Logicalis

National Construction firm Adolfson & Peterson partners with Logicalis to help it build enterprise portal skills in-house.

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Adolfson & Peterson Construction provides construction management, design/build, general contracting, facilities maintenance, and facility asset management services to public and private clients in a wide variety of government, commercial, light industrial, and technology industries. Formed in Minnesota in 1946, it now operates nationally with offices in Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota, California, North Carolina and Texas.

The creative use of technology is one of the ways A&P distinguishes itself from its competitors on and off the building site. CIO Frank Carlson recognized the potential of enterprise portal technology to facilitate workflow and collaboration internally and enhance responsiveness to A&P’s customers. He also recognized that a tool with that kind of potential required a great deal of experience to use effectively and turned to Logicalis to help his staff become proficient with this enabling technology.

Database programmer Bob Brazeau was the designated hitter for enterprise portal technology projects within A&P. In anticipation of coaching from Logicalis he had already committed to a self-study course in IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory between other assignments in a typically busy IT department. The prospect of developing portal projects was both exciting but, after a week taking online tutorials, also a little daunting.

Portal Mentor
“When we got started working together, I wanted to be able to at least hit the road jogging, if not running,” Brazeau says. He estimates now that two days working with Logicalis enterprise portal mentor Eric Braun would have gotten him further than a week of tutorials.

Connected by telephone and WebEx, Logicalis’ portal expert Eric Braun and Brazeau set off together to build the first project: a warranty management portal that could be used to track the current status of warranty requests throughout A&P’s regional offices. 

After spending some time reviewing the capabilities of Portlet Factory, Braun says, “I let Bob drive.” Braun acted as the navigator following the methodology that he has used in countless portal projects to get from building a requirements list, to portal design, development, implementation and support.

“Eric knew how to ask the right questions and we could draw on his experience to see what was coming down the pike,” Brazeau says. “He saved us a lot of grief.”

The warranty management portal pings data warehouse queries that draw on data from A&P’s databases. Regional managers are able to drill down to the details of specific projects and monitor the current status of all ongoing projects. The result is a level of responsiveness to customer requests that is a clear competitive advantage for A&P.

Best Practices
Having proved the effectiveness of portal technology with the initial project, Brazeau says other portal projects are envisioned that will give on-site project managers and supervisors day-by-day status of every aspect of a construction project.

“In the past in construction, you’d only find out if a job was profitable after it was done,” says Brazeau. “Portal technology now makes it possible to catch potential problems early when it is relatively inexpensive to prevent them from happening, instead of later when it’s impossible.”

Beyond mastering the strengths and idiosyncrasies of portal technology, Logicalis’ mentorship with Braun transferred knowledge of best practices developed working with a variety of customers over many years that inform the entire life cycle of a portal project. A primary, if often overlooked, best practice is recognizing that the true test of a successful portal project is measured in how much it helps users get their jobs done better and faster. The technology is the tool, not the solution.

Having mastered both the art and the science of portal development, Carlson and Brazeau envision extending portal solutions not only to other user communities within A&P but also to its customers and sub-contractors. A customer portal for example, would make it possible for a customer to monitor the status of construction projects A&P is completing for them. Sub contractors and partners could login to monitor schedules and time lines and availability of resources and materials.

One of the challenges Brazeau faces is that not all the potential users who could benefit from portal technology are inclined to turn to their computers for help. “Some are cool with technology and some have the mentality, ‘I’m here to build a building not play on a computer.’” 

One of the best ways to get users to buy-in to a portal project, Brazeau says is to involve them in its development and to incorporate as much adaptability and flexibility as possible in the design.

Brazeau says. “I’ve learned to get user feedback early and often. The more involved they are the more accepting they will be. Working with users keeps things interesting. Some weeks are very interesting,” he adds.

Like many IT professionals in busy IT departments, Brazeau is not able to focus all his attention on developing portal projects. The ongoing mentoring relationship with Logicalis means that whatever interesting challenges working with end users presents him with, he always knows he has access to Braun who has focused all his attention on developing portals for demanding users in a wide range of industries. Next up will be the architecting of a Web Content Management System (Web CMS) to manage its expanding variety of portal projects.

“Logicalis has seen it all,” says Brazeau. “There is no substitute for that kind of experience. It’s good to have access to that as we expand our use of portal technology throughout our organization.”