Bentley launched a new pen-based solution called ProjectWise Dynamic Plot today, with the concession that paper is a ‘near-perfect’ mobile media. Despite assumptions to the contrary, more paper is generated as access to computers and printers become more ubiquitous, and much of this is due to the portability and ease of using pens on paper for design review and markups in the field. Problems do arise however, when you look at the time that is spent to synchronize the markups with the original design documents.
Bentley has been working with HNTB to test drive the solution, and they’ve uncovered some stunning details regarding efficiency. HNTB indicates that there are an average of 10,000 plots per project, with 8,000 of those plots receiving markups throughout the building process. With an average 15 minutes to synchronize markups, the company realized that they spend nearly 2,000 hours per project synchronizing the drawings on paper, and it’s tough to archive these hand-drawn notes to get a sense of how the project has evolved.
The ProjectWise Dynamic Plot allows users to do exactly what they’ve done before, but with the smart pen the markups are captured providing an audit trail of changes that can be part of a collaborative workflow that’s almost real time. The digitization of the process is seamless, without any need for training. The users simply dock the pen after mark-up, and their changes are recorded with a unique identifier that let’s everyone on the team know who wants the change and when their change request was recorded. The pens are a comfortable mobile solution that are intuitive and rugged, and they hold up to 50 sheets of markups with a charge that lasts up to seven days.
The current lean times provide an incentive for companies to streamline, reducing costs by improving efficiency. This pen-based solution seems like an ideal candidate for such testing as it’s a relatively low-cost solution that doesn’t require any training, very little support and very little adjustment to current work practice.
Bentley has been hard at work on the Dynamic Plot concept for some time as I first viewed the concept at the 2007 BE conference in their Applied Research Labs booth. The pens are produced by the Swedish company Anoto, and the underlying pattern-based printing is licensed from that company. The same technology is also licensed by companies such as Adapx that have a solution based on Adobe’s PDF format. The differentiator here is that the Bentley’s solution is tightly integrated with the ProjectWise environment and is tailored specifically to the AEC workflow.
When considering sustainability, it’s hard to feel good about the continued reliance on paper. Tree lovers everywhere will shudder at the thought of an average 10,000 plots per project. But paper is recyclable, and my hope is that the solution will evolve to some sort of digital paper or erasable whiteboard solution in the future.
