Koll found the process quite smooth, as Bidcom assigned a project manager, Sean Cooper, to train all the team members, both within Koll Development and those team members, working for other companies, on our projects. Following the training period, he remains focused on the Koll Development projects and serves as its link to Bidcom, closing the gap between the technology and the users. Cost savings are realized on many levels. Because meetings can be held over the phone, with everyone looking at the same documents on Bidcom's system, travel costs, such as airfare and hotels, are reduced tremendously. More important, by reducing travel, the company can save a considerable amount of time required to get to and from meetings in other states, as well as saving the expenses not only of our own travel, but also that of our architects, engineers and construction executives.
Virtual meetings work for a majority of all phases of the project.
Reimbursable expenses are also slashed. On large, long-term projects, reimbursables such as blueprints, messengers, color outputs of renderings and photocopying of large documents for each team member can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. And once again, the time savings for the people involved on the architectural and engineering team is immense, as they are not required to go through the cumbersome process of ordering and distributing hard-copy documents. This results in greatly reduced operating expenses for the project. The document trail, too, is greatly enhanced in its efficiency and its usefulness, as the computer logs all the entries and can file them in chronological order.