E7-the-story-so-far - Woobius Information

Woobius - the story so far

Who is Woobius

Woobius is not product developed by a software cooperation venturing into new territory nor is Woobius conceived by a management consultancy trying to turn a theory into working practice.

Woobius is a collective of architects and programmers who decided to develop the tools they need for their day to day work by themselves. Not because we haven’t got anything else to do but because we need the functionality of Woobius for our work and it is time to stop accepting half house solutions.

As architects we trade in problem solving as well as attention to detail. Clear-, structured- and functional design are second nature to us – so why not apply those skills to our immediate working environment.

The research that gave Woobius it’s shape is based on our very own experience gathered during the past decade working for internationally renowned architectural practices such as Foster and Partners and Make Architects. With the help and comment of virtually hundreds of colleagues, engineers and clients using Woobius on live projects over the last months we have managed to develop Woobius to the leanest and most flexible application possible.

Our first working result can now be seen and used www.woobius.com – a project collaboration tool for the construction industry, designed to cut cost, improve file exchange and document management.

A variety of extensions to that application are being developed and will follow soon.

The Problem

A typical building project involves a lot of drawings and documents (hundreds of drawings to be precise, even for small projects), each of which is nowadays a file of a few megabytes that wants to be printed as and when needed. Each of those drawings has multiple revisions – ensuring everybody is always working to the very latest revision being the key here. Multiply this by 10-20 consultants and contractors involved in a typical building project, and it makes for a pretty big collaboration headache. Adding to the problem, the construction industry has very specialised workflows which means that most of the common collaboration tools used in other industries are not adequate.

There are tools available to solve this problem (e.g. BIW, Asite, 4projects), but they are typically slow, very expensive, hard to use (requiring costly training and specialised staff), and are often only applied late during the construction stages of a project, because they've usually been developed by and for builders, for the building process rather than the design process up front.

The rest of the time, architects seem still stuck in the 20th century: they end up sending tens of megabytes via email or loading them onto an FTP server, both of which are not particularly handy when it comes to keeping track of things. And when that doesn't work even CD couriers are being deployed. This ends up costing a lot of money as well as slowing things down at the worst times.

Document Management Systems

Without knowing it at the time Woobius was almost certainly conceived when we met in the training room of a large document management system that was to be used on our then current job – a large construction project in central London.

The monthly fees for the system were as mindboggling as the number of commands and buttons to press - bearing in mind that every single question we asked during the course were answered with “no, it doesn’t work like that”.

The string of limitations implied by the system at the time is too long to repeat in this paper but from the headache that system caused virtually everyone on the project we learned a couple of fundamental things:

- Communication is essential for the success of a project. If I don’t get my contractor to receive or find the correct information I must be prepared for irritation and confusion later on – usually underlined by a fair bit of shouting during the respective meeting.

- Every project is unique. It has proven complicated to get a project team to adhere to the restrictive nature of large document management platforms. A project team needs a certain freedom to get the system to work to their standards rather than having their hand forced.

- Responsiveness is key. All design and construction projects these days are done under immense pressure. The ability to respond instantaneously does not go well with elaborate procedure but requires an immense amount of flexibility without loosing track of things overall.

What is Woobius

Woobius is online project collaboration and document management for the construction industry. Woobius is web based and can be accessed by pretty much any computer connected to the internet, given it has a reasonable current Flash player installed.

The aim is simple: Woobius is providing a project team with a single place to store all documents needed and, by means of a database structure, ensuring that everybody involved will always access the latest and most up to date information available. Any user can create as many projects as they desire, inviting as many parties as they need to collaborate on their projects.

Woobius can be put to the test right away, without having to go though lengthy application procedures. Every Project has a free storage space of 200MB and can be utilised at once.

How Woobius Works:

Dashboard – See all current movements such as up- and downloads at a glance.

Vault – All key documents are being stored and archived in the Vault. Document revisions are being tracked. The most up to date information is always clearly visible without loosing access to older revisions. Submission sheets are being generated automatically and sent via email including a link to the respective documents.

Dropbox – All accompanying or unofficial material, such as site photos, sketches or presentation materials are being stored in the Dropbox. A dedicated link to a single or a group of files can be sent via email.

Companies – All participating Companies or individuals are being invited into the project via the Companies section. Everybody invited will have access to all documents and be enabled to upload documents in their respective section.

Should you have confidential documents that must not be visible to all participants – i.e. contractual documents for your client – why not open a second project just accessible to you?

Storage – All projects are free up to 200MB of storage space.

If you enjoy using Woobius and need more storage for your project, then for a £10 setup fee, you will have unlimited access to storage at a rate of £10/gb/month.

All price s shown are exclusive of VAT.

Getting started

Go to www.woobius.com , request or log in with your password, wait for the system to load and enter the project. All further instructions can be found in the help box on every screen.

Woobius is designed to work intuitively and no training should be required. Should any question or problems arise - the "contact support" function gives you direct access to the Woobius development team.

The Difference

Certainly there are plenty of document management and file sharing systems available. Many of those we used ourselves in our day to day job as architects. Many of those we dissected and analysed during the development of Woobius itself. Out of everything we learned from that we focussed on avoiding the following stumbling blocks:

Number of Documents – Free file sharing websites usually reduce the number of files you are allowed to upload. Architecture requires hundreds of documents. Having bought a larger capacity regular file sharing sites usually lack an appropriate system to order your files. Woobius does not limit the number of Documents stored.

Number of Participants – As above file sharing services like to limit the number of permissible users to lure it’s customers into spending more. The usual result is that only the senior personnel has access to the system and the project goes on standby once the boss is off for the weekend. Woobius does not limit the number of users to a project.

Up- and Downloads – Even the frequency of up- and downloads is limited with some services: Uploading a small correction triggers a debate about cost. Projects without fixed budget such as competitions or feasibility studies usually don’t even benefit from decent file sharing. Woobius does not limit the number of up and downloads.

Databases – FTP Server and mailboxes do not think. Just a few weeks into the project and chaos has taken over. A clear overview of the current state of play is becoming more an element of speculation than matter of fact. Exactly here lies the split between heated argument and constructive discussion at your next project meeting. Woobius thinks for you. The current state of affairs is always recorded and clearly visible.

Contracts – All currently available Services require applications, in some cases even payments, up front. The customer is tied before he can put the system to a realistic test. A formal procedure has to be obeyed before the work can start. Woobius can be put to use without prior formalities.

System Requirements – Quire a few of the currently available Project Management Systems require the installation of specific software, some even the purchase of dedicated servers. So it is no wonder that some participants within your project are unable to comply and excluded right from the start. As an web based service Woobius can be used by everyone who is able to send and receive emails.

The IT Man – There seems to be an unwritten law for FTP servers and many of the big Document Management Systems that says: any modification, new folders or additional users shall only be implemented by the trained specialist! The call for the IT man for even the smallest changes is standard practice. The time wasted by this condition is counterproductive to say the least. Woobius is 100% user controlled. All adjustments can be made by the users themselves. Should technical problems occur the Woobius Technical Support is at hand.

Training – Many of the big systems require dedicated training courses before they can be used. Apart from the expenses involved this further reduces the number of people that can use the expensive system. Woobius is set up as a self explanatory system. A clearly visible help function allows every newcomer to get into Woobius step by step.

Availability – Everything that is based on particular software of even dedicated intranets has a limited number of access points. As the landscape artist from Australia isn’t the exception anymore a project in a globalised economy needs to be accessible from everywhere. As a web based service Woobius can be accessed from virtually every computer on the web.

The Company

Woobius was founded by Bob Leung, Architect, in 2007 to see if a collaboration tool could be designed as simple and straightforward as discussed with many of his colleagues for the past years. In order to assemble the initial brief he gathered a small group of friends and colleagues around him who developed the requirements and principles of Woobius in a series of weekly meetings.

During that process Daniel Tenner, then a consultant for Accenture, entered the group to function as technical advisor driving all aspects of programming and running Woobius.

Three months into the process a very early Beta Trial was launched on the Web in 2007 – initiating a constant cycle of trials and improvements to the software that endures until to date.

Very early on Woobius decided not to attempt a complete solution but an organic process of growing and improving the software along the comments and feedback of it’s users.

One year later – during the summer 2008 – Woobius launched with 15 users into live project testing. This grew over the past months virally to over 2500 registered users today, from over 200 construction-related companies in the UK, across 100 construction projects, in 27 countries - all through word of mouth!

We believe that we are now ready to launch in for real!