VPO | Virtual Project Office™

Reducing Costs. Improving Collaboration.
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Your Challenges

According to IDC, workers spend up to 20 hours per week searching for, shuffling, and reformatting information in unproductive ways.
 
You may have switched from paper documents to e-mail because it's fast and cheap; for those very reasons, your organization is probably suffering from information overload. More than half the American organizations AIIM surveyed in 2009 admit that their e-mail is out of control, and they have little confidence that vital messages and information will be accessible in the future. Besides, e-mail systems can't handle the large files that you and your project participants need to exchange.
 
Burning CDs? Using flash drives? How do your team members know if they're using the latest version of an important file? An FTP site can do the simple job of storage, but only if everyone--across organizations--is disciplined enough to name files properly and save them to the right locations. Plus, since it's just a storage 'room,' there's no intuitive interface for conveying site-usage instructions, news or announcements.
 
Document Storage & Routing
 
Members of your project team need to manage vast quantities of information. Project participants from multiple organizations need to access, submit, review, comment on, approve, and update vital records like drawings, change orders, contracts, instructions, meeting minutes, notices, reports, schedules and payment applications.
 
These review-and-approval processes don't follow a straight-line path. And the network of people who are involved can grow and shrink over time, depending on the project phase--design, bidding or construction.
 
Time & Money Pressures
 
 
Impending deadlines can easily lead to mistakes and mis- communication by project participants, causing unanticipated project delays and extra costs.
 
Collaborating team members represent various companies--owner, architect, engineer, construction management firm, prime contractors, subcontractors--and are separated by geography and work hours.

Security & Archiving

 

 

Project owners and construction management teams are responsible to all project participants to impose control over the way in which documents are created, stored and maintained. They have to apply standards and procedures in order to protect confidential and proprietary information.

 

They also have to be able to synthesize comprehensive historical project data for executive oversight and maximization of future projects' profitability. Even a claims situation in which they ultimately prevail can cost a lot of time and money if records are not organized for easy and efficient discovery.