Bentley ProjectWise vs. Fieldwire

ProjectWise is good for really large projects with many team members. I would not recommend it for small projects or those with a small team of people working on them. It is best for technical people and those who plan to use it daily. There are better FTP options out there if you just want to use them for file sharing.

We used Fieldwire to increase our overall productivity for our engineers and for our installers and techs in the field, so our techs could have everything in front of them when needed. Sometimes the software can be dependent on cell service and when in a remote construction area it becomes hard to pull the information.

Incentivized

• It works for collaboration
• The backend is customisable to do work that other document management systems just cannot do.

• Quality control, tagging a picture on the drawings is particularly helpful.
• Assigning tasks to field personnel.
• Having all pertinent files instantly accessible for review from the field.

Incentivized

• many users cannot be in the same file at the same time
• files are not automatically freed upon closure
• copying files to another ProjectWise folder is complicated. There is an option to copy, another to copy to, etc.

• The software is geared toward general contractors. We are actively providing feedback to gear it toward engineers, architects, and design professionals.
• I would like to see more options for mark-ups.

Incentivized

I use this all the time for my field measurements. But sometimes when I am working offline and upload it to cloud after coming to office, the tags get messed up. Some lines I drew at plan gets missing

Incentivized

They have always been very responsive to any changes that we have asked for. We have never had a technical issue.

Incentivized

Bentley ProjectWise from a user perspective just does not stack up to even something as simple as Dropbox. ProjectWise is powerful, it is capable, it has a ton of features. The best implementation I have seen from Projectwise is where the admins unlocked everything and let the users do as they please defeating everything it stood for and using it as a big Dropbox account, though even then the user interface couldn't be improved still causing significant workflow delays. I would reluctantly leave a good company if they implement ProjectWise, I respect that it's powerful for system admins but it sucks for users. This means 2-10% of what it is used for is well designed while the other 98-90% of its functions are just bogged down by a lack of development in its user interface and I say this as someone who has periodically used it over the last 10 years and seen no effective improvement in usability. Bentley ProjectWise was one of the first I believe to do this type of system, but as is common with being the first is you don't keep up with the times and bring a lot of baggage with you.

Fieldwire for sure has better mobile usage, however, Smartsheet has better organization and charts. Ideally using both software together would help us achieve our goals and what we needed but the cost to run both software will cost you more than what other larger project management software competitors would charge for the same service.

Incentivized

• It has saved us time in archiving and versioning documents
• It has saved us effort in backing up files and restoring them when mistakes are made
• It has had an overall positive impact on our bottom line by helping with file sharing and collaboration

• It has allowed us to catch issues before they compound on site.
• It allows supers to look at their plans from anywhere on-site through the ease of an iPad.

Incentivized