FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention generally relates to a network based collaboration tool used to enable communication and collaboration between people working on industrial, commercial or residential construction projects.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Residential, commercial and industrial construction and building projects can involve many different people and organizations, such as architects, contractors, electricians, accountancy firms, plumbers, painters, and material supply firms, among others. Although each person or group of people may not be known to each other beforehand, they may all collaborate at some time in order to design, construct and maintain the intended building.

Unfortunately, it is rare to achieve the level of collaboration needed in order to facilitate the design, construction and maintenance operations. This can lead to time delays and/or cost overruns, which are fairly commonplace in the construction industry. Substandard workmanship and/or materials may sometimes be used to make up for these delays and overruns, which may not be discovered until years afterwards and require expensive and/or lengthy corrective action.

While other industries have improved collaboration between people and organizations through use of electronic communications and computer software, these gains have not yet been fully realized by the construction industry. Therefore, there is a need in the construction industry for an improved collaboration tool.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

As embodied and broadly described herein, the present invention provides a method for enabling collaboration between individuals to design, construct and maintain a building. The method comprises providing a network based computer system including at least one server and multiple clients. The multiple clients allow respective individuals to interact with the server. The server includes a machine-readable storage, which is encoded with software for execution by a CPU for allowing individuals at the respective clients to create, execute and manage projects associated with at least one of a design phase, construction phase and maintenance phase of the building. Each project comprises one or more events that are related to time. The method also comprises storing in the machine-readable storage events as they occur during execution of each project to create a building project database spanning at least the design phase and the construction phase and optionally the maintenance phase of the building.

