Another problem is that neither Bidcom nor its competitors have solved the cumbersome process of transferring hundreds of pages of blueprints between participants in a project. The approximately 400 drawings associated with the mining building must be copied multiple times and distributed to Turner and its subcontractors. The firm sends copies on to the owner, who in turn forwards more copies to the architects and engineers. In theory, transferring the drawings electronically would save an enormous amount of time. Each subcontractor would need his own computer and blueprint plotter, she said, and it could still prove slower to print out the multiple copies from a single plotting machine, rather than sending them to a shop that has invested in special equipment for large jobs.
Process needs improvement Everyone agrees that the current process needs to be improved.
The lack of technological progress has been costly. Teicholz calculated that labor productivity in the construction industry declined an average of almost half of one percent a year from 1964 to 1998. In contrast, labor productivity in all non-farm industries increased by 1.7 percent a year. Daryl Magana, Bidcom's founder, figures that the construction industry wastes 15 percent of total sales a year on management costs that could be avoided. Oracle Corp. The system he created has made some people happy.