In 2005, O’Hare International Airport began a project to relocate and modernize a 2.1 million ft.2 runway. Five independent firms worked on the project design with the IT/data management led by Milhouse Engineering and Construction, Inc. Milhouse implemented GlobalSCAPE WAFS which mirrors critical files to all sites. This provided fast local access to all project files automatically without any administrative burden and with no delays.
Milhouse Engineering Manages the O'Hare Airport
Project Quickly and Securely with GlobalSCAPE WAFS
NEXTManaging large multi-company
design projects with GlobalSCAPE WAFS
Milhouse Engineering Manages the O'Hare Airport
Project Quickly and Securely with GlobalSCAPE WAFS
In 2005, O'Hare International Airport organized a collaborative effort to relocate and modernize a 2.1 2million ft. runway. The IT/data management was led by Milhouse Engineering and Construction, Inc.,
with production including four other independent ? rms. Immediately, Milhouse Engineering's IT Man-
ager Amar Singh began to consider the ? rst challenge of the project-digital collaboration with large and
sensitive CAD ? les among ? ve unique entities.
ThTTThhheeee C CCChhhhaaaalllllllleeeennnnggggeeee... Weekly Update from O'HareIn an effort to achieve the optimal ? nal design and construction, O'Hare sought to use the power of col-laborative design, harmonizing the best ideas into one outstanding project. The O'Hare Air? eld Engineers (OAE) was formed as a joint venture comprised of ? ve O'Hareworld-renowned engineering ? rms: Milhouse Engineer-ing, Edwards and Kelcey, Carter and Burgess, Delta Engineering, and Earth Tech. Collectively, these ? ve industry leaders were to collaborate as one. 3 hour download
As the leading ? rm managing and housing data infra-structure for the joint venture, Milhouse Engineering bore the ultimate responsibility for management and Milhouse
dissemination of all project data, including CAD ? les. Instant MirroringAmar was tasked with implementing a feasible system by which ? ve separate companies with dozens of end-users from all over the nation could collaborate on thousands of ? les. Their data consisted of both Microstation DGN formats and standard of? ce ? les that together totaled over 12 GB of project ? les. Fur-thermore, the solution would require that Amar ? nd a way to work seamlessly within the various ? le management practices already in place at the other four ? rms.
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Historically, projects for the O'Hare International Airport relied on a web-based ? le sharing and project management program that had been developed by their CAD software provider. How-ever, the OAE joint venture was breaking new barriers in project scope, project team size, and the quantity of data involved. In a given week, Milhouse Engineering spent nearly three hours downloading the latest master ? les from O'Hare using this web-based sharing program. Then, those ? les had to be disseminated to four other sites before work could begin. Although O'Hare was resistant to any change, Amar insisted that a new solution must be implemented in order for the OAE joint venture to be successful.
ReReaal-l-TTiimmee AAcccceesss.s.
Amar's ? rst and most overwhelming realization with GlobalSCAPE WAFS was the impact of true real time ? le access. At each ? rm's local server, a small 2 MB application called the WAFS Agent was installed. Week after week, this small application allowed Amar to mirror the entire bundle of master ? les from O'Hare to each site in less than a second each week. "With this kind of All things considered,
? le sharing," Amar commented, "the only delay due ''byte-level differencing to data transfer was in the initial download from proved to be the real O'Hare, which was still accomplished through ac- power of the WAFS cessing their web-based sharing program." Using solution for us.WAFS, ? les were accessible instantly upon down-load to every user in the entire OAE. And, while full ? le replication may still be in progressss,, WAFS' intelligent streamiinngg ffeeaattuurree allowed users to access any ? le before the repliiccaattiioonn hhaadd completed.
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However, real-time ? le access with newly created ? les was only the beginning. Once this repli-cation occurred in the ? rst weekly download, subsequent In nearly 2 years using downloads of updated ? les were mirrored with true byte-
''this solution in the OAE, level differencing-sending only the small, ? le-we have yet to have an issue by-? le deltas to each server and minimizing
with users unknowingly editing bandwidth. As a result, Milhouse Engineering was able to forego the expense of a T1 con-the prior version of an upd... [download for more]
