Todd cuts 70 minutes from triathlon personal best!

At last weekend's 2011 Ford Ironman Lake Placid competition, Newforma Co-founder and Director of Sales Todd Kozikowski cut one hour, 10 minutes and 27 seconds from his 2010 time at the same venue.

After swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles, Todd is resting and tending to Newforma duties.

“The energy from the crowd was unbelievable,” Todd said. “Thousands of people come out to cheer people on. But now it feels great just to relax with my family.”

In addition to achieving a personal best time in the triathlon, Todd raised more than US $2,500 for David’s House, a residential facility for families of pediatric patients at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth.

To see pictures of Todd during the race, including a video of his crossing of the finish line, visit this page.

Quick update: Todd K's Ironman

At a time of day when most of us are putting our feet up or thinking about starting the coals on the grill, Newforma Co-founder Todd Kozikowski is deep into the marathon portion of his triathlon competition at Lake Placid, New York.

You can follow Todd’s progress by entering his name in the “Athlete Tracking” field here. You'll see Todd competed the 2.4-mile swim in one hour and 15 minutes, and the 112-mile bike ride in six hours and seven minutes.

For background, see this blog post, or visit Todd's dedication page at the website of David’s House.

We’ll post pictures (or links to pictures) when the race is done. For now, go Todd!

Man of iron, heart of gold

You may not be aware that Newforma Co-founder and Director of Sales Todd Kozikowski is a triathlete, more commonly (and more descriptively) known as an “Ironman.” That means Todd competes in a race that demands him to swim 2.4 miles, bicycle for 112 miles and run for 26.2 miles.

That’s right. Todd covers 140.6 miles in a day. For fun. He's doing it again this Sunday, July 24.

Todd's motivation this year is not all about fun and games, though. He has dedicated this year’s event to a cause that touched the Kozikowski’s lives recently, as Todd describes here:

Nearly 14 months ago, Laura and I welcomed our baby daughter, Elena, into the world. Elena was born with a few minor complications and spent a brief period of time in the neonatal intensive care unit at Elliot Hospital in New Hampshire. During that time, I felt the world had stopped and the only thing I wanted was for our baby to be healthy. We were fortunate because Elena fully recovered and left the NICU after only a few days. But, I couldn’t stop thinking about the parents and children who spend their days, weeks, months, and even longer in this environment.

Todd discovered a facility that provides housing for families visiting children at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Children's Hospital at Dartmouth. It's called David's House. In this short reflection, Todd tells why participating in an Ironman competition is easier than enduring what many David's House residents undergo.

This year, Todd invites us to join him — not on the Lake Placid Ironman course this weekend (thank goodness), but in his desire to support David’s House.

Please make a donation here, writing “Todd K” in the “Name of Person to be Acknowledged” field.

And please revisit the Newforma Blog in the coming days as we report more about Todd’s 2011 Ironman competition!

Newforma Project Analyzer - Project planning, resource management and reporting for project managers and A/E firm executives

Yesterday we announced the availability of our newest product, Newforma Project Analyzer. This is an awesome product that provides project planning, resource management and reporting for architectural and engineering project managers and firm executives in a dynamic, interactive, highly visual format. It pulls live project data directly from your financial system to facilitate what-if scenarios and real time decision making concerning project scopes, budgets, and staffing for individual projects, groups of projects or the entire firm.

The idea behind the solution - Our solution was born out of the real life challenges that our customers face every single day. Customers having to work with multiple spreadsheets dispersed around the firm makes it difficult to assemble the necessary information at an executive level to make adequate decisions. In addition, the firm is left with varying processes delivering varying quality among the project management team. The need to continually communicate with the accounting team to get visibility into even the most routine sets of data creates frustration and inefficiencies.

Here are some of the quotes we heard along the way:

“Every one of my project managers has their own spreadsheet for planning and managing their projects.”

“I know the information my project managers need is in our financial system; I just wish they could get to it in real-time to use it more effectively as they are making decisions.”

“We make money on 80% of our projects, but that 20% is killing us!”

“There is no standardized way to review and assess the health of each and every one of our projects on a regular basis.”

“Our billing process always bogs down in the project managers’ review of invoices.”

“Why can’t every job be as profitable as the projects done by Jim’s team? How can we replicate his process?”

Newforma Project Analyzer solves these problems and more! Here are some of the key features and benefits of the Newforma Project Analyzer:

Standardize project management - Newforma Project Analyzer encourages the development of standard project management and reporting processes across the office or the entire firm, increasing transparency, reducing risk and increasing profitability.

Improve decision making - Newforma Project Analyzer improves decision making by providing A/E project managers the tools to schedule, plan, track and report project financial performance. It also allows A/E firm executives to have the information at their fingertips to view graphical projections that illustrate the impacts of various scenarios.

Achieve broad adoption - Newforma Project Analyzer achieves broad adoption because it presents real-time project information in a highly visual manner that makes it easy to learn and easy to use. It is also easy to implement and easy to administer in a single office or across multiple offices.

Monitor & control project performance - Newforma Project Analyzer provides the tools that allow you to quickly and visually assess the performance of projects against budget, then drill into any area that warrants closer examination.

In summary, Newforma Project Analyzer is geared to deliver visibility and tools for both the project manager and firm executives. Information that the project manager routinely manages for purposes of tracking and controlling their projects is available in real-time for the executive team to roll-up into a firm view to facilitate projections and forecasting.

If you want to see a quick overview of the product, we have a 3-minute demonstration video on the Newforma Project Analyzer product product page or you can schedule your own personal presentation by emailing us at answers@newforma.com or calling us at +1-603-625-6212 Option 1.

Prouty Ultimate 2011 - Ride, Jesse, Ride

Our CEO, Ian Howell, was able to capture this live action shot of Jesse Devitte cycling through the streets of Goffstown, NH as he started on his journey towards completing the 200 mile bike ride in The Prouty Ultimate. Jesse, a Co-Founder & Founding Investor of Newforma, is supporting a great cause with his ride. He and Team Borealis have combined to raise over $86k for The Prouty and their support of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center.

If you're interested in supporting Jesse and Team Borealis in the The Prouty, it isn't too late. You can visit their team page and make a contribution. It is all being done for a great cause!

As for Jesse, so far, so good. He has passed the day one challenge and survived the grueling first 100 miles (99.02 according to his Garmin) to cross the finish line with a smile. In fact, he was able to finish his ride in just under 8 hours! Nice work Jesse!

For those data driven folks out there who like to see some numbers associated with his ride, here are the stats, courtesy of his Garmin device. Check out the elevation gain. Pretty impressive!

And, for those people who like to see some colorful charts & graphs, here are some nice eye-candy visuals on his ride. Those hills from 40 to 60 miles look pretty tough!

Tomorrow is another day, and another 100 miles to go, but I'm sure Jesse will tackle the ride like he does everything, with gusto! Good luck Jesse!

Tomorrow is also the start of The Prouty for Team Borealis members who didn't go for The Prouty Ultimate. We wish all of them the best of luck as well. Happy Cycling Team Borealis!

Support Team Borealis - The 30th Annual Prouty

This weekend a number of our friends will be participating in the 30th Annual Prouty, a fund-raising bike ride through New Hampshire’s scenic White Mountains. It was 30 years ago that four Cancer Center nurses rode 100 miles to honor their patient, Audrey Prouty and raised $4,000 for research at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center.

This year, the total donations have already reached $1.4 Million and more donations are rolling in by the minute. This is a great event where the proceeds support Cancer Center researchers and clinicians who are working on innovative ways to prevent, diagnose, treat and hopefully, one day, cure cancer.

Newforma is proud to be a supporter of Team Borealis for the 4th consecutive year. Led by Jesse “Double Century” Devitte, Team Borealis has raised over $70,000 through the outstanding efforts of 68 people and they are close to achieving their goal of $100,000. Jesse, who is on our board of directors and is a Co-Founder & Founding Investor of Newforma, has committed to riding the full 200 miles that comprise the Prouty Ultimate. Not bad for a guy who rode only 25 miles in his first Prouty 4 years ago! We wish Jesse and the rest of his team the best of luck!

If you would like to help support Jesse and Team Borealis, please visit their team page.

Happy Cycling Team Borealis! Keep your wheels on the pavement!

Show of hands: Newforma users at RTC 2011

Newforma Chief Product Officer Allen Preger sends this report on last week's Revit Technology Conference:

The Revit Tech Conference (RTC) made its debut in the United States last week in lovely, laid back Huntington Beach (a.k.a. Surf City), California. Newforma was there as an exhibitor, sponsor and curious observer!

Carl Bass of Autodesk welcomed the group with an opening speech on the possibilities of infinite computing and projects like Photofly, Zeon and “Augmented Reality” in the Autodesk labs that will soon be productized to exploit the promise of “zero-cost computing.” The conference then divided into its format of 4-5 parallel tracks that ran across the three days.

Everybody I spoke to said they really were getting a lot out of the sessions. Not surprising when you consider the list of experienced speakers and the choice and depth of topics offered.

Location is everything and that proved true not only with the event city but also the Newforma booth. We were located amongst the food and drink, allowing for great opportunities to connect with a number of existing customers and many new prospects between sessions. This was the perfect audience to discuss our latest product, Newforma Add-in for Autodesk Revit. Product Manager Chris Hawkins and I were kept pretty busy demonstrating and discussing Newforma’s new Revit-focused functionality.

Most everyone that attended said they would try to make it back next year. There were also lots of good networking opportunities in the exhibit area and social functions, which included an “Aussie-style” BBQ on the lawn with views of the Pacific. (Yes, Ian, there were plenty of shrimp on the “barbie”!)

Check out Dave Light’s blog for photos and his observations on some of the RTC technical program content. Click here for Dave’s comments on Day 1 and here for Days 2 and 3.

Another highlight was the closing event, which Newforma sponsored. Prior to introducing the closing speaker, Screampoint President Paul Doherty, I had a few minutes to introduce PIM (project information management) to this audience of BIM experts. When I asked how many in the audience knew about PIM, it was somewhat encouraging to see so many hands shoot up. When I followed up to ask how many were Newforma users, or had used Newforma at their prior job, it was awesome to see all those same hands shoot up again! RTC2011 was well done and very worthwhile for us. Looking forward to next year!