"I did a presentation for a group representing all our offices, Columbus was received very well and all the CAD people are quite excited. I believe that Columbus is a great product and an excellent solution for document (read drawing) management for the small to mid sized AEC firm."

Jim Brinkmeyer - OTAK USA

"I had the fortunate experience of being BSI audited a few weeks ago, with half an hours notice, Not only did Columbus save my bacon (and possibly my job) but the auditor himself went away 'drooling'at what he'd just seen. His parting comment was that's the best Document control system he's seen and will all the office be running Columbus on his next visit."

Anonymous User

"Six projects were short-listed - only one can win - yet by common consent this year's group contained several entries of Award standard."

"One of these was not a construction project in the accepted sense. Columbus is a piece of software. Created by the Ove Arup organisation and made available to the industry free of charge through the Internet, it represents an imaginative contribution to the Latham and Egan imperatives of facilitating working in traditional inefficiencies and artificial boundaries. As an easy to use document management, viewing, filing and communication vehicle, I challenge any organisation represented here this evening not to find uses for it. Indeed, as a result of last weeks demonstration, I mentioned it to a colleague in my own University Department; the next day I received an e-mail listing six uses to which we could immediately put it."

"Therefore in recognition of both its innovative concept and, in particular the innovative way in which it is being used to facilitate cross-industry improvement the judges wish to make a special Award to Columbus"

Professor David Nethercot, Imperial College London - presenting the ICE Special Award, April 2000

"I've just downloaded and installed Columbus - and I'm stunned. I can really appreciate a) the scale of the problem you guys set out to tackle and b) how well you've tackled it - I'm currently working for a web design company and we were considering getting a document_managementS, I remembered something about Columbus being released as freeware and looked it up, and I'm incredibly impressed. Many, many congratulations on a job well done."

Dylan Beattie, Software Developer - X-RM Ltd.

"You work for an excellent company if they support this kind of sharing. I guess that it the point. An atmosphere of sharing builds a strong company in so many ways."

The Glave Firm - Architects in Virginia

"I am very impressed…"

"We have been looking at document management systems for a while now and this one almost rivals Bentley's Project Wise, which is a couple of tens of thousands of US dollar investment with a hefty maintenance fee each year on top of that."

Gary Mensch, CAD Manager - The Lauck Group

"We first became interested in Columbus because of it's flexibility and cost. We have customers all over the place and we can set up project ftp sites and deal with it all within Columbus without resorting to an expensive and cumbersome 'collaboration' system. It's fairly easy to convince a customer to use software that is freely available. It's worked fairly well thus far. We also use suppliers that have ftp sites with electronic parts files and can set these up for easy access as well."

"What we are really looking for is a Pdocument_management system without the constraints of a typical Pdocument_management system. We like the localized structure of the Columbus system. We do all our data generation and storage in SolidWorks files, so it makes complete sense to do the same with the data management information."

Christopher Dubea, Vice President - Engineering Moving Parts L.L.C.