From extras to cash allowance draws, contingency expenditures to fund allocations, there are many ways to affect the original contract price, authorize new work within the existing contract price, and track adjustments and progress to the Work. Let’s take a closer look at how to handle any situation you may encounter.
(more…)In a perfect world, every Request for Information (RFI) from the Builder would come from a true need for information that was missing, unclear, or contradictory in the contract documents and drawings.
In the real world, RFIs are often weaponized.
(more…)Almost every construction project will inevitably require a change to the originally agreed upon price and time. From deficiencies in the contract documents and drawings, to unforeseen circumstances on the construction site, to mandates from authorities having jurisdiction – there are plenty of things that can (and will) result in extras or credits to the contract.
(more…)You have always been able to drag & drop an email message onto a document in FIVE to grab the email’s attachments and store them in FIVE. But thanks to a feature request from users at Strasman Architects, you can now easily attach email message content as a PDF with a vastly simplified workflow.
(more…)Almost 200 icons have been completely redesigned to be crisp, clear, and colourful on today’s modern display devices.
(more…)Michael Copas (founder of STATSLOG Software) received an Honorary Membership from the Ontario Association of Architects. Honorary Membership is one of the highest honours the OAA can bestow on a person outside of the profession of architecture. Council nominates individuals who, as defined in the Architects’ Act:
(more…)When it comes to email, one size does not fit all.
Even though most mailboxes accept email messages of 25 megabytes or more, it’s not uncommon for some to be limited to 5 or 10 megabytes. It also not unusual for your CCA documents to exceed that size, especially when they include a lot of images and drawings.
The traditional approach is to publish large documents to your FTP/SFTP site, or a third party file service. This works fine, but can be time consuming – you have to export the document, upload it to the service, and copy & paste the link back into your email message.
We wanted to make things a bit easier for you, so now you can send document attachments as links in just a click – right from FIVE!
(more…)No two companies do their construction contract administration exactly the same way. We’ve designed FIVE to be as flexible as possible so that our software helps you do things your way, not our way. Because of this, our documentation is broad, generic, and useful at a high-level to the wide variety of architectural, engineering, and interior design firms that use FIVE.
Some of our customers have developed a more personalized layer of internal documentation that describes their unique processes and workflows as they relate to FIVE. Storing this custom documentation where it is easily discoverable and within arms reach of all users can become an issue. To make this easier, you can now keep all your custom user guides in the Help menu of FIVE!
(more…)…Sometimes you must do what is required.”
― Winston S. Churchill
Our friends over at NXL Architects have been customers for many years, and they are real power users of our software. They’ve recently been working hard on a new standard set of reports, forms, and CCA processes, and as a result, they have been hitting FIVE hard in just about every area. We’ve been discussing ways to improve the software along the way – from better workflows, to new features, bug fixes, to feature enhancements – and the end result is that all users will benefit from the changes we’ve been working on.
Thanks to NXL’s valuable and constructive feedback, we just added one small feature that can make a big difference for the consistency and completeness of your contract admin documentation.
(more…)Our good friends at Low Hammond Rowe Architects recently reached out with a request for a small time-saving feature, and we were happy to oblige.
It’s now possible to switch between different views (report, form, attachments, etc…) from the location bar near the top of the FIVE window. For fans of keyboard shortcuts, each view also has a hotkey assigned for the ultimate in view switching speed!
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