Marianne Nebel Goetz, vice president and senior knowledge manager, Parsons Brinckerhoff Photograph by Steve Borns

Intranets are fast becoming a critical weapon for companies trying to close a deal. An intranet search engine--the same technology used to find information on the Internet or within a Web site, but geared to search and index your company's intranet--is the tool your staff needs when documents on an intranet must be found ASAP. First-generation intranet search engines required full-time administration and oftentimes provided documents in a format the end user couldn't read.

Relief is in sight--vendors have listened to your complaints and have designed tools that help end users locate crucial information, access it, and manage documents throughout the enterprise. Today's intranet search engines are easy to get up and running, and require little administration.

The engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff has taken advantage of this new technology to compete for engineering projects. A quality intranet search engine improves your ROI and competitive advantage by reducing the amount of time necessary for locating and managing corporate information. Fulcrum Technologies' Fulcrum Knowledge Network 2.1 helps Parsons Brinckerhoff staff use its intranet as a secret weapon when competing for new engineering projects. It also aids the company in sticking to its "clients are forever" philosophy.

New York City-based Parsons Brinckerhoff is a 112-year-old engineering firm employing more than 5,300 people in 150 offices worldwide. Recent company projects include managing the construction of a new $1.59 billion 12-lane superhighway in Salt Lake City, and managing consulting efforts for the largest urban highway redevelopment project in the country: Boston's central artery/tunnel project, dubbed the "Big Dig."

Keeping up with change

Recently, Parsons Brinckerhoff had to remodel a previously approved bridge design that will link Boston to its northern suburbs. The bridge was supposed to be one of the final stages of the Big Dig project, but the aesthetics of the original design were met with opposition from the community. Fulcrum Knowledge Network 2.1 enabled Parsons Brinckerhoff to bring together engineers who specialize in areas such as building materials to come up with a new bridge design. The technology allows the company to hold internal on-line chat sessions in its Practice Area Networks (PANs), which let the firm's engineers--from anywhere in the world--share their experiences and know-how for the betterment of the company and its finished products. Discussions from PAN sessions are then grouped by topic and stored in an Oracle database for future reference.

AT A GLANCE: Parson Brinckerhoff The company: New York City-based Parsons Brinckerhoff has more than 5,300 employees working in 150 offices worldwide. Founded in 1886, it is heavily involved in Boston's "Big Dig" project. The problem: Indexing and searching documents for multiple queries to be viewed on the company's intranet. The solution: Fulcrum Technologies' Knowledge Network 2.1, a self-administered indexing and searching tool. The IT infrastructure: Servers running Windows NT and Microsoft Exchange linked by Fulcrum Knowledge Network to an Oracle database.

After much discussion and many debates with engineers--using the Fulcrum technology--and community residents, a compromise was struck. The result: a 10-lane suspension bridge Parsons Brinckerhoff designed specifically for Boston--a bridge that will not only look good, but will also help to alleviate the city's terrible traffic problems. Once the bridge is completed, it will be the widest suspension bridge in the world.

Answering the skeptics

Many people hear the words "search engine" and assume the worst: high administrative costs, useless search results, etc. However, Tim Sloane, director of Internet infrastructure research at the Aberdeen Group, a market research and technical consultancy in Boston, says, "when companies are deciding what intranet search engines to use, they have to ask what they are trying to accomplish with their searching. Do they just want to index information or do they want to index and manage information? Today's intranet search engines not only search corporate intranets, but also keep track of document revisions, leaning towards document management capabilities." And Sloane believes that these new intranet tools are far superior to the previous generation of intranet search engines.

Parsons Brinckerhoff's intranet administrators seem to agree with Sloane's assessment. They are using the Fulcrum technology to support the company's total quality management initiatives. "We're happy with the Fulcrum product and it is meeting all of our needs," asserts Marianne Nebel Goetz, vice president and senior knowledge manager. "There are features of the Fulcrum product [that] we haven't even looked at yet but may incorporate into our business in the near future. We are poised to double in size over the next five years and we feel that the Fulcrum product will aid our growth," she says.

Along with the PANs, Parsons Brinckerhoff also uses the Fulcrum tool to maintain a database of corporate resume's describing work experience. The company can then group employees based on skills in planning, engineering, and construction management. This database will be put on line in Microsoft Exchange Server, so interested personnel can use the Fulcrum tool to look for candidates with skills for specific project opportunities. "We are using the Fulcrum product to link an Oracle database with Microsoft Exchange to help people find files as [easily] as possible," says Goetz.

Eventually, every employee at Parsons Brinckerhoff will have access to corporate files in all departments, including human resources, marketing, and information services. According to Goetz, full deployment of the Fulcrum tool will be completed in mid-1998, but the company has already benefited from using the technology. //

AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97

AltaVista's product lets administrators schedule document updates for more accurate searches.

Digital Equipment
Littleton, Mass.
508-486-2017

Pricing: Ranges from $995 for 1,000 indexed files to $99,995 for unlimited indexed information.

Unique features: Enterprisewide searches within databases, Web servers, and file repositories with support of more than 200 file formats, including Microsoft Office 97, Adobe PDF, Postscript, HTML, and text.

Server OSs supported: Windows NT (Intel and Alpha chips), Digital UNIX v4.0 or later, and Sun Solaris v2.4 or later.

Good points: Ranked one of the fastest intranet search engines on the market.

Bad points: AltaVista has little market share in intranet technologies and could abandon intranet technology to concentrate on the Internet like Excite and Yahoo.

What users say: Reliability and quick response time convinced the FBI to use the AltaVista search engine for its criminal history database. "The AltaVista search engine reduces the search time from days to 2.8 seconds," says Charles Daniels, deputy program director for Science Applications International Corp., which implemented the AltaVista Search eXtension 97 for the FBI. When you are looking through the FBI criminal history database filled with 45 million potential criminals and 250 million records, 2.8 seconds is not such a long time. The ad hoc search, as the FBI refers to it, allows the user to enter partial data and retrieve information on the top criminal candidates. It's less structured, explains Daniels. The simple GUI conceals a powerful behind-the-scenes search of the database.

© 1998 Earthweb / Internet.com and Matthew Snow