NBS Create - Prelims, Project Management and Costs

All of my blog posts to-date on NBS Create have been on the creation of a project specification and the functionality surrounding this. However, as with NBS Building and NBS Scheduler, NBS Create also allows the creation of contract preliminaries.

The first improvement with NBS Create is that sections may be added to your job prior to knowing what construction contract will be used. The screenshot below shows the New Job Wizard and sections such as "Project definition", "Works terminology" and "Works contract procurement" that are selected for addition from the start.

Fig 1 - New Job Wizard - sections common to all construction contracts

With the section editor, the experience is familiar to existing NBS specification users. A number of pre-written clauses are presented to the user and these can be completed with the assistance of technical guidance and suggested values.

Fig 2 - Section editor

Assistance is given to the user when selecting a contract. In the example in the screenshots below, the user has specified that the job is for a commercial client, in Scotland and there are contractor design portions. They are then offered a selection of contracts appropriate to this work.

Fig 3 - Assistance with selecting of the contract

Fig 4 - Relevant contracts are presented to the user

Once the contract is selected, all relevant sections are highlighted for addition to the job. The user may unselect any sections that they do not wish to add.

Fig 5 - The sections that are relevant to this contract

Another screenshot is included below to show the improved section editor from within NBS Create. All existing prelims behaviour is supported such as excluding clauses, adding user clauses, synchronised guidance and drop down suggested values. In addition to this, it is possible to quickly report on all reference documents and also it is easy to add office guidance notes and office drop down suggested values.

Fig 6- Completing the contract preliminaries and project management sections

One improvement with NBS Create that we believe will be very well received is the ability to include both project management sections and specification systems within the same document. This allows the project team to work on a combined single document. The screenshot below shows the content for the job all together. An advantage of this is that the cost consultant can see exactly what the design intent is for all of the systems in the job. This will help with team-working and also building-up informed cost estimations from an early stage. In addition, a single coordinated specification for the job can easily be published.

Fig 7 - Specification and project management content in the same document

At any time, the systems from within the job may be exported to a spreadsheet for use in the free Cost Tracking tool. The screenshot below shows an example export. The cost consultant is adding estimated costs against these systems based on the early outline descriptions provided by the designers. This tool may be used throughout the design phase and then the spreadsheets can be compared to perform a tender or a budget cost analysis.

Fig 8 - Costing the systems from the specification

NBS Create is launched next month with Engineering Services content. I'll continue to do monthly blog posts. If anyone has any topics they'd like me to cover - please add a comment to this article.

For all previous articles on NBS Create click the "NBS 2012" label.

To join our Beta Testing Program and help us develop this product, please see:
- http://www.thenbs.com/support/betatesting