Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration | Hacker News Reader

Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

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57 pointsswombat46 comments

I have a comment. I have been urging my confreres to use basecamp and actively looking for other collaborative tools. To little or no avail. Old-school is real. I can say that much. But the questions old-school types ask is usually based not on price or speed, but on CYA and security. For CYA, once you upload something then everyone has it and they can criticize it. If there is a mistake somewhere it is visible to everyone forever. For security, the issue is that fear:"what if this gets into the wrong hands?" "What if it gets into the "right" hands, but at the wrong time?" Consider jobs for clients like government: "What if the media gets hold of this?" Also, don't underestimate the tendency of people like me to look at all that work in its native file formats like word and AutoCAD and say: "hell if I will put this out there!" Reading this I know it sounds un-progressive. Fearful, even paranoid. I am being honest. This stuff is people's life's work, their reputation, their self-esteem...and so on and so on. So these are the things people think when collaborative web-based tools come up. The reason I put this here is just to point out that your PR task would seem to me to be reassuring the bosses that it is "safe." Look at legislation and IP precedent. Tell us exactly what protects us. Nice job, Woobiusers. Especially on the pricing. Good luck.

I think part of the way forward on this is to realise that you don't actually have that control, even today.

We touched on this in our Be2Camp North presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1509410 (it's about 20 minutes long - there are a bunch of other presentations in the same stream, after ours).

When you send a file to someone, anyone, you are trusting that person with your file. They can send it on to anyone else they want. They can burn it to a CD. They can print it out and leave it lying around. They can show it to someone at the wrong time. Etc. When people need to send a file to someone, they will - no matter what barriers you put in their way. If you put barriers, they will always go around them some way, either by burning a CD, sending an email, or printing it out.

The more disorganised your modes of communications, the more likely that is to happen by mistake rather than intentionally. And the more disorganised and ad-hoc your communications the least visibility you have over all this.

To your colleagues, I would say, perhaps bluntly, that the control they feel they have is an illusion. There is no control, once you send a file to someone else - there is only trust. The nearest thing to control you might have is visibility - to be able to at least see who downloaded what when. And that, you can get through the Woobius audit log.

Does this help?

You can develop an Access Management system (or integrate with a COTS). You can watermark the files with timestamp and username. Thus allowing you to track who let the documents go into the wild. Based on Meta data, you can restrict access to different files and restrict the client's ability to display those documents.

None of those tasks are trivial and all of them can be worked around. You aren't building a military grade secure system, so, perhaps what you are doing is good enough. I'd start with Access Management and add visibility controls on documents.

Yes it does help. We're always bound under some kind of NDA...But you're right. It's something to think about.

How about a mobile client with a limited browsing capability for AutoCAD? That way, the customer is never giving away the direct access to the file, and can even restrict users to see only parts of the design.

This is a great point. Personal comfort is a huge part of social processes and interactions. The internet has particular obstacles to overcome in this area.

The pricing is too low. It's a niche market, people are prepared to pay more for things that work. However, you need to offer desktop clients to upload the files, because I would believe that architects work with pretty large files - uploading using a webform on a website is painful.

Also, it's easier to sell an actual piece of software to old school companies than a pure web service. Throw together a 'POST' client in C# and you're done in a day.

Niche market? The construction related part of the economy is huge! I think their pricing is just right. By charging more for additional storage space, they have an ideal "try before you buy" situation.

Mobile clients might be very useful. Missed collaboration in construction often results in stuff that cost money to put there and more money to correct. The ability for those in the field to get clarification quickly could save lots of money.

We are looking at the mobile market, but rather than simply adding another interface to access Woobius we are looking at how we can really make mobile technology work for us and our customers. With the inclusion of technology such as GPS receivers, compasses and high speed internet now as standard, we can do much more than mobile voice communication.

Exactly. If a foreman can pass a request for clarification up quickly, this can save a lot of money. If you can use GPS to determine the context/location quickly -- that could be very sexy!

Were any of you guys trying to do this in Cincinnati, OH 10 years ago?

Also, I think you already have the idea, but don't forget that you can also make money selling disk space. Those who need a lot more of it may well be willing to pay for that at premium rates!

Mobile is a waste of time. Mobile apps are too cheap, people can just call each other. And the construction industry is a niche, because we're talking about the intersect of construction and web apps here.

The web designer industry is a niche in the overall economy, but it's one of the largest in the web based economiy. The reverse is true for the construction industry.

I have experience in selling B2B. Their pricing is wrong.

By the same token you could argue that burning CDs and printing out reams of paper to send via couriers is adequate, and that a system of distribution via the internet is a waste of time. Mobile applications aren't necessarily a replacement for voice communication, but rather an enhancement to.

For example, what better way to communicate information that pertains to a particular geographical location than providing a map with the location clearly marked on it? Add photos into the mix, taken on site with their positions marked and even the direction in which the photo was taken and you can save yourself a thousand words.

As for the price of mobile applications, only a small percentage of mobile applications are stand-alone anyway, the majority being integrated with much bigger systems in order to expand, enhance and mobilize the workflow. We don't expect to butter our bread with mobile applications, but we do intend to increase the usability and usefulness of our system.

Without a doubt, mobile applications make sense. But the amount of time you would put into this at this fledgling stage of the business would be a big mistake - one should first focus on the web based part of things, iterate till it matches the needs perfectly, then make a simple mobile app and expand from there.

Trying to make some large mobile app would bog down the business, and it will not pay.

The misconception there is that a mobile app need be large, or indeed that we are (or intend to) plough effort into one while we still have more important things to do.

But that doesn't stop us planning, theorizing and experimenting. How else is innovation manifested? :-)

Sure, but that doesn't stop us from dreaming about it until we have the resources to do it!

The guy who started this would have been a customer. Maybe he knows a bit more about what customers want the pricing to be.

Do you have any experience in the construction industry? How would you know whether the price is too high, too low, or whatever else?

I think joel_feather has 2 points: uploading via web is painful and niche pricing will be accepted by woobius target market. (This is also just an opinion, but I honestly believe those 2 points merrit some consideration).

I think the title (and article) is a little over the top. The audit trail is a nice feature but the rest is just sharing files?

The real problems are in annotating these drawings collaboratively, merging separate parts and layers of buildings and in general managing the actual flow of information in a design process instead of merely the drawings. Solutions with versioning IFC files, IFD libraries and solving the problems in this area are far more important (and complicated unfortunately). Think like: Which parts of the building were modified in the last version by the architects and how does that influence the building costs? Is the old construction still valid and if not which parts cause conflicts, etc...

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the innovation that woobius does on the user interface side is really great and that they managed to get featured on techcrunch is also great to get more attention to this topic, so all the good to them!

Hi, I'm the founder of Woobius. Firstly, thanks for your kind words on the user interface. We are fortunate to have Cliff Rowley who been a key driving force behind it.

With respect to the body of your comment. The reason Woobius is useful to architects and engineers is that it fits into their existing workflow - e.g. they produce a 2D drawing that forms part of their legal documentation. While this process is (for all intent and purposes), basic, it's often neglected. Being practicing architects ourselves, we realised that by making this easy and efficient, our collaboration cost can be dramatically reduced.

I believe that once we have achieved this first step, we can start to tackle the more complex issue of allowing collaborative annotation on drawings themselves. Hopefully, by which time we would be in position to annotate a 3D model even!

Hi, thanks for your response. I think I just expressed my hopes so I understand it's just a start. I am currently researching annotating / versioning 3d building models however I feel greatly restricted by all the format wars in 3d / CAD land (collada, csg vs brep, autodesk land, ifc (2x3/2x4) and on and on. Does anyone have thoughts on this subject?

Congrats Daniel. It's like Basecamp for architects. Re: your TC comment - is that 3000 users or customers?

Thanks. It's users, sadly :-) But we'll get there...

Please please please, set your aim really high: think International. Look into project management and scheduling. Look beyond the web app, and certainly beyond the typical $5/mo "monetization". Don't hesitate to offer customized versions and certainly solicit and implement user feature requests. Look into all the industry standards, laws and regulations. The more you learn about construction the better it will reflect in the quality of your product. Reach out to industry groups that your users are members of. Read their trade publications. Attend their conferences. Befriend architects, and actually become friends with them.

That's what I want to tell my younger self when I was working on my first start up, 1999 - 2001.

Dragging industries into the current century always seems like a great idea. But, there's often a reason why the industry is still stuck where they are, and it's usually not technical. (I can't say I haven't been tempted to try this on more than one occasion, though. So many industries are so old school as to be painful for a nerd to even look at. So much time being wasted every day on old processes and methods, it's quite sad.)

100% agree. Woobius's success so far is not due to some especially advanced technology, but to the fact that we're strongly connected in that industry (Bob, my cofounder, is himself an architect) and so we've been able to build a tool that adapts to the way they already work, rather than trying to force them into some new processes.

Essentially, what allows us to reach this market is the user interface work rather than the hard technology, if you see what I mean.

"...we've been able to build a tool that adapts to the way they already work, rather than trying to force them into some new processes."

Good for you. Getting users to change is like trying to get them to eat an elephant. The best way to do it is one bite at a time.

Congratulations. I also read your article about document control, and immediately liked your approach. For example, restricting folders to just one level and not folders-within-folders, seems to have helped you in eliminating gratuitous complexity.

Side question out of sheer curiosity: Do you have AutoLISP/ObjectARX plugins that interact with your site?

We don't have such plugins yet, but our system is built with the eventual release of an API in mind (so that any number of clients could connect, not just the Flex client)... if you want to build something that interacts with it, just contact me and I'll see how we can help you.

First of all, congrats on your TC coverage.

I'm interested in your approach for the pricing of the service. I have to agree with joel_feather that 12$/gb/month seems a little too low for a niche market. Do you have any estimates about the average storage needed by your targeted users?

Thanks for your comment.

I won't go into all the detail of the lengthy, lengthy conversations we had about pricing over the course of a year before finally implementing it, but you're right that the price is low. However, that's intentional.

There are already products serving really big projects (the ones with costs in the hundreds of millions), but those tools are all far too expensive (and complex, slow, cumbersome, etc) to be used by smaller projects. We chose to make Woobius affordable to smaller projects too.

With respect to average size of projects, many of the tinier projects (e.g. a small house) will probably just about get away with the free version (but if they need a bit more storage, £10/m - or equivalent in other currencies - won't break the bank). Small-ish commercial developments will probably use around 1-3 gigabytes. Very large or very active projects are probably looking at 5-10 gigabytes.

I've worked in the residential construction space several decades as a surveyor, draftsman and software developer. I tried with some friends to approach the whole workflow from customer contracts through plans, estimates and purchasing to finish product. It ended up being too large of a scope for a few people part time on it. I think picking a small piece of that workflow and improving it is a smart choice.

It would be a cold day in hell before I decided to engage the services of a company called "Woobius".

Seriously, am I the only person on earth who thinks all these new startup names are just utterly stupid? What are these people thinking? "Woobius"!

It's very interesting what people say about our name. One thing for sure, the name Woobius is like marmite, some love it, some don't, but everyone remembers it.

Thanks for the honest comment though!

I look past names and use them for the problems they solve.

Well, more power to you I suppose. I just see it as laziness on the part of the founder, and I can't overlook it.

edit: you can mod me down all you like, swombat, but I'm just stating what I think, and I doubt I am alone.

He actually can't downmod your original comment, because he submitted the story.

I don't much care for the name either, but in the long run, I don't think it matters much. "Google" doesn't sound very serious, "Yahoo" speaks for itself. "Micro" "soft" has been the butt of jokes for a while. Unix is a pretty awful name in its own right. And so on and so forth...

"Unix" sounds freaking awesome compared to "Woobius". As do the others. Microsoft is a fantastic name, what are you talking about?

I think more than a few founders here are in denial about their companies' ridiculous names, but whatever, it's not my fight. Hey guys, if modding down my (polite, reasonable) comments makes you feel better about naming your company something a 3-year-old would laugh at, have at it.

[edit: the having-at-it has commenced all right, but are people really defending these crappy names? I might come across as an asshole but I am actually serious here - I think these names are awful! I think they are costing otherwise good companies customers! What is wrong with telling the founder community to try harder?]

if modding down my (polite, reasonable) comments

Your initial comment said it would be a "cold day in hell" before you used Woobius and that the name was "utterly stupid." That's an interesting interpretation of polite and reasonable.

I don't see what's impolite or unreasonable about that. I really do think the name is stupid, and I really would be prejudiced against a company with a name like that.

I suppose I could have said the name is "suboptimal" or something but why beat about the bush?

You could try couching it in some politeness: "The idea looks good, but my honest opinion is that the name sounds awful". Also, keep in mind the "what would you say in person" guideline. I guess some people would be that blunt in person, but for most people, it puts things in enough perspective to produce something polite.

Are you my ex-girlfriend?

"You're ugly and stupid!!! I'm not being mean, those are simply the facts!"

Never said they were facts, just my opinion.

So, she's free, then ..? :D

Unix --> eunuchs Microsoft --> small and soft

Chill.

No, but you might be one of the few limiting their options and opportunities simply based on names ;-)

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