Chapman Taylor will use 'Workspace' from Union Square Software to improve information sharing between eleven European offices
Chapman Taylor, one of Europe's largest architectural practices, has placed a £50,000 order for Workspace, a knowledge management software portal from construction IT specialist, Union Square Software. The web-based system, which will be used by all members of staff in ten offices throughout Europe, is being rolled out in separate phases this year and will provide a marketing database, email archiving and tracking and intuitive storage and retrieval of all project-related information. Chapman Taylor will also be exploring the possibility of extending the functionality of Workspace to include the management of architectural drawings.
According to Tim Partington, a Director of Chapman Taylor, the Workspace portal offers unique opportunities for the construction industry and will have potentially huge benefits for the company. He explains: "Chapman Taylor has experienced significant growth over the past fifteen years so we required a flexible, scaleable system that could automate existing manual processes. Working with Union Square, we have a software partner that provides specialist systems for the construction industry and who understands the way that architects and engineers work."
Established in 1959, Chapman Taylor operated from a single office in Kensington, London, conducting predominantly UK-based projects until the early 1990s. Since then the company has developed an international presence in the architectural arena, with nine additional offices to be found throughout Europe and 50% of its work located outside of the UK, including its recent contribution to Panama City, 'Los Faros de Panama', one of the tallest residential buildings in Central America.
Commenting on the difference the system will make to the company, Partington concludes: "One of our large scale projects can last up to seven or eight years, and in that time a huge amount of information is produced by a large team of people which will also include sub-contractors. Retrieving a batch of information for a specific purpose was previously an arduous process and not an efficient use of employees' time. Looking to the future, we want to move away from hard copy filing and have the confidence to recycle paper at the end of the day, with the ability to locate historical project information in seconds not hours! Workspace provides us with the platform to achieve this goal."
