OCC extended their repertoire into the building sector with one of the Britain's leading providers of building services project management (BSPM).

As part of a group specialising in building project management, documentation of new developments and audit surveys on embedded systems, this company provides an invaluable service to large corporations. Its responsibilities include the management of office buildings, maintenance of building infrastructures and the smooth operation of utilities such as power supply, heating, water, and facilities such as lifts, airflow management.

For the engineers, plumbers, electricians and other professionals involved in the investigation and maintenance of these systems, knowledge of the specifications of the systems is of vital importance. They also need to access this information readily and easily - particularly in the case of an emergency. This information is collated, documented and standardised by the BSPM company and then held in an electronic library - using rudimentary software to index documents for easier searching. The software also provides an information base and portal, supporting Microsoft Word or Excel.

AutoCAD is used to collate, organise and present the large collections of documentation associated with the maintenance and management of major buildings. However, with technological advances, a redesign and upgrade of the existing software was required and OCC, with their long standing expertise in database development, was the preferred choice.

The project involved upgrading the existing software package, written in Visual Basic, using an Access database.  Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) was used to communicate between the various components. Obsolete controls in the user interface were replaced, modifications made where necessary to interact with the three external viewers and various bugs and inefficiencies found in the original software were corrected.

The resultant package retained the functionality of the original system, whilst providing up-to-date platforms with additional value adding features.