The Corps' Doctor Will Make House Calls to Check Design
While not typically considered a software developer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is turning some heads with a Web-based product developed in-house to improve the design review process. The Corps and several other federal agencies are using the software to manage design reviews on hundreds of new construction projects. And users say the new tools are shaving weeks off project schedules and thousands of dollars off total costs.
The Design Review and Checking system (DrChecks), developed at the Corps' Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Ill., links designers, reviewers, project managers and other interested parties via the Internet to track the review of construction plans and specifications. While bearing similarities to commercial Web-collaboration tools developed for the architecture, engineering and construction market, DrChecks provides a couple of attractive twists for federal agencies. These include additional security, since the software and data are hosted on a federal computer system, and a structured, database-driven approach specifically geared toward managing design reviews.