Dec

21

2007

Important Details: The critical factor is the BIM (Building Information Management), which Tectonic has been a pioneer in enabling and managing. While modelling and visualisation in the construction and engineering markets has a long history, including AutoCAD and Autodesk (and its Revit architecture), the management and storage of these models, and their use in workflow to act as the focus for all of the information pertinent to the building and its design and construction, has been relatively slower in appearing. Tectonic aptly describes itself as “the information bridge between specification, buyers and sellers of building products”. Its Library Management environment creates the space for storage of vital dynamic virtual products, for managing the relationships between files and visualisations created by architects as well as those from external suppliers, and, above all, for creating real productivity gains in quantity surveying and pricing activities.

Tectonic Partners comes to BIM from two different directions. On the one hand, it works with suppliers to create virtual products (visualisations of doors or windows with specifications, for example) for insertion into the Personal Library of the architect. All suppliers with whom Tectonic have agreements have this facility, and they are also listed in the Directory which allows users to reach them. At the same time, the Library software allows the assembled architectural elevations and visualisations to be stored, and then turned into quantity take-offs or pricing schedules through automated processing. This is almost certainly the largest step forward in the industry since CAD became endemic in architects’ offices in the mid 1990s, and it brings a workflow management logic to the business of specifying for the first time. If the injection of content into workflow is meant to improve decision-making (cost free comparison of alternatives in this case), improve productivity (single key stroke invocation of specifying and pricing processes), and compliance (BIM solutions are easy to monitor in compliance terms) then RBI US, with its valuable specification data, and Tectonic are very well placed indeed.

Implications: Like Barbour Index in the UK, there was a time when the specification and product directories were a microfile and then a CD-ROM business. Every country had one, and it was usually a valuable and new monopolistic promotion and information tool. Clearly, while manufactures will want to be in every visualisation/library environment that comes along, the fact that Tectonic has created the initial environment, performed the tasks associated with creating virtual products, and created a library and handling environment around them, means that they have a real head start. If architects adopt the Tectonic library software and store their own work on it in their own network then it becomes difficult to dislodge them from the workflow. Add the RSMeans data, and a competitive position while begins to address McGraw-Hill’s clear lead with Construction Network, its bid-handling software, and the FW Dodge and Sweets data, is obviously underway. Since BIM is international in scope, the same type of challenge would be exerted in the UK, where Emap and UBM (Barbour Index) are the main players, or in France (Groupe Moniteur) or Germany (Bauverlag). Although they have the major trade fair (Batiment), Reed has not been as strong in construction in Europe as their competitors. In both the US and Europe, the arrival of Tectonic could begin to address that issue.