Manchester, N.H.—August 7 , 2007—Newforma, a software company addressing the project information management needs of the design and building industry, today announced commercial availability of Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition. This major release delivers new solutions for the project information management challenges that architects and engineers face as they adopt building information modeling, or BIM. Those challenges include:
- The proliferation of model views. BIM technologies permit users to generate a full set of design documents far more easily and frequently than do conventional CAD tools. To manage this added source of important project information, Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition provides capabilities to find, capture, organize, share and integrate BIM views in the same manner as other project information.
- Increasingly collaborative and fast-paced design iterations. An accelerated design process makes it harder to record the rapidly-made decisions that result, along with who was involved in the decisions and the decision justifications. Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition addresses this problem with functionality to create and record Markup Sessions, and to link model views to Project Issues and their associated email decision trails.
- Access to the intelligence of the model. While the good news is that BIM provides a common underlying database of building objects, the challenge is to make the properties of those objects easily referenceable and accessible to other team members and software applications outside of the model. Newforma solves that challenge in Fourth Edition through expanded Search capabilities that find object property descriptions in rich file formats such as DWG, DWF and IFC.
- The ripple effect of unintended changes to a model. The parametric nature of BIM means a change to one object will trigger changes in every other occurrence of that object throughout the model. Problems arise when changes are unintended, undesirable and undetected. Fourth Edition expands the Compare capabilities of Newforma Project Center to include sets of model views, flagging all changes from one iteration to the next.
These new BIM-related capabilities are in addition to enhanced project information navigation and out-of-office support for project email management, announced previously. (See release, “Newforma Announces Upcoming Release of Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition.")
Aaron Kivett, Director of Information Services for BNIM Architects, welcomed Newforma’s recognition of the information management needs inherent in BIM. “Over the past year, we have embraced BIM as our single design platform and Newforma as our project information management environment,” Kivett said. “I am pleased to see how Newforma has extended the software’s functionality to support BIM, particularly in the area of model view and markup management.”
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) Director of Firmwide Applications Doris Pulsifer said, “Even though Newforma Project Center is relatively new to the SOM design and management teams, the early reaction to Fourth Edition has been very positive. Key capabilities such as out-of-office support for managing project email and expanded markup for BIM model views will help significantly shift staff time toward higher-value work and away from time-consuming and error-prone manual information management tasks.”
“As the AEC industry accelerates its adoption of BIM, project information management software also needs to evolve in order to support a smooth transition from CAD-based project delivery practices to the new ways of working with model-based design,” said Newforma CEO Ian Howell. “We are very focused on advancing our solution in ways that anticipate and facilitate this major industry change.”
Additional, in-depth details on the new features and functionality of Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition are available at www.newforma.com .
About BNIM Architects
With 37 years of experience as a multidisciplinary architectural firm, Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell Architects (www.bnim.com) has built a reputation for thoughtful and responsive design, thorough technical competence, and conscientious service. With offices in Kansas City, Mo., Houston, Texas, and Des Moines, Iowa, BNIM Architects has completed many significant public and private projects at both local and national levels. The firm’s areas of expertise include sustainable design and community redevelopment, urban planning and design, educational facilities, campus master planning, residential and corporate office spaces. BNIM is committed to restorative design, which aims to maximize human potential, productivity and health while minimizing the consumption of resources and the production of waste and pollution.
About SOM
Founded in 1936, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP is one of the world’s leading architecture, urban design, engineering, and interior architecture firms. SOM’s sophistication in building technology applications and commitment to design quality has resulted in a portfolio that features some of the most important architectural accomplishments of the 20th century. Examples include the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center in Chicago; Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai; Canary Wharf in London; the Washington Mall and Constitution Gardens in Washington D.C.; and the Lever House in New York City. The firm maintains offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Brussels.
About Newforma
Newforma is a software company serving architecture, engineering, construction and owner/operator (AECO) organizations worldwide. Its mission is to develop and market industry-leading software solutions which significantly improve the productivity of the building project team by streamlining work processes, reducing exposure from errors and omissions, improving coordination and communication, increasing visibility into costs and quantities, and enabling greater repeatability of project success. Newforma® Project Center, Newforma’s flagship product, creates a more productive environment for project managers and the project team by organizing project information, facilitating information exchange, and enabling efficient project process. Newforma Project Center is currently implemented on thousands of projects in industry-leading AECO firms. For more information about Newforma, phone +1 (603) 625-6212.
© 2007 Newforma, Inc. Newforma Project Center is a trademark of Newforma, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.