Effective electronic communication and a nearly paperless process turned out to be the keys that enabled the team to complete the project as directed, meeting all the milestones mandated by upper management.

Choosing the Best Tool

"Efficiency in the design process is absolutely critical," says Clay Hayden, director of Research Resources Administration at Merck. "Efficiency includes easing the demands on the client members of the project team since we already have full-time jobs. We could not let our normal work suffer because of the project."

The sheer logistics of communication, document review, and editing loomed as major time consumers. The team's ultimate goal was to completely eliminate document storage for all clients because, typically, full-sized project packages can quickly outstrip available filing space.

Hayden remembered reading an exclusive Tradeline report about how the National Institutes of Health used software that allowed most project documents to be uploaded and centrally stored. He asked Central Engineering personnel whether the company had anything similar. Their response pointed Hayden to a software package in their library, Documentum.

"Apparently this application was not used to its full potential by project engineers in the past, but I thought the benefits of implementing electronic document and work flow management could be significant for Merck," he says.

The software acts as an umbrella program, accepting files uploaded from many other programs and allowing reviews and edits by authorized users, all the while keeping efficient track of the latest document versions.

The editing and tracking functions made it possible for the planning team to do much of its review work without physically meeting. Team members were geographically located in three separate offices up to fifty miles apart. Without an online collaboration tool, the potential need for face-to-face meetings was overwhelming. Each meeting could generate mountains of paper that would then have to be circulated around to everyone on the project team.

"We could not let the logistics of communication and process run away from us," says Hayden. "We looked at a couple of other Web-based work flow management tools, but fortunately we did not choose either of them because their manufacturers went out of business in the interim. Finally, we simply took the stance that we have to use this program because if we do not, the workload will keep us from meeting our milestones."

Ultimately, the architects in Philadelphia, the engineers in Somerset, N.J., and the clients in Rahway reduced by 90 percent their total paper documentation during the project.

Design and Security

The project entailed two design phases, an eight-week conceptual phase, and a 12-week basis of design (BOD) phase. During the conceptual phase the team came up with the square footage of the facility and blocked and stacked the configuration of the building. In the BOD phase, the team delved into the detailed specifics of the facility's layout.

Adept with Microsoft Excel, one of the planning team members from the A/E firm programmed a template for "what if" scenarios. Uploading the scenarios and sharing them electronically enabled the team to cut through the complexity of issues engendered by the landlocked site.

"We did our space programming in real time," says Hayden. "One team member dumped a scenario with its information into the system and five minutes later we all made our comments and turned it around. It went back and forth until issues were resolved."

Team members communicated by logging on to the Merck network where the software resided. They uploaded files containing minutes of virtual meetings, spreadsheets, photographs, and other items, which they then reviewed and commented on. They made their comments directly upon the files maintained within Documentum. Downloads and printing were rare since the whole idea was to be paperless. The network's dial-up facility allowed access to authorized users from home and other external sites.

"Despite the ability to access the network from the outside, we brought some team representatives from the firm in Philadelphia to work at our engineering facility in Somerset," says Hayden. "This not only facilitated their access to documents, but also enhanced their interaction with our engineering staff.

"The BOD phase entailed an exponential increase in documentation over the conceptual phase," he continues. "During both phases the electronic format allowed the engineers to look at all versions of the design documents and cut their turnaround time by 50 percent over past practice."

Many security issues associated with traditional hardcopy documents or purely Web-based applications became moot for the team because all editing and communication of the electronically managed material took place within the firewall of the Merck network.

Keeping the participants to the minimum further enhanced the speed and security of the operation. The core planning team consisted of three members from the client side, along with two Merck engineers and two architects from an outside firm. At various times about 24 other individuals participated in the planning effort on an as-needed basis, coming from Merck's manufacturing division, in-house architect and construction management staff, and internal and external utilities.

Pushing the IT Envelope

The information input process was centralized by making the Merck project engineer responsible for incorporating most of the material into the electronic system. The majority of his inputs were files from Microsoft Office programs--Access, Excel, and Word. Office files were the easiest to use since all members of the planning team were familiar with them.

The uploads also included scanned documents and photos, but not CAD files. Although Documentum has the capability to accept graphic-intensive CAD files, none of the client project team members were CAD-trained.

"CAD files are a small sticking point," notes Hayden. "Our architects and engineers created most drawings using the CAD program Microstation, from Bentley Systems. You can store Microstation documents in Documentum, but in order to read, change, or comment on them, those of us who are not architects or engineers had too steep of a learning curve to overcome in too short a time."

The solution was simply to have the project engineer scan photographs of models and blueprints into Documentum, leaving Microstation output in paper format. This material comprised the majority of the 10 percent of project documentation that remained hardcopy.

"Had there been time to train team members in using Microstation, we could have greatly improved upon our 90 percent reduction of paperwork," says Hayden.

Training needs were not the only way in which the planning team pushed the IT envelope at Merck. Storage also became an issue. Although Central Engineering's IT personnel managed the work flow system on the Merck network server, they had little experience with the storage space required by this project.

"Every day we loaded many megabytes of information," says Hayden. "Servers have a limited amount of storage capacity in which to put all those megabytes without using the latest compression technology or adding on another server. We are today out of the design phase and into the construction phase and continue to use these online collaboration tools. We will start stressing IT shortly with our storage requirements, but it is not an insurmountable problem."

Team members may address the storage problem by archiving on CDs the material that they no longer need to access daily. Determining what material to archive thus becomes an important part of the project management.

"We may ultimately weed through the early versions of each document and save only the last one," says Hayden.

Cutting Through Complexity

The site for the new Merck research facility is surrounded by other buildings and peppered with utility and service connections. These constraints complicated the design phases and without electronic collaboration would have required more face-to-face meetings than the average project of its size.

"Five buildings already exist on the site," says Hayden. "We had to work around their underground infrastructure. In order to include things like new sewers in our design, the planning team had to coordinate with our manufacturing division, which is the landlord at Rahway. Our online approach facilitated coordination by creating virtual meetings, cutting down drastically on the lag time and loss of information often involved in the communications within collaborative efforts."

Ongoing Usefulness

The use of an electronic document management system remains a key success factor in the construction phase of the research facility. One example involves the ability of the application to easily accept photographs.

"We purchased a good digital camera for the project," says Hayden. "We also plan to use a Web camera permanently mounted on the roof of a nearby building to watch the construction as it proceeds. At the end of the project we can review snapshots from the camera and watch time-lapse movies showing the building growing out of the ground."

Merck will continue to use the system as a fast way to review and comment on meeting minutes.

"The software can do more than we asked it to, but because of time imperatives, training, and other issues, we did not ask it to do more," says Hayden. "Using electronic media enabled us to complete very aggressive conceptual and BOD design phases within our milestones."

By Lawrence A. Howard

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ISSN: 1096-4894