For entrepreneurs, building a new business can be a matter of putting out one fire after another. Launching a new product typically means the height of “fire season.” But for Borealis portfolio company Newforma, the proverbial “fires” of a start-up were nearly squelched by the NH Floods of May, 2006. In the midst of the commercial launch of its product, the Company's Manchester offices were filled to waist height due to rising floodwaters from the Merrimack River. With the entire Company pitching in on the Sunday evening of Mother’s Day (including a handful of moms), Newforma was able to rescue all of its computers and servers and was relocated in new accommodations - now safely on the 10th floor of an office building - with all systems operational by the next afternoon. More importantly, the Company still launched its product on schedule.

Newforma Project Center meets the needs of Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Owner (AECO) project managers, who are responsible for on-time and on-budget project delivery, but suffer the brunt of issues arising from having to manage and share project information – where a change, if not communicated on a timely basis, can result in substantial waste, rework, cost increases, and delays. Newforma Project Center addresses these challenges by reducing barriers to information sharing and increasing the speed with which project information can be located and applied to project process. In the words of early customers, Newforma Project Center is the "project glue" that frees project managers from time-wasting tasks and productivity-draining obstacles.

One of the keys to Project Center's success as a solution is the Lighthouse program, which teamed Newforma with a representative group of industry-leading AECO firms to collaborate in defining, developing and implementing solutions to some of the industry's key pain points. With over 100 participants from the AECO industry validating and testing the product strategy, prototypes and early versions, the Lighthouse program was a powerful tool in both defining the product so that it truly addressed business needs, and solving the pain points of target customers in order to create market demand.

Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, Inc. (HOK) is one Lighthouse program member that has signed on as an early Newforma Project Center customer. HOK is a global architectural firm that specializes in planning, design and delivery solutions for buildings and communities. HOK plans to deploy Newforma Project Center as a component of HOK buildingSMART, a corporate-wide execution of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) buildingSMART initiative. Project managers and project team members at HOK will be using Newforma Project Center to organize and find project information more efficiently, to share and communicate project documents more quickly and easily, and to reuse and enhance project data in ways that streamline critical work processes.

"Newforma Project Center is the salvation for project managers who are frustrated by time-sapping administrative tasks related to their project information and project process," said Mario Guttman, Vice President and Firmwide CAD Director at HOK. "As an early participant in Newforma's Lighthouse Program, we were able to apply Newforma Project Center to a few select projects, and, as a result, we have identified opportunities to assist our incredibly busy project teams through the use of this solution on a wider scale."

The official release of Newforma Project Center and the acquisition of its first customers formally bring to reality what was only an idea less than three years ago. Newforma now has over 40 employees in offices on both the east and west coasts, a skilled channel of Newforma Consultants, top tier investment partners, a world-class board of directors and many advisors who have been helpful along the way. Says Borealis Managing Director Jesse Devitte, "Newforma's recent accomplishments, the quality and diversity of the team they have built, as well as their approach to involving customers in all that they do from the earliest moments of the Company has resulted in a 'different kind of company.' At Borealis we are proud to call them officially a member of the next generation of great companies!"

We still work for our companies even after they have been acquired. Although @Last Software is now a part of Google, Jesse still helped out the Google/SketchUp team at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) trade show last month. Here he is on the streets of L.A. waving people to the Google/SketchUp party and working the booth the next day.