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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]
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