Information hub designed for collaborative working

For architectural practices working in the knowledge economy, project team integration, information management and communications are all critical to achieving high standards of quality and efficiency. BDP, with 16 studios across the globe and an interdisciplinary approach to projects, is no exception to this. BDP needed to develop a strategy for content management, team collaboration and practice-wide communications.
BDP’s Content Management Group, which comprises key business stakeholders and internal technology experts, had a clear view of what needed to be achieved and selected Waterstons to help design and implement the vision.

Microsoft SharePoint was identified as the most suitable platform because key line of business systems within BDP are already being extended to provide SharePoint integration and its functionality can be extended to meet specialised requirements using Microsoft .NET customisation.

It was ideally suited to delivering a range of requirements through a new intranet, including:

Practice: The distribution of corporate information has been improved throughout the practice; with enhancements to the way news is presented and the addition of profession and sector sites with centralised document libraries.In addition, Waterstons has developed bespoke styling controls to allow BDP greater control over the look and feel of their intranet identity.

People: With interdisciplinary teams at the heart of BDP’s philosophy, it was necessary to provide centralised people profile information including contact information, profession and location information, with both formal and informal CVs and details of internal committee membership. Furthermore, functionality was provided to enable users to search and connect individuals.

Design Process: A portal was developed which displays the ‘Design Process’ using a graphical interface and links relevant information to specific activities. The content in the portal is managed and controlled using the electronic document management functionality built into Microsoft SharePoint and is accessible by all project team members.

The solution has enabled BDP to:

- Centralise content from across the organisation into one repository.
Provide an environment for managed communication with a decentralised editing community.

- Quickly connect geographically dispersed people, ensuring that the disciplines have the best access to relevant information.

- Make their people across the business more visible, fostering a greater sense of community, improving interpersonal communication and making the identification of unusal skills easier.

Today, the BDP Content Management Group and Waterstons are continuing to improve the solution.