile email, face to face meeting was expensive and difficult to conduct. However, face to face meeting to discuss various issues and documents was becoming a critical issue. It was at this point of time Keen Computer Solutions got involved.
A classic project management and operations management analysis of the situation was performed. The operations management along with project management was done to understand the workflow - who does what and when. We realized at this point that each domain of expertise has its vocabulary and protocol that needs to be followed. A blog of the various domain expertise and document revision become critical requirement. The requirement of work flow also became evident at this point. We used UML based business process analysis to model the operations management of the real estate development company and the various authorities that it needed permissions from[1][2][3].[5]
A collaboration and document management solutions was introduced as the solution. The requirement of the solution was that it must be accessible from mobile phone, tablet and laptop and desktop. We recommended Alfresco Collaboration Server[1] as the solution. It is a cloud server hosted solution and has excellent mobile interface, It has robust revision control and work flow management that is so crucial for the present business. The Alfresco collaboration server was hosted on Keen Computer cloud service using OpenStack technology. The solution was elegant, functional and cost effective.
After the completion of the project the impact and value of the collaboration server was investigated and the following points were observed.
- The collaboration server was able to avoid cost and time over runs - the value of which could be easily 10 Million.
- The collaboration server helped see documents on tablets and pc and smartphone of the construction site,
- By uploading site images from tablet and smart phone to collaboration server, people were aware of the real situation on a timely basis. Without online collaboration that was impossible.
- Various monitoring and environmental agency could see the progress first hand.
The project was a immense success and it was noted that collaboration server from Alfresco should be used in E-Government solutions. The use of Microsoft Sharepoint was avoided because of closed and proprietary architecture .
The Alfresco collaboration server was integrated with Liferay horizontal portal for the company and this formed a complete solution, that was easy to navigate.
In Summary
Alfresco collaboration server was a success for the real estate developer. The cost and time overrun which are common on such projects was substantially reduced with collaboration server/ The value of collaboration server on e-government was demonstrated. Please contact us for details and how you can use collaboration serve to avoid time and cost over run, One of our solution engineers will be happy to discuss possibilities.
References
1.0 Alfresco Collaboration Server- Alfresco.org
2.0 Liferay Horizontal Portal- Liferay.org
3.0 E-government-
4.0 Openstack in Action- ISBN-13: 978-1617292163
5.0 Business Process Reengineering- Hammar- ISBN-13: 978-0060559533