ABE Services Weblog - Home

Glossary of common CDMS terms

2007-04-08T23:39:00Z

Checker: A person authorised by a Contractor or a Subcontractor to use a PDA for handling the compliance of construction work. A Checker’s CDMS authorities also include the capability to attach Guest Checkers to their PDA.

Note that an ITP could be assigned to more than one Checker. The first Checker to check an item off gets credited with the check and the uploaded check is not affected if subsequently checked by another Checker.

Construction Administrator: The person in a contractor or subcontractor organisation with authority to administer the organisation’s CDMS function, including setting up and revision of ITP’s.

Inspection and Test Plan (ITP): A document that identifies the inspection, testing (verification) and acceptance requirements for each activity. This is normally done in the sequence of activities for a construction process. In the context of the CDMS an ITP is the actual plan for inspection and testing for a particular activity for a contract, eg for brickwork. In the CDMS an ITP must be based on (linked to) an ITP Template. Typically ITP Templates specific to the project are set up.

ITP Template: A template of an ITP maintained by ABE Services Pty Ltd and available for use by associations for developing their Association’s ITP Template.

Association ITP Template: A template of an ITP maintained by the association and available for use by their contractors or subcontractors for developing their ITP Templates.

Subcontractor ITP Template: A template of an ITP maintained by a contractor or a subcontractor for use by them as the basis for preparing an ITP Template for a particular project.

Point: A particular point of verification in an ITP.

Lot: A subdivision of the work defined as such for verification purposes by the nature of the work and its location (or equivalent), eg electrical work on the second floor, supply of plants for the northern half of the site. (Note: payment lots, typically called work lots in the building and construction industry may be specified by the contractor’s customer, or defined by the contractor and approved by the contractor’s customer.

Criteria: One or more specific requirements that describe the expected characteristic of a compliant verification point.

Quality Assurance – An explanation by definitions

2007-04-01T09:35:00Z

(reference: AS/NZS ISO 9000:2000 “Quality Management Systems – Fundamentals and Vocabulary”)

In the world of Australian and international standards Quality is not just good, bad or best quality, but is actually a defined term. In the language of the quality standard Quality is: “the ability of a set of inherent characteristics of a product, system, or process(service) to fulfil the requirements of customers (and other interested parties).”

This definition requires a further bit of explanation. The word “characteristic” is a definable and measurable “requirement’ of the customer.

So what does all this mean? In layman’s terms quality is meeting the requirements of a customer. The customers requirements could be to build a road that only lasts 6 weeks. A quality job is therefore one where the road lasts 6 weeks – the customers requirements have been met and thus the quality requirements have been met.

You demonstrate to a customer that you have met his/her requirements via Quality Assurance which is:

“That part of quality management which is focussed on providing confidence that quality requirements have been fulfilled.”

Again, a further bit of explanation is required in relation to the term “quality management,” which is all those coordinated activities used to direct and control an organisation with regard to (achieving) quality.

The key words in the quality assurance definition are “providing confidence” This is achieved in two ways:

By firstly planning quality activities to achieve the customers requirements. This is done in the construction industry though the development of inspection and test plans which set out what parts of the works will be inspected/tested and what the associated quality requirements are, and secondly

By establishing a record management system for recording and collating the results of inspections and tests undertaken against the inspection and test plans.

What this all means is that for Quality Assurance to provide the confidence to the customer that the product or service delivered is to the customers requirements, the supplier of the product or service must be able to demonstrate to the customer that he/she has both undertaken compliance planning and has recorded/stored/can retrieve the outcomes of that planning. Compliance Planning shows the customer the supplier understands his requirements, and the records generated provide the clear evidence the requirements have actually been met.

Compliance Applications

2007-03-25T23:11:00Z

Compliance Overview

In general compliance is the requirement that a piece of work is completed to a satisfactory level, as mandated in a specification, standard, law or regulation etc..

Usually the specification provided by regulatory authorities is at a relatively abstract level and an organization needs to define a compliance specification specific to their own requirements. Alternately there may be a suitable industry recognized specification that can be adopted as is or with minor changes. Changes would include applying the specification in the context of a specific site, for example close proximity to the corrosive elements of the ocean may mandate the use of stainless steel bolts on a construction site.

Thinking more generically, compliance can also be extended to include the monitoring of the state of an object. In this case an object complies while its state remains within a given range of values and fails to comply when its state moves out of that range.

The first steps in compliance are determining what the compliance specifications are and the specific situations providing the context in which compliance will be checked.

Compliance Management Applications

Fully managed compliance is performed in the context of a project or a business process. In an initial design phase users specify what needs to be verified and the criteria which will form the basis of the verification. A compliance plan is produced which lists the items to be inspected, the compliance criteria and who has been allocated the inspection tasks. During the inspection process when an item can’t be deemed compliant a follow up action is raised. The generated list of outstanding follow up actions is monitored, with each action being managed to a successful resolution.

The Compliance Data Management Service from ABE Services is an example of a “Compliance Management” application.

CDMS allows on-site inspections of construction work to be performed using a mobile phone web based application.

The diagram above summarises the main workflows of the CDMS mobile phone application.

Main Work Flows

The main work flows for a compliance application are outlined below.

Compliance Specification is the task of defining the steps which need to be taken to validate the state of specific items. The outcome is a “Compliance Plan” which lists “Verification Points” that need to be deemed valid or not as per a given set of “Criteria”. The “Compliance Plan” is used in the “Project Design” work flow. The “Compliance Specification” work flow is a potential candidate for implementation as a semantic-wiki to encourage the development of community based “Best Practice” compliance plans.
Project Design is the task of defining a project in terms of one or more “Compliance Plans” which are applied in specific contexts, deemed “Worklots”. A “Job” is the pairing of a “Compliance Plan” with a “Worklot”. The “Job” consists of a set of Verifications, each Verification matching a “Verification Point” defined in the “Compliance Plan” and applied in the specific context of the assigned “Worklot”. A Verification is the smallest unit of work which can be assigned to an individual. The individual would perform the verification using the criteria defined against the Verification Point of the Compliance Plan.
Compliance Validation is a ubiquitous activity supported by a web based application that is accessible in the field by a mobile phone and in the office by a standard web browser. The web application provides the means to validate work or raise follow up actions.
Project Management is also ubiquitously supported, providing report generation and RSS feeds to assist in project management.

The main interactions between the “Project Design”, “Compliance Validation” and “Project Management” work flows are shown in the diagram above. In the diagram “Compliance Specification” has been merged with “Project Design” and the “Compliance Plans” created as part of “Project Design”.

Stakeholders, Users and Roles

Project stakeholders are typically organizations with their associated users performing project tasks according to the roles assigned to them.

The main types of organizations are currently “Construction Contractors” and “Project Owners”.

The main roles are currently “Project Designer”, “Project Manager”, “Checker” and “Guest”.

Future organizations participating via a semantic-wiki to create compliance specifications could include “Industry Organizations” and “Product Manufacturers” who provide instructions on how their products should be installed. These users would participate with a role of “Compliance Specifier”.

Related Applications

There are a number of other types of applications with features in common with “Compliance Management Applications”. These include “Defect Recording” and “Automated Error Detection” applications.

Defect Recording

A defect recording application operates in a similar manner to the compliance management application in the sense that work is inspected and follow up actions can be raised to indicate that the work is not of an acceptable standard, however the defect recording application operates in a more ad hoc fashion. The work is not verified as per a pre-defined compliance plan. Defects are raised on items as they are encountered by the person performing the inspection.

Automated Error Detection

Automated error detection refers to an automated system where an agent monitors the state of an object and raises a follow up action when the object moves beyond its desired state. An example of this type of application would be a building security system which raises an alarm when the normal resting state is disturbed, e.g. if there was an intruder, and the follow up action would be to notify the security firm to perform an on site security check.

Common Features

The common features of compliance applications is the raising of follow up actions and forwarding that action to someone or thing to be monitored and actioned. The action raised needs to be linked to the resources required to resolve it.

The “compliance management” and “defect recording” applications share a similar mechanism for associating criteria with an item for evaluating that the item complies with that criteria.

The staff management aspects of the “compliance management” and “defect recording” applications are also similar.

Mobile Phone Browsers

2007-03-05T20:28:00Z

In the same way that there are a number of web browsers for desktops, e.g. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera, there are a number of web browsers available for mobile phones.

These include the following:

Netfront

Openwave. A list of mobile phones using the Openwave browser can be found on this page at the Openwave Developer Network web site.

Opera

Typically the mobile phone browser is pre-installed.

Additional browsers which can be installed along side the pre-installed browser include Opera Mini.

Supported Mobile Phone Browsers

The following mobile phone browsers are known to work with CDMS.MOBI.

NetFront v3.1. from Telecom (New Zealand) – running on a Sanyo 7500

Mobile Phone Requirements for other Web Sites

As an aid to understanding mobile phone browsers, the following is a list of the minimum phone requirements recommended by other mobile phone sites.

Gmail Minimum Phone Browser Requirements

The ABE Services Blog

2007-03-05T19:47:00Z

This is the blog for ABE Services and the “Compliance Data Management Service” (CDMS) for the building,construction and related industries.

To subscribe to the blog using a blog reader such as RSSOWL or www.bloglines.com use the URL http://abeserver.isa.net.au:3000/feed/atom.xml.

If you are using Microsoft IE7 go to the URL http://abeserver.isa.net.au:3000/ and select the RSS feed icon on the toolbar to automatically detect the RSS feed. IE7 then gives you the option to subscribe to the blog.

If you are using Firefox 1.5 go to the URL http://abeserver.isa.net.au:3000/ and select the RSS feed icon at the end of the URL input box to add the blog as a bookmark using the “Add Live Bookmark …” option.

Currently there are three sections, Home, Technical and Developer.

The Home section contains general articles about CDMS (the “Compliance Data Management Service ” application ) plus anything else relating to CDMS. E.g. changes in standards, new legislation which impacts on the building,construction and related industries etc..

Currently the Home section is also the place where up-coming demonstrations of CDMS and meetings will be announced.

The Technical section contains articles relating to best practices, helpful tips and other information relating to setting up projects on CDMS.

The Developer section contains articles relating to the design and construction of the CDMS application.

cdms.mobi

2007-03-04T22:55:00Z

cdms.mobi is the registered domain name of the ABE Services CDMS Mobile Phone Application.

.mobi is a top-level domain (TLD) approved by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

.mobi is unique – it is the first top level domain dedicated to delivering the internet to the mobile phone.

There are four times as many mobile phones as there are PC’s in the world. By 2008 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones. (IDC Research). A goal behind the use of the .mobi domain is to ensure that these sites work well on mobile phones.

.mobi web sites must be compliant with the Web Developers Guide.

Mobile sites can be checked for compliance with the Web Developers Guide by using the Mobi Ready site listed below.

General information on .mobi is available at the dotMobi site.

Mobi Ready Analysis for Mobile Phone Site

The Mobi Ready Site provides a free analysis testing the mobile-readiness of a mobile phone site. It test the site and gives a report, evaluating the site tested using the industry best practices & standards that .mobi sites need to comply with.

The level of compliance of the CDMS Mobile Phone Application can be tested by going to the Mobi Ready Site and entering the URL www.cdms.mobi.

Mobile Emulator for Web Sites

The Mobile Emulator Site “emulates” a real mobile phone Internet browser and can be used to check how a web site looks to a typical mobile phone user.

Compliance

2007-03-04T21:56:00Z

Wikipedia lists a number of definitions for the term compliance, as used in different contexts.

The most applicable in the context of ABE Services Compliance Data Management Service – CDMS is the definition given in regard to management. In the managment context compliance is defined as “the act of adhering to, and demonstrating adherence to laws, regulations or policies”.

In the context of CDMS compliance is demonstrated in regard to a specification which defines how a specific task should be performed or carried out. The specification itself may be based on defined standards, such as those maintained by a Standards Organisation.

Additionally the specification may also take into consideration the laws, regulations or policies acting at an international, national, regional, or organisational level.

The specification prescribes how the laws, regulations, policies and standards are adhered to in the actual performance of a task.

Based on the above the formal definition of compliance in relation to ABE Services Compliance Data Management Service – CDMS is “the act of adhering to, and demonstrating adherence to the specification prescribing how a specific task should be performed”.

What is WURFL

2007-03-04T06:06:00Z

WURFL is the Wireless Universal Resource File, an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of wireless devices.

A full description of WURFL and the open source project which maintains WURFL is available at the WURFL web site

The Wireless FAQ also provides insightful articles on wireless devices. An example is the article What is the difference between XHTML MP, XHTML Basic, WML, i-mode, and HDML? which describes how all these mobile phone technologies are related to each other.

CDMS Supported Mobile Phones

2007-03-03T22:16:00Z

The following mobile phones are successfully being used with the CDMS Mobile Phone application.

Motorola L2

Nokia 7650

Sanyo 7500

Sharp GX17

If you are using the CDMS Mobile Phone application and your phone is not in the list let us know by making a comment below, telling us the make and model of your phone. Alerternatively if you are having a problem using the application also let us know, describing what the problem is and how it manifests.

Browser Capabilities

You can test the capabilities of your mobile phone browser by visiting the URL http://abeserver.isa.net.au:8080/wurfl2007/wall/.

If you are having problems viewing any aspect of the CDMS Mobile Application is a good idea to visit the URL above and attach the information provided as a comment below.

The page displayed should show a number of links plus a display of the user-agent (UA), Wurfl ID of the browser on your phone and a list of capabilities.

An example is shown below :

UA = Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418.9.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3

Wurfl ID = netfront_ver3_subseries60nf32geckoen

Capabilities: Mark-up = xhtmlmp preferred_markup = html_wi_oma_xhtmlmp_1_0 xhtml_make_phone_call_string = none xhtml_format_as_css_property = false xhtml_format_as_attribute = false xhtml_table_support = true xhtml_supports_table_for_layout = false xhtml_supports_css_cell_table_coloring = false xhtml_document_title_support = true

The CDMS Mobile phone application has been developed using WURFL and the related WALL java tag library. Applications like CDMS render content to the mobile phone browser based on the user-agent (UA), Wurfl ID and capabilities that have been identified for that mobile phone browser. By sending us the diagnostic information above, you allow us to cross check that the content being sent to you is correct for your make and model of mobile phone.

Details on WURFL and how mobile phone applications are built using WURFL are available via the following links:

What is WURFL

How the CDMS Mobile Application Works

WURFL Web Site

Wall – WURFL and Java

CDMS as a Disaster Management Tool

2007-03-01T09:32:00Z

In the document A Short History of CDMS the origins of the CDMS application and its heritage in the building-construction industry as a tool designed for the on site verification of the quality of the work being done and the compliance of work with the original specifications are discussed.

Now that CDMS can be accessed directly via the web browser of a mobile phone the range of the the application has been extended, both in terms of the types of applications that can be catered for and the available user base. Where previously the Palm Pilot user required access to a PC in order to sync data with the back end server, with the mobile phone all that is required is maintaining the battery power on the mobile phone.

A simple example of the extended range of CDMS is its potential use of in the context of disaster management. In this example scenario at its regional head office a regional authority may use CDMS to create a project which allocates tasks for locals to help check on the state of the infrastructure throughout the district. For example a local farmer may be given the task to validate the state of all the roads in his immediate vicinity.

Once the tasks had been assigned to him the local farmer would log on to CDMS with his mobile phone to access them. These tasks may entail checking the condition of the roads, bridges, electricity, phone lines etc.. in his area. Within the context of CDMS the local farmer is validating that the items specified are in good shape, as per the criteria describing what to check when validating the condition of each item. This criteria was earlier specified at the regional head office.

Within CDMS the things to check and the criteria used for validation are store as a template which can be applied repeatedly, ie the same template can be reused over a number of different emergency situations. Since a lot of what needs to be checked can be determined befor the disaster or emergency occurs it is possible to be very well prepared, through each region specifying crucial infrastructure that needs to be checked ahead of time . When the need arises, the regional head office creates a new project using the appropriate templates and assigns the tasks to the appropriate people.

Once the tasks have been assigned and people begin checking the state of the infrastructure a picture of the damage sustained unvolds in real time. If an item can’t be validated an action can be raised to further clarify the problem with that particular item. PDF reports can be generated which summarise the progress of the project and can be printed out for presenting at meetings. The document The CDMS Mobile Application provides examples of the contents of the CDMS pdf reports.

Another advantage of the real-time project managment capabilities of CDMS is since the progress of the field workers are being monitored as they work their way through their list of allocated tasks the vicinity of their where-abouts is known. If for some reason no contact has been made with a worker for an extended period of time an approximate guide to their last location is provided via the last items they checked. In this way CDMS contributes to maintaintaining the safety of the field workers.

A Short History of CDMS

2007-03-01T07:26:00Z

The about page of ABE Services briefly touchs on the origins of the application.

Two of the directors of ABE Services, John Anderson and Mike Evans are engineers who have each worked in the building and construction industry for over thirty years and also have expertise in Quality Management. In particular both are registered Senior Quality Auditors and members of the select working group that wrote the Standards Australia publication “HB90.3 – The Construction Industry Guide to ISO 9001:2000”.

The “Compliance Data Management Service” application (CDMS) originated from the desire to bring quality management to the building,construction and related industries in a simple form that utilised available technologies in order to minimize and simplify the tasks relating to quality management.

The other directors of ABE Services are Rob Beasley and Richard Hancock, who together have built the CDMS software.

As the home page of ABE Services shows the orginal vision was to use Palm Pilot PDA’s on site. The Palm Pilot works fine but since this part of the application was developed in 2003 the capabilities of mobile phones have reached the point where they can now browse the web in the same way as desktop PPCs.

The CDMS Mobile Phone application was developed to work using the mobile phones browser, effectively meaning that anyone who has an internet capable browser on their mobile phone can access and use CDMS to verify that construction work done complies with the original specified design. Further details on how CDMS works on a mobile phone can be found in the PDF document The CDMS Mobile Application .

DotMobi domain names, i.e. web domain names ending with the suffix .mobi and intended for use by mobile phone applications such as CDMS, were made available for public registration on September 26, 2006. The CDMS Mobile Phone application can now be accessed using the dedicated mobile phone domain name http://www.cdms.mobi. Tips on simplifying access to the application by bookmarking it and setting it as the default page of the mobile phone browser are available in the document Bookmarking CDMS on a Mobile Phone

Bookmarking CDMS on a Mobile Phone

2007-03-01T04:14:00Z

Mobile phones use web browsers in the same way that desktop PC’s, Mac’s and Linux use browsers, the difference being the mobile phones browse a different type of mark up language, e.g. WML, while PC’s browse HMTL or XHTML.

The browsers commonly found on desktops are Firefox and Internet Explorer while on mobile phones they are Openwave, Netfront, Motorola and Nokia.

To access the CDMS mobile application whenever you need to create a bookmark in your mobile phone’s web browser. The steps below provide general instructions however depending on the type of mobile phone you have and the browser it has installed the specific steps may vary slightly. Add a comment below if your phone is different and in particular mention the model and type of mobile phone you are using

The simplest may to create a bookmark for CDMS Mobile Application is connect to it and follow the steps below.

1. To connect to the web scroll through your phone’s menu, and look for the option to access the web and launch your phone’s web browser.

2. Once your browser has been activated select the option to enter or access a URL. This can be found by selecting Menu or Options on your phone. Sometimes this option is called “Go To”.

3. Enter http://www.cdms.mobi and select OK (sometimes called Go To or Send).

4. Select the option to bookmark the page.

5. Add a title for your bookmark, or edit the default title provided.

6. Save your bookmark by selecting OK (your phone might say: Save or Done).

7. Some phone browsers e.g. the Sanyo 7500 also have the option to set the saved bookmark as the default page for the browser. If you select this option the login page for the CDMS Application will be opened when you start up the browser. If you don’t set the bookmark as the default page you will need to scroll through your list of bookmarks and the select the one saved for the CDMS Application.

Bookmarks can be called different things on different phones, e.g. Favorite or Shortcut. If your phone calls them something different again then leave a comment below and we’ll update our notes.

ABE Services Weblog - Home

Glossary of common CDMS terms

Quality Assurance – An explanation by definitions

Compliance Applications

Compliance Overview

Compliance Management Applications

Main Work Flows

Stakeholders, Users and Roles

Related Applications

Defect Recording

Automated Error Detection

Common Features

Mobile Phone Browsers

Supported Mobile Phone Browsers

Mobile Phone Requirements for other Web Sites

The ABE Services Blog

cdms.mobi

Mobi Ready Analysis for Mobile Phone Site

Mobile Emulator for Web Sites

Compliance

What is WURFL

CDMS Supported Mobile Phones

Browser Capabilities

Related Articles

CDMS as a Disaster Management Tool

A Short History of CDMS

Bookmarking CDMS on a Mobile Phone