The following article is a summary of the key notes spoken about in Built Intelligence's most recent Quarterly Product Roadmap Webinar.
This article contains the following topics:
- Academy Recap
- Top Tip - Webinars
- Upcoming Workshop
- Save the Date
- What's Under Construction
- FastDraft Recap
- FastDraft Last Quarter Notes - All Users
- FastDraft Last Quarter Notes - Admin Users
- FastDraft Roadmap Q1
- Video Recording
Academy Recap
This section will look at what we have been working on in Academy recently. We release updates on Academy on a 4 week cycle which you can find here.
Some new Academy features that have taken place recently include:
e-Learning Content
We have recently launched new e-Learning:
- Improving Cost Certainty on Rail MegaProjects
- How can Public Procurement Help Deliver Social Value?
- Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Alternative Dispute Resolution
- Legal Developments in the UK Construction Industry
Webinars
We recently aired the following webinars:
- Capital Allowances - Post Autumn 23 Budget - Hosted by John Lovell, this webinar covers Capital Allowances on Construction and Property Expenditure in an era of higher taxes and inflation.
- Amending the JCT contracts - This presentation, delivered by Mike Tiplady, covers the JCT Suite of Contracts; we recommend attending this if you want to get a better grasp of how the different parts of the contracts relate to each other!
Academy Features
Some new Academy features that have taken place recently include:
- Mobile App and Offline Learning - all Academy features can now be accessed via our mobile app, perfect for teams who travel or work offsite, as well as those with limited internet access.
- Journeys available in Mobile App
If you'd like to hear more about Journeys in Academy, get in touch by emailing support@builtintelligence.com
Top Tip - Webinars
This quarter's top tips centre around our Webinars in Academy.
If you have an account for our Academy, you can access our webinars using the Training Calendar.
The webinars will automatically be shown in Month View, but you can Switch to Agenda View.
Our webinars compliment our e-Learning and training. By using the Training Calendar you can register for as many webinars as you like.
If you have a subscription, you can watch our webinars on demand, at your convenience. You can find the full selection under My Learning.
At the bottom of the page, under Categories, you'll be able to see Webinars On-Demand, where you can browse through our library of webinars and assign any you like to your profile, for easier access.
Upcoming Workshop
FastDraft Reporting Product and User Group Workshop 24th January
In this quarters' workshop, Chris and the BI product team will share how you can leverage your Built Intelligence data to:
- Stay on top of team productivity and project delivery. Get a real view of activity across all workflows for your projects teams.
- Understand users efficiency by visualizing project issues by discipline resolved against time spent. Identify the champions who are "doing more with less" and replicate them, and
- Optimize allocation of resources to projects. Ensure that your most complex projects are being resourced properly.
We'll dive into both analytics features such as the performance dashboards and our contract maturity model which provide a blueprint for advancing your organisation contract management performance. This event will also provide you with an early look at, and opportunity to influence our product strategy and direction, and an opportunity to interact with peers and discuss products ideas with our senior management team.
Click here to book.
Save the Date
We are pleased to announce this year's Built Intelligence User Group Conference will be held on 21st March 2024.
We will be live-streaming the all day event for FREE, so register now to make sure you don't miss out!
Our conference has become the must-attend event for experienced NEC professionals and clients with a passion for smarter contract management.
Our diverse mix of leading industry expert speakers and topics will include William Brown, Genna Rourke, Sean Gibbs, Rob Hubbard, Rob Cummins, John Hayes, and Foot Anstey.
The conference will be focussing on collaboration, legislation, procurement, dispute resolution, the critical importance of project execution plan, all with practical advice.
What's Under Construction
New features due for release
Journeys Analytics Reporting Enhancements
We are collaborating with Genna Rourke, chair of CIC's Women In Construction, to advocate for upskilling young surveyors, and those new to the role. We're working on a new 2-year journey in our Academy aimed at Quantity Surveyors, to take them through their journey as an alternative to a college or university course.
New e-Learning Courses
- NEC4 Facilities Management Contract
- FIDIC Red Book Fundamental
- FIDIC Silver Book Fundamental
Webinars
- The Law of Construction Adjudication
- A 'Typical' Adjudication
FastDraft Recap
This section will look at what we have been working on in FastDraft recently. We release updates on FastDraft on a 2-4 week Sprint Cycle which you can find here.
PowerBI Analytics
PowerBI is a prebuilt set of reports embedded into FastDraft, with comprehensive filtering capabilities. It is there to enhance and provide a more comprehensive reporting tool, as well as our already embedded Aggregated Reports.
We are slowly rolling PowerBI out to our customers - those with a dedicated instance can get early access, but we are looking to roll out on our Managed Services in the near future.
PowerBI dynamically adjusts so that users can only see the data they are entitled to see; for example, users will only be able to see reports about contracts that they are a user of.
FastDraft Last Quarter Notes - All Users
Task Orders & Project Orders
In order to support NEC TSC and FMC contracts FastDraft provides a Task Order workflow and a Project Order workflow.
If needed, Completion Date Certified can be added to the workflows and registers.
PM & Supplier Defect Workflows
We have updated this workflow to allow permissions to be configured independently for update and close tabs on PM/Supervisor and Supplier notifications. For example, this allows the PM to delegate responsibility for updating the defects register whilst retaining the responsibility for closing defects.
Early Warning Workflow
We have updated this workflow to allow permissions to be configured independently for update and close tabs. For example, this allows the Supplier to update the action and owner, but the PM retains the responsibility for updating the likelihood and severity and for closing the Early Warning.
Cosmetic change when editing registers
When customising any register, the column selector has been changed to a tick box (where you would previously drag them in and out you now tick or untick them).
Moving a column to a new position is still drag and drop.
FastDraft Last Quarter Notes - Admin Users
Aggregated Reports
Admin users now have the ability to filter reports for a specific project company.
Contract Template Control
We have added an option to apply Master Template changes to contracts based on that template. In order to assist with rolling out changes and improvements across a number of contracts it will now be possible to link contracts directly to a master template. When creating a contract it will now be possible to link that contract directly to the master template so that changes to the master template can easily be pushed out to all contracts based on that template.
- Any user with permissions to edit a contract template will (via the Contract Overview) be able to select whether a contract should use its own customisable template or point directly at a master template
- When switching an existing contract from using a customisable contract level template to using a master template, a copy of the contract level template will be retained (in the background) so that it can easily be reinstated.
- When switching an existing contract from using a master template to a customisable contract level template any previously customised contract level template will be reinstated or (if a custom contract template didn't previously exist) a customisable copy of the selected master template will be created so that it can be customised for this contract
- If attempting to access the contract template, a user with appropriate permissions will be able to see the template but not edit it
- If you wish to customise a contract and it's not desirable to reinstate the previous contract template (in other words if you would prefer to use the latest master template and overlay new customisations) then please contact the help desk at support@builtintelligence.com
- Unless there is a good reason to apply custom configuration at a contract level (e.g. a Supervisor has delegated permissions to act as PM) it's recommended that all contracts point at master templates so that new features (e.g. rolling out new certificates workflows or adding the new payment types dropdown to payment certificates) can be easily implemented via a single config change to each master template.
- Aggregate Report support has been added for Master Templates links to prevent reporting errors if a template is moved from pointing at a contract level template to a master template.
Clone a Contract
We have added new functionality so that users with specific permissions will be able to clone an existing contract from the Contracts Overview page. Some of the information will not be cloned e.g. Contract Number, Hub/Area/Other Tags, Price, but we are copying Start Date and Completion Date because these fields need a value, otherwise it will cause errors. However, we've implemented a pop-up prompt to remind people to change them. For further information please check our FastDraft manual in the next couple of weeks, for a new support article.
Lockdown of Company Users
We have implemented a new feature, that has been sponsored by one of our customers to ensure that users are set up under the correct company. Specific admin users will be able to enforce that some company records are created for contractual purposes only and that all users are added to a single group company.
A Site Administrator can set a flag preventing anyone adding users to a Company. This is designed to prevent users being added to a JV Company. There is also an optional dropdown where an existing company name can be selected - which if specified is where the users will be created.
New Tag Category
We have added an additional 'Other' Tags field on the Contract Overview page. It is an optional category but will be included in reporting.
FastDraft Roadmap Q1
NEC In-App Coaching
Unlock your project team's potential with FastDraft In-App Contract Coaching, coming soon!
In-App Contract Coaching will provide contract type and role-based notifications for the first 30 days, first 90 days, and last 90 days of your contract. It aims to coach users with regards to NEC, for those less familiar with or new to NEC contracts. It's designed to help remind you of the things you might need to do, notifications you may need to raise, actions you may need to take within the previously mentioned timeframes of your contract.
Users will be able to enable/disable this feature based on their preference.
Integration Hub
With our new Integration Hub, users will be able to connect multiple platforms together. You can send project data to third-party software and apps, such as:
- Productivity software Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, or
- Common data environments like ViewPoint, Aconex and Asite, or
- Financial systems like COINS, QuickBooks, SAGE or SAP, and
- Scheduling tools like Project Online and Primavera Cloud
You can use software like Power Automation or Zapier to receive a trigger from FastDraft that will prompt another software to perform an action, or vice versa.
The Integration Hub opens up a massive potential for lots of use cases - if it sounds like something you might be interested in, please get in touch and speak to our Support Team by emailing support@builtintelligence.com
Exporting Contracts (expanded to Site Admins)
A new feature that is currently only available to Built Intelligence will go live soon; the ability to 'Export' a contract. In the Contract Overview, there will be an 'Export' button next to the Contract State. This schedules a zip file to be exported overnight, and will provide a spreadsheet register of workflows, a pdf of notifications, plus any attachments added to notifications. This will save you having to do it manually, and you will be able to find the export in the Downloads page under Analytics in the left-hand navigation panel.
If you'd like to know more about Exporting a contract, or are interested in exporting your contracts, please contact support@builtintelligence.com
Enhanced Action Reminders
All workflows where it is relevant to have a reply will have a reply timescale, but there are several additional scenarios where you've got scheduled tasks which we are looking to support better so that they will also appear in your action reminders. This includes:
- Schedule Tasks - Payment Applications/Certificates/Programme Submissions, etc.
- Actions arising from instructions
- Manually assigned actions
- Support mutual agreement to extend deadlines (currently only supported for CEs)
Some additional roadmap features include...
- Support for multiple currencies on a single contract
- Support for X1 - Inflation
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