“As a subsidiary of the ATP Group, Central Europe’s leading full service design company, we specialize in the development of large-scale properties. Particularly in such comprehensive projects, we require a central platform for all the participants involved worldwide. To achieve this, we deploy conjectPM – on the one hand, as a Project Space for operative implementation of planning and execution and, on the other, as a Data Room in the due diligence segment for uniform legal, commercial and technical documentation.“

(Jochen Seibert, Managing Director, REDSERVE real estate development GmbH)

Project: the largest retail agglomeration currently planned in Croatia, the Shopping City Zagreb, a shopping, entertainment and business park on an area of more than 1 million m², is now entering the realization phase.

Key data: the core of the Shopping City Zagreb is the Westgate Center in Zapresic, a two-floor shopping center of a new dimension with
250,000 m² property size,
6,000 parking spaces (2,500 on the parking deck and 3,500 in front of the building) and
net rentable space of approx. 93,500 m².

The center offers the highest level of attractiveness for individualists and families through an international high-end mix of tenants, brand-new and generously dimensioned family areas with child-care facilities and the creation of “Plazas” to underscore the key factor of attractiveness.

Project partners:

Big, bigger, gigantic. The Iskandar International Financial District, a multi-billion dollar project in Malaysia, is moving in these dimensions. The world-class hub of Islamic finance is to be constructed in the next few years. conject is helping the owner, Millennium Development International, with a CRM solution: all customer requirements, whether contacts or purchase contracts, are recorded in an Internet-based manner. As a result, properties can be reserved in real time and reservations and dates of payment can be tracked directly and without losing time. A major advantage in mammoth projects such as this one.

The roughly eight billion dollar project comprises financial institutions, corporate headquarters, office and living space, restaurants and catering, including a dedicated mass transit system. Uwe Forgber, who heads conject’s Dubai office, is excited about the order: “A trend-setting building project in South East Asia. With conject we are able to support the entire lifecycle of the building project - all participants of such a large project will come to appreciate the easier administration and ability to keep within time frames.” Richard Polkinghorne, Director of Millennium Development in Malaysia, also explains his satisfaction in selecting “such a user-friendly, flexible system like conjectCRM.” “Already in the installation and introduction phases, the system proved that it very effectively and efficiently models both our requirements and those of our customers.”

However, the financial center is only part of the entire “Medini Iskandar” – an urban development project on an area of over 920 hectares and an investment amount of roughly 20 billion dollars. conject is also involved here. The Online Project Management Platform conject.com is being deployed for the planning phase to control communication and documentation in this gigantic building project, providing the transparency needed in all processes.


About Millennium Development International
Millennium Development International (MDI), a subsidiary of Saraya Holdings, is a building company that provides integrated and building authority services from one source for large and mixed-use projects. MDI offers tailored services for all components of the real estate construction cycle.

Project Excellence Award 2008

The DHL air freight hub in Leipzig will give wings to Europe’s most state-of-the-art logistics hub – a logistical masterpiece, backed by excellent project management. Not only that the time frame was very tight, the gigantic construction project was even completed ahead of schedule and within budget.

This was reason enough for the German Project Management Association (GPM) to award the GPM Project Excellence Award 2008 to the project team of DHL and OBERMEYER Albis-Bauplan GmbH.

“It was a very special project,” Evelyn Kolbe, OBERMEYER Albis-Bauplan Leipzig said, “not only in light of the challenges, but also due to the level of fairness and team spirit which formed the basis throughout the project work, despite extreme pressure at times on each individual.”

conject’s Internet-based Project Management Platform was deployed successfully to manage information and communication between over 200 project participants at various locations worldwide and for the documentation and exchange of vast amounts of data.

The most state-of-the-art technology as the key success factor for excellent project management

Project: DHL – Central Air Hub Europe, Leipzig

• Amount invested approx. EUR 300 million
• Project duration 2005 - 2008
• Hiring 2,500 employees (until the end of 2008), 3,500 until the end of 2012
• Warehouse: 413 m long, 97 m wide, 16 m high
• Office building: 3 floors, 11,900 m²
• Hangar: 232 m long, 98 m deep, 30 m high for up to 2 x A380 or 4 x B757
• Apron - capacity for a maximum of 56 airplanes
• Handling of approx. 1,500 t freight per night (planned for 2012 = 2,000 t/night)
• Capacity of the Material Handling System: 185,000 shipments per night
• Fuel farm – own aircraft refueling facilities, 3 tanks (4,000 m³ each)

“We’ve been using the conject Platform in our projects for over a year now. We first deployed Document Management. It quickly became clear that conject could also be used efficiently to direct smaller projects. We added Drawing Management already in the second new construction project. Now it’s even easier to manage all relevant drawings and documents transparently and comprehensibly. In addition, this advantage convinced us that we could run several projects simultaneously on conject.com. We will also be relying on it in future projects."

(Johannes Stolze, Project Director, Deutsche Messe, Hanover)

The company:
Deutsche Messe AG, one of the leading trade fair companies worldwide, offers all services involved in planning and executing around 100 trade fairs and exhibitions annually in Germany and abroad – with approximately 25,000 exhibitors, 2 million visitors and 15,000 journalists from over 100 countries.

The main focus of activities is on trade fairs for capital goods run by Deutsche Messe in Hannover with the aim of representing the current markets and highlighting international market trends.

Current projects:
1) Conversion of the Foyer Nord (Hanover)
Construction volume: EUR 12.5 million
Project duration: December 2007 to January 2009
No. of project documents (thus far): 1,400

2) New construction of the passages between halls 15/16 and 16/17
Project duration: September 2008 to August 2009
Construction volume: approx. EUR 4 million

Right after conject was introduced into the company, Ralf Schiermeyer also came into contact with the software – even though he would not describe himself as a software freak.
“I’m just a normal user,” the 43-year old project manager says, “without much prior technical experience, simply introduced to the technology through my job and then grew with the system.” Ralf Schiermeyer works in the company headquarters of IKEA Deutschland in Wallau, in the Construction Department. For over six years, he has been heading various construction projects there for the renowned Swedish company. In a mere six decades, IKEA has grown from a small company in the forests of Southern Sweden to become one of the most important retail companies in 44 countries/territories throughout the entire world.

For nearly all planned construction in Germany, IKEA is equipped with the most state-of-the-art software technology – initially for new construction, meanwhile reconstruction measures are also directed on the Internet platform. Ralf Schiermeyer finds that the advantage lies in the fact that he has much quicker access to important documents. “When I’m on the road,” he says “I can simply have a quick look in the Project Spaces.” Missing addresses, for example, can thus be found quickly. “I also get other documents from the platform right when I need them.” In addition, one uses much less paper and has a better archive. But it was primarily the fast access – theoretically from all over the world – to documents that should be available, which speaks in favor of software like conject.

Do people today still shy away from software technologies such as those offered by conject, for example? “Roughly two dozen colleagues in our department are working with Project Spaces,” says Ralf Schiermeyer and all have been able to find their way around well. The hotline is there to help when problems arise – and on short notice. “We’re always called back right away; questions can often be answered immediately on the phone.” He feels this is an extremely important service. There’s no reason to have any reservations about it. He comes across such reservations today more infrequently when he’s is on the road. Nevertheless, smaller companies, in particular, will certainly still need to adjust. “That takes time,” according to the project manager, “but people everywhere are having less and less reservations.”

What is Ralf Schiermeyer, who worked for a major general contractor before joining IKEA as a project director, up to when he’s not building? He tries to see as much of the world as possible. He enjoys traveling with his family, likes to ski or is on the road with his RV. Most recently during his four-month parental leave. Three guesses where he went. That’s right, to Scandinavia…

… you can now view all the news about a process at once in conjectPM?

Every process contains the original message with responses and the respective attachments. You can open an individual message in the process window and, conversely, you can access the entire process from a message.

You’ll find a list of your process in the new “Processes” tab (in the “Communication” section).

You will find more information on the newest products in the Release Notes.

… a new version of conjectFM 7.5 has been released?

One year after the permanent integration of BuiSy into the family of conject products, we are pleased to introduce you to the promising and extremely customer-oriented new version of our established CAFM package with the release of conjectFM 7.5. We were guided in the development by your requirements in Facility Management even more than in other years.

Here an overview of some of the changes:

1. VectorDraw^® replaces Condor^® as graphic viewer
   
   With conjectFM 7.5, a new product is replacing Condor used previously as the graphic viewer: VectorDraw^® This product has also been integrated entirely into conjectFM and will replace Condor^® permanently without any limitations. The new graphics core is faster and offers more usability. The use of drawings is suited to the current CAD standard. Another substantial advantage is the compatibility to various current CAD formats. With VectorDraw^® it is possible to integrate the current versions of AutoCAD^® and Microstation^® drawings without converting them. This makes maintenance of the drawings much more efficient.
   
   
2. Improvements in the workflow system
   
   Another integral component of conjectFM is the workflow system. Through the appropriate parameterizations, customers can adjust processes here to suit their individual needs. Other improvements have been made to conjectFM 7.5:
   a. Variable window size depending on the type of procedure
   b. Individual filter settings
   c. New double-click functions
   
   
3. New structures make conjectFM much faster
   
   From the very beginning, the enormous level of flexibility set conjectFM apart from the rest. This flexibility is achieved through the familiar object model in the database. We did not want sacrifice this advantage – a unique feature – in any way. Nevertheless, we have extended the structures and, while maintaining the previous capacity, have managed to achieve another substantial advantage, particularly in regards to system performance. This was attained by introducing additional relational tables as well as by optimizing the tree structure and search algorithm.
   
   
4. Storage of Cube layouts
   
   The OLAP-Cube has become established as a flexible evaluation tool. Prior to Version 7.0, however, it was often criticized that layouts created by the user could not be called up again and instead had to be put together again each time they were called up.
   With conjectFM 7.5 this is now a thing of the past. Every table can be transferred into the Cube view. What is new is that now any number of layouts can be saved to one table. A layout describes the complete representation here. Information is stored as to whether a table and/or chart should be displayed and which heading the chart should have.
   
   
5. New expert module: iPAM
   
   The relationship between technical and infrastructural Facility Management and commercial aspects is becoming more and more significant. Budgeting measures and projects and monitoring these budgets are becoming increasingly important. In order to meet these requirements, we are introducing a new expert module with 7.5: iPAM – integrated Order and Project Management.

We will be reporting in detail on the improvements in the coming issues of Falcon Flash. Just wait and see!

… in conjectCM the user interface can be shaded?

In the total revision of the user interface in conjectCM, all icons were redesigned based on the familiar interface of conjectPM. As a result, conjectCM now has brighter colors available.

Changes were made not only to the appearance; there have also been improvements in usability. One particular highlight: in many places the background is darkened to support you during input, as you are accustomed to doing in several Web applications. This is the case, for example, when you enter an account assignment.

More information on innovations in the current release.

Everyone’s talking about CSR, but what exactly does it stand for? Corporate Social Responsibility stems from an understanding of sustainability, basing long-term responsible actions on the three pillars of economic, ecological and social responsibility. This means sustainable corporate management combined with voluntary social responsibility over and above legally required measures.

As regards efficient utilization of resources and expansion of renewable energies, environmental awareness needs to change, behaviors must also change. This turnaround is all-encompassing, it is not merely a matter of electricity, it also concerns heating and transportation. Making the concept of sustainability an integral part in politics and the economy – this is also an objective of the “Bürgerstiftung Energiewende Oberland” (Community Foundation for Energy Turnaround Oberland) amongst others. conject has now come aboard.

It's a well-known fact that conject supports sustained construction with its software for Infrastructure Lifecycle Management. What is new is its advancement of sustainable energy management in Bavaria. As a member of the foundation “Bürgerstiftung Energiewende Oberland,” the Munich software house is making a contribution towards protecting the environment.

Think it’s a good idea? Why don’t you join! Martina Raschke, Executive Board Bürgerstiftung Energiewende Oberland, will be glad to provide you with information: info©energiewende-oberland.de.

conject is always on top of the newest design trends and emphasizes that excellent technology can also look good. The entire conject.com website was redesigned – over 300 pages in four languages and regions. Since January customers and interested persons can now navigate even easier through the world of the conject company and its products.

You can not only find information on the website, you can also work with it directly "on demand"– it's now possible to login to the online platform from every page.

And not just that. In addition to a higher level of user-friendliness through faster page reproduction or dynamic elements for every type of screen resolution, the entire navigation was optimized with more transparent information processing and the search function was optimized as well.

There are a lot of new things to discover on conject.com – try it out for yourself …

Our conject Webmaster will be glad to provide you with more information.

Do you speak a South-East European language, such as Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian, Czech or Turkish and love the Viennese vernacular or the charm of St. Petersburg? Then join conject in Vienna or St. Petersburg and become one of our new sales managers for South-East Europe/Russia.

YOUR STRENGTHS

THE COMMUNICATIVE, OPEN TYPE
Your winning style manages to win over every kind of customer. You motivate your colleagues through constructive suggestions rather than condescension. You have strong language skills in a South-East European language.

AN INSPIRING, CREATIVE STREAK
You love to develop solid sales strategies and use them to motivate your colleagues. If you have great ideas, you then let them spread like wildfire, inspiring everyone around.

A FULL-BLOODED SALESMAN WITH A DEGREE
We’re a bit conservative when it comes to qualifications. We really would prefer a degree in engineering, architecture or business administration. With some know-how in construction/real estate or software/IT, you’ve almost got it made.

WE OFFER...
…a secure position with Europe’s market leader with a growth rate of 45% in our core product, which could soon also belong to your portfolio, a salary package that meets your needs and wishes and career prospects that could take you all the way to a partnership.

Interested? Then please send us your application only via email to Angela Lorenz.

The Hearst Headquarters Tower in New York by Foster + Partners is the winner of the International Highrise Award 2008, worth EUR 50,000.

“Built on a plinth that is a historical building, the transparent highrise stands out through its expressive design. Its triangular steel structure creates floors of varying sizes and could serve as a model for prototypes,” the jury commented on the 182 m high winning project. The structure of the framework resulted in a 20% savings of steel.

The building is the first highrise in New York City to receive the gold designation from the LEED certification program. The four other finalists also received recognition. All projects exhibited a broad spectrum of uses. The 27-floor Missing Matrix Building in Seoul by the Korean architects Mass Studies integrates various uses, such as living, working, as well as cultural and commercial space. The interior structure of the Television Cultural Centre by OMA in Beijing corresponds to an urban organism. Here the television studios, hotel and public areas are covered by a unique long-span spaceframe roof. The Newton Suites residential tower in Singapore by WOHA, on the other hand, represents the feeling of environmentally-friendly living in the tropics transferred to a vertical dimension. The New York Times Tower by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and the Hearst Tower represent the selection of two innovatively designed New York media centers. The jury bestowed a special award for urban, energy and social sustainability to the WestendDuo in Frankfurt designed by architectural office of KSP Engel und Zimmermann.

You will find further news on the real estate industry from industrieBau-online.