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(Source enr.com - Date 3/23/03)

By Judy Schriener

The companies say: e-Builder will acquire the assets of Collaborative Structures, which announced its closure last month. This will bring 2,500 users from 600 companies into the e-Builder fold. Based on customer preferences, some will continue to use Collaborative Structures' FirstLine Lotus Notes-based collaborative service, which e-Builder will host and support. Other projects will move to the e-Builder collaborative service, which e-Builder is calling TeamBuilder.

John Macomber, president and CEO of Collaborative Structures, had several calls from other companies that were interested in various arrangements to acquire Macomber's customers. It was important to him that his customers be in good hands, he says. Negotiations with e-Builder CEO Jon Antevy and President/COO Ron Antevy moved quickly. Terms were not disclosed.

"This is great for our customers, and they are universally thrilled to be able to keep using FirstLine," says Macomber. "I also found Jon and his brother Ron to be completely above board and decent in the negotiations and closing. The driving considerations throughout were first, 'what's best for the customers,' and second, 'what's reasonable between Collaborative Structures and e-Builder.' I think that given the uncertainty in the rest of the market, this acquisition puts e-Builder in very good stead. They really do have a sustainable business model and a good focus and attitude. I'm happy that this acquisition worked out."

Only one customer decided to leave, says Jon Antevy. e-Builder also announced enhancements in its collaborative service.

e-Builder now provides "intelligent faxing" to include project participants who are not online. When a document goes out, it is e-mailed or faxed to everyone on the designated list, depending on preset preferences. The cover sheet is bar-coded so that when the response is faxed back, it automatically goes into the right folder for everyone to access, just as if it had been e-mailed back. "Now we don't have to ignore the subconsultants anymore-we're not going to lose that information anymore," says Antevy. "I think every job will use it," Why haven't other extranet vendors offered this? "Arrogance" on the part of the vendors, he believes.

Another enhancement is what e-Builder calls its e-Builder Neighborhood, which enables people to work offline and synchronize to e-Builder. The advantage is not having to go into the Web browser to upload a file, says Antevy.

e-Builder also has added the ability to create customized forms on the fly.

e-Builder's "X-ref" management feature allows for management of linked CAD files that have other CAD files linked to them. Instead of having to upload the entire set of files whenever a change is made, the new feature updates only files that have changed.

e-Builder is a partner of the McGraw-Hill Construction Information Group. McGraw-Hill has an equity stake in e-Builder but is not the majority stockholder. e-Builder is a separate company and is independent of McGraw-Hill.

What it means to the industry: The acquisition of Collaborative Structures is a happy ending to a sad decision to close a business. Unlike most such decisions that result in the customers getting stuck, Macomber's determination to take care of his customers and the Antevys' desire to let Collaborative Structures' customers use whichever platform they like best and are comfortable with resulted in an excellent outcome and no disruption in service for customers.

The "intelligent faxing" capability should allow everyone on every project to participate in the collaboration process, which is essential. The Cephren (now Citadon) extranet platform also has the ability to fax and receive faxes, but not to the degree of sophistication that e-Builder now provides. The enhanced features of e-Builder reinforce the commitment that e-Builder has to not trying to be all things to all people, not provide the end-to-end solution, but to continue to focus on and improve its core competency-collaboration. As each extranet provider makes improvements, everyone else will have to offer them too and hopefully will try to outdo each other, and the industry will only benefit.

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