Fluor Daniel

Fluor Daniel

Fluor Daniel, an architectural, engineering and construction firm with headquarters in Irvine, California and worldwide offices, has been the number one firm in its field for over ten years. The corporation's maintain a sharp focus in all industry groups, including pulp and paper; pharmaceutical and biotechnology; chemical, plastics and fibers; automotive; and metals, with Project teams concentrating on engineering and construction requirements of each sector.

Rick Cashon, Project Manager of Fluor Daniel's corporate-wide electronic document management system effort, has extensive experience in the Information Systems, CAD and design visualization environments.

Fluor Daniel's various computer systems include a worldwide WAN and LANs in various offices utilizing Novell. AutoVue is available on the company's standard server platforms along with a suite of products, found in each location. The company has a Wang Open Image system and uses Docs Open from PC Docs for document management. AutoVue has been used for many years at Fluor Daniel to address CAD viewing and markup needs.

Cashon was responsible for a year-long evaluation of Fluor Daniel system needs and vendors. However during the evaluation period the company decentralized its operations tremendously. He suggests the decentralization process changed the company's perspective of how to do document management as well. Initially the intent was to implement an enterprise wide solution but the direction moved to the project level, and consequently to an evaluation of products that fit project team needs.

Markup of drawings was done by hand on plot copies or notes on the actual CAD files. Although not used extensively, AutoVue was available for non-CAD staff to do viewing and redlining, but most changes were made to hard copy drawings because "old habits die hard," according to Cashon. "And people didn't necessarily have computers available to do redlining electronically," he noted. "The tools weren't there for a document manager to know who had done redlining."

Fluor has now acquired 500 corporate seats of AutoVue, which is now part of the document management viewing and markup solution, and it has evolved as an enterprise wide solution. Now there will be better document control and Cashon expects more on-line redlining instead of hard copy changes. The result will be better work flow as staff access drawings, make changes or add notes, and then pass the file to the next person electronically, never touching a piece of paper.

Fluor Daniel may use other document management systems depending on their client requirements. "We have so much diversity in the files that we get from our clients," Cashon indicated. "We can get either hard copies or whatever they happen to use and if we ask for an electronic file they send it in whatever format they happen to have. We have to be able to view or print the file if we need to."

The variety of documents and drawings provided by outside sources in different file formats is tremendous, according to Cashon. "We try to push our vendors to provide drawings either AutoCAD or MicroStation format." But the formats, particularly word processing, vary widely. "We're trying, and it would be nice to get a fully electronic world, but being realistic, it's going to be a long time down the road before we get rid of all paper," Cashon said. "You always have to have the capability of printing whatever you're looking at and that's what AutoVue allows you to do because it can recognize the file formats."

Cashon says no single application will ever be a standard with Fluor Daniel, but the use of AutoVue has increased as company needs evolved, primarily because of its use with CAD applications, and staff were already familiar with the features. Any company standards evolve from a point of view of the user, the popularity of products and the capability of users to work with applications. "Products are used because people like them and they get the job done, not because of an edict." He suggests there are two sides to document management in the AEC industry - business and project issues. The project involves everything from specifications to drawings to correspondence. And each project has its own special needs, be it only drawing management or including correspondence as well, depending on the client's requirements.

Fluor Daniel spent over one year evaluating vendors and products. The ongoing decentralization efforts of the company created a situation where the evaluation is now along the lines of specific software needs to fit the project and client needs. "We went through the process to select a primary vendor," notes Cashon. "We never select a single vendor. We select a primary vendor or preferred vendor." Fluor Daniel needed a non-CAD viewer for non-technical staff to "pop-up" views of MicroStation and AutoCAD drawings. And as document management systems were added, the need for a viewing and markup tool became apparent.

"There are so many people involved in document management that are not CAD literate and you don't want them fooling around with or amending the native CAD files," Cashon emphasizes. "They need to be able to review the file, but not be able to do any revisions. So we looked at viewers from another perspective and that is from the document control side," he added. "Since we are already familiar with AutoVue, it made good sense to continue because a lot of people already know the product." And AutoVue can be used to launch files both in the CAD and the document management environments, which was a positive factor according to Cashon. "That makes a big difference because it allows you to have only one product to view and print files," Cashon said. "You don't have to worry about having different software applications available on each server."

Cashon remembers an AutoVue training course he organized and taught at Fluor Daniel's location near Philadelphia. The staff were knowledgeable about MicroSoft's Windows, but had never used AutoVue. They were not engineers or designers, but rather were responsible for document control or were project managers. "The class was four hours," Cashon recounted. "It was meat and potatoes on how to use the product because the best way they had to learn was by doing it." The majority left with a very strong comfort level regarding AutoVue. "People who are Windows-knowledgeable and work in the CAD environment with AutoCAD or MicroStation can work with AutoVue for about an hour and be
ready to go," according to Cashon.

And he has never had a problem with the support from Cimmetry Systems Inc. AutoVue is good enough that any questions have typically been related to its use in various situations rather than to correct a problem.

Fluor Daniel is also investigating various approaches to document control as they plan for the future, and the development direction of AutoVue is important. Cashon is pleased that Cimmetry staff keep him up to date on product enhancements. "I'm on the Beta test list," he remarks. "I love being a guinea pig. Sometimes it's interesting because you try to make them earn their money because you break a feature in for them."

Cashon states Cimmetry is receptive to recommendations for product enhancement and if a feature is not available, then the development staff are ready and willing to listen. "That is extremely important because we get a variety of client requirements and needs," said Cashon. "And if we get asked to do some type of integration using a document management system that we're not familiar with, the first thing we're going to want to do is see how well AutoVue is going to fit into and work with it."

Cashon prefers products that evolve. "The engineering and construction industry has always been evolutionary because the competition is so fierce, if you're not on the front line you're not going to win the contracts. And you have to have products that fit those front lines."