Navy launches collaboration over the Internet

The United States Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), which oversees $500 million in construction projects annually, is taking its construction business to the Web.

This year NAVFAC's Midwest Regional Contracting Office will build project Web sites for three separate construction projects: a $65 million residential project, a Navy Exchange retail store and a combat training pool.

Using Framework Technologies' ActiveProject Web collaboration software, construction team members, government subcontractors and other Naval departments will exchange project information from CAD files, project schedules, documents and links to external databases.

In the past NAVFAC outsourced the management of construction projects to service bureaus. However, an increased need for customization and management of the buildings' entire lifecycle made outsourcing prohibitive, said LTJG. Joshua Drum, Assistant Resident Officer in charge of construction for NAVFAC.

According to Drum, two mandates have pushed the adoption of Web-based construction project management.

"Our goals [are] to make construction projects paperless by the year 2000, and to align our IT practices with those used by owners and contractors in the private sector," he said.

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