I am not a social media butterfly but I am always interested in ways in which we can make our lives easier within the construction industry.
The latest offering from our American west coast friends is the Google Plus Project. I won’t ramble on about how it works or the pro’s and con’s viz a viz Facebook/Twitter et al. Suffice to say it is going to be big, very big.
My question is can we use G+ (as the hipsters call it) in the construction industry? Some immediate uses are the ability to video conference up to ten people simultaneously. So Mr Construction Manager, from head office you can have a weekly hook up with up to ten sites and talk and see to your site managers. Mr Commercial manager can do the same with his Contract Administrators (aka project control managers outside Australia). The company Safety Manager can do presentations on incidents, method statements etc. So that is a big tick for G+
The next use is the way in which people you connect with are placed in “circles” etermined by the user. So you can have a circle of site managers, or one of consultants, or the PCG. The information you distribute only goes to those in the circle you specify. maybe the next step is video minutes of subby meetings, but they might be R rated and cannot be circulated as they would bre each google’s content policy. But seriously there is a lot of potential in the desemination of information.
Currently G+ is not available as an enterprose tool but they are trailing that with some larger companies such as Ford. But that should not stop us using it within a business environment to simply communicate. I am double checking this with the Google guys.
With the introduction of Office365 “in the cloud” and the future demise of purchasing off the shelf software to upload on our PCs, the way in which G+ integrates with other Google products such as Sites, maps, Documents etc makes it an application we should not ignore. I know several construction companys that manage their tender process, document control, RFI/Variations etc through Google Products without the need for an in house IT guru. just a cadet with an iPhone and he is happy because his parents follow him on Twitter and Facebook, but on G+ he controls his “Stream”, Circles”, Hangouts” and “Huddles“. Oh dear I think I am turning hipster – Pirillo please send help!
Related articles
- e-Builder Named One of the Most Influential Construction Technology Providers (prweb.com)
- 1,571 part-time design and construction project managers? (judicialcouncilwatcher.wordpress.com)
- Google+ the first days (johndierckx.wordpress.com)
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