Civil Engineers Bring Mixed Media Online

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in Reston, VA, recently created a Web site to serve the engineering industry using CommonSpot content management software from PaperThin, Duxbury, MA (www.paperthin.com). A professional society with approximately 100,000 members, the ASCE wanted to disseminate the latest information about technologies, processes and projects to the engineering community. A particular challenge was using media that could not be published in traditional print media.

"We found, for example, that for many large-scale, long-term engineering construction projects, such as airports and bridges, construction firms produce videos and case studies on how the projects were designed and constructed, but they don't have an outlet for these materials to reach the broader market," says Robert Silverstein, project manager for the ASCE.

Training on the PaperThin software took place in April, the site was populated with content in April and June and the new Web site, www.ceworld.org, went live July 1. The site provides software demos and traditional text-based presentations as well as information in video, audio and Powerpoint formats. A virtual trade show on the site, which lets companies exhibit online for an annual fee, has already brought in revenue exceeding the cost of building the site.

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