Dec 8 2009
Contemporary buildings, such as London’s ‘Gherkin’, showcase architecture, technology, and engineering. Yet for most small architecture firms the collaborative process between architects, engineers, builders and contractors, is firmly rooted in the 20th Century, with its bureaucratic traffic of plans and notes. But new software is changing this. Woobius and its mobile phone application Woobius Eye is a simple, user-friendly file-sharing system for the building industry.
Woobius CEO and architect Bob Leung explains that when a building is being built the architect needs to know that people are using the correct version of the drawing. ‘Because you may have edited the drawing ten times before the guy who’s actually building uses it,’ says Leung, ‘and he may be using a version that is two weeks old. In that scenario, how does the contractor know he has the right information? Woobius comes in as the glue between all these parties.’
Paper trail
Leung had worked on the UK’s Treasury building for Foster and Partners when Gordon Brown was Chancellor. They had access to electronic tools at the time, which allowed for revisions, but these are generally only used on very large projects. Leung left Foster and Partners and joined a spin-off called Make, and he pitched the idea of collaborative software. Launched in June, it’s now used in 30 different countries with 5000 users in 450 companies. Woobius keeps people up to date and provides ‘a paper trail’. All drawings by the architect require receipts when they are sent to the engineer, then the engineer has to document them, not least because there are requirements by insurance companies to keep an audit trail. As Leung says, ‘the architects and engineers are out there to make great buildings. They’re not there to do filing.’ Woobius should save time and money.
Source: http://www.britishcouncil.org/new/