Bob Rakow
Editor

Mark Bostleman, president of ProjectVillage, Holland, Ohio, views project-management somewhat differently than many of his competitors, and his philosphy is reflected in his company’s solution.

“The bottomline is, ProjectVillage was built from the ground up as an application that represents real-world relationships in this industry—companies revolving around projects, not companies revolving around one company that contains a project. The only way an application like this can be built is if it is delivered via a large, shared network—the Internet. Given this, ProjectVillage is inherently an Internet application and, as such, leverages the full potential of the Internet,” says Bostleman, summarizing his company’s view of construction project management.

“To the contrary, the other applications out there are effectively LAN (local-area network)-based applications with HTML (hypertext markup language) interfaces. Technically, this makes them Web-based, but the fact is, they are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of value proposition,” he adds.

As Bostleman explains, most construction extranets work essentially the same way. Typically, a general contractor creates an account for a particular project. The GC owns and controls the account and grants subcontractors and other project participants access by giving them user names and passwords. Basically, everyone involved in the project can log in, access information, and collaborate, based on the policies set by the account-holding organization.

But this approach can be problematic for the subcontractor who works with several general contractors. First, the subcontractor must keep track of the multiple passwords and user names for the various projects in which he is involved. In addition, because data is tied to individual projects, it is nearly impossible for the subcontractor to integrate or aggregate information from the various projects in which he is participating. That, of course, makes it virtually impossible to compare costs and other vital information.

Bostleman contends that most construction extranets are modeled this way “because the applications in use today are the same applications that were in use 10 years ago and moved, as is, to the Internet,” he says. “They were not designed for an environment like the Internet where every organization is participating. As a result, they revolve around a single organization that contains projects.”

“The conventional extranet returns value only to the general contractor,” Bostleman continues. “But what if the same amount of value was returned to every organization on the project and, to boot, you remove the friction inherent in other applications that comes from organizations working in different combinations of partnerships on different projects?

ProjectVillage has tried to accomplish that with its project-management solution.

“Our approach to customers is less about saving a few dollars on long-distance (charges) or faxes and more about the broader strategic value of an integrated supply-chain. That is, it’s great that everyone can see all of the project information immediately from a central location, but the real value lies in integrating business processes across multiple projects and multiple organizations while offering an enterprisewide application for each organization,” Bostleman says. “All the projects are in the same space, in your own account.”

My first question for Bostleman was, “If your approach is superior to that of your competitors, why have other extranet vendors not adopted it?”

The inefficiencies of his competitors’ approach to project management are not yet apparent, he says, but will be as more builders and contractors use extranets for project management. “The pain point isn’t there yet,” Bostleman adds.

He first came up with the idea for ProjectVillage while working for his family’s construction firm, Bostleman Corp. His firm won a job that included 32 retail sites and the need for a collaborative tool was immediately apparent. The company considered several solutions, and almost purchased one, but decided in the end to develop its own, which it called Web PM. The solution later became ProjectVillage.

“Today’s AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) extranets are like biplanes in orbit,” Bostleman concludes. “They move faster they did in their native environment, but they have no chance of navigating efficiently.”