ConsensusDOCS Unveils New, Improved Brand and Web Interface

Earlier this month, ConsensusDOCS unveiled its new brand and logo. In addition, the coalition revealed its new website that was created to feature the new logo, color scheme, design, and more, along with new technology and an improved purchasing process.

The new and improved ConsensusDOCS web platform now provides the user instant access to contract documents from any computer, at the office, on the road, or at home, through a secure web-based portal. Once you log in, all of your personalized information, projects, and contracts are there waiting for you!

Carrie Ciliberto, deputy executive director and counsel for ConsensusDOCS said “In our ongoing efforts to respond to your subscribers’ needs, we’ve significantly upgraded our technology—it’s now cloud based so that users can access contracts anytime from any computer using Microsoft Word.” With the customization ability of Microsoft Word, not only will personalizing your contract documents be easier for you, but they will be easier to pass between parties and to transfer to PDF and back.

Ciliberto added, “The system offers users a personal dashboard with quick links, allows easy collaboration, automatically tracks version changes along the way, uploads attachments, and automatically generates a comparison report back to the standard language. Our year-long effort to upgrade the technology will result in an entirely new platform, a new website, and new branding that will allow ConsensusDOCS subscribers to collaborate more easily and efficiently to promote quick consensus and will truly bring ConsensusDOCS to a heightened level of functionality and ease.”

All at your fingertips, you now get 24/7 access, Microsoft Word contract documents for easy editing and customization also making it easier to collaborate with other users, the ability to create favorites of documents you’ve modified for your unique needs, and conversion and comparison tools. Best of all, with all of these changes, you may need help, and the new ConsensusDOCS platform offers free guidance through provided user instructions that are embedded in the contracts, along with the ability to reference the free ConsensusDOCS Guidebook.

The transition process will be as follows:

Existing User Transition to New Platform

All Package Users: Allow access to Complete Package within new system for the length of their current subscription (some via manual conversion).

All Meter Mode Users: Allow access to Complete Package for 90 days (through mid-July). Offer to convert any remaining balance of their current subscription towards purchase of new platform package (via manual conversion).

Renewals Transition

Renewals Within First 90 Days (mid-July) After Launch:

• All Package Users will have the option to pay “full” price for dual access to both the new system and DocuBuilder, or will be offered a discounted price (TBD) to convert exclusively to the new system.
• All Meter Moders will have the option to replenish on DocuBuilder or purchase a new package on the new system (discount offer TBD), or both.

Renewals After First 90 Days (mid-July) from Launch:

• All Package Users and Meter Moders will have the option to purchase the new system or replenish on DocuBuilder or both.

Deadline for Package renewals on DocuBuilder = tentatively December 31, 2012.

For New Technology Platform Packaging and Pricing, click here.

To view the new ConsensusDOCS Contracts Catalogue, updated with the new web platform, click here.

ConsensusDocs users will be able to work on their standard construction contracts using Microsoft Word® on a PC or Mac as the result of an upgraded new web-based platform released today by the coalition. The new technology allows the more than 4,700 office locations currently using ConsensusDocs to share and collaborate with anyone using Word.

“The new cloud-based technology platform totally transforms how we deliver contracts,” said Brian Perlberg, executive director and senior counsel for ConsensusDocs. “Our growing base of subscribers can now collaborate and negotiate contracts more efficiently.”

The new technology allows contract sharing with multiple contract collaborators either via the web or offline, compare versions of Word, PDF, effectively organize contacts, projects, and each negotiation step into a central dashboard, create templates as favorites for future projects, convert scanned paper and pdf documents into text, and access new and updated standard contracts and technology improvements in real time.

Perlberg added that “the new technology is being offered at no additional cost and current users can opt to use either the new or old system for a period of time.”

The coalition is also releasing new and updated standard construction contract documents including:

• ConsensusDocs 702 Standard Purchase Order
• ConsensusDocs 702.1 General Conditions to Standard Purchase Order
• ConsensusDocs 235 – Standard Agreement Between Owner and Contractor (Cost of Work)
• Exhibits A and B to ConsensusDocs 235
• ConsensusDocs 415 – Standard Agreement and General Conditions Between Owner and Design-Builder (Lump Sum)
• ConsensusDocs 450 – Standard Agreement Between Design-Builder and Subcontractor
• ConsensusDocs 460 – Standard Agreement Between Design-Builder and Subcontractor (Where the Subcontractor Provides an Element of Design and a GMP)

These new agreements and editions provide the latest contractual best practices in today’s design and construction industry for design-build, cost of the work, and purchase order construction contracts.

NASBP is an endorsing organization of the ConsensusDocs coalition, an unprecedented effort by 36 industry organizations to identify industry best practices and to incorporate such practices in a new generation of consensus industry standard form documents.