Newforma and the Building That Forgot

The drawing tells you where the wall goes. It is considerably less helpful about why the wall moved, who approved the change, and whether the person ordering the materials ever saw the approval. Those answers might live in an email, a contractor’s portal or a Teams conversation someone has since edited. Newforma has built its business around this gap between the building and the explanation.

01 A project has more than one memory

Construction produces two kinds of memory. One is visible: drawings, specifications, models. The other is conversational: the clarification, the exception, the reluctant approval. The first gets issued. The second can remain in somebody’s inbox, behaving as though a building were a private correspondence club.

Newforma sells project information management, usually shortened to PIM, to architects, engineers, contractors and owners. It gathers and connects the material around delivery: messages, documents, action items, requests for information, submittals and model coordination issues. A request for information, or RFI, asks for clarification. A submittal sends proposed materials or other details for review. Both acquire a history that matters to the people doing the work.

That focus gives Newforma a particular place in the market. Model-authoring software creates the design. Construction platforms manage much of its execution. Newforma follows the information between people and applications, with some overlapping administration functions. Its connector catalog is almost a confession: the project was never going to fit inside one vendor’s software.

In July 2026, the company introduced a Konekt connector for public and shared Microsoft Teams channels. Linked messages, replies, reactions and files enter the project record. Earlier message versions are preserved with timestamps; deleted messages remain identified as deleted. The quick conversation acquires a longer life. Anyone who has searched for an approval after its author departed will understand the attraction.

02 The connector that paid its way

The useful test of this proposition is a mundane task. Shive-Hattery, an architecture and engineering firm, used Newforma Konekt’s Procore connector to remove duplicate data entry between systems for RFIs and submittals. The firm’s account also describes easier publication of models and sheets, and a move away from manual filing.

In a testimonial published by Newforma, project software support manager Mitch Kelchen reports approximately 50% shorter response times and savings of $1,000-$3,000 per project. These are customer-reported results, not a promise for every buyer. The mechanism, however, is legible: stop entering the same item twice, then let the review proceed.

“We’ve been able to reduce our response times by about fifty percent.”

Mitch Kelchen, Shive-Hattery
In a Newforma-published customer testimonial

This is where a competitor becomes a collaborator. Procore can be an alternative for construction administration, yet a contractor using Procore can create a reason for a design firm to buy a Newforma connector. The buyer’s problem is the boundary between systems. A tidy product comparison that ignores that boundary misses the work.

03 Three ways to keep the receipts

Newforma Project Center is the established on-premises offering. It makes project emails searchable for the team, connects information across applications, controls documents and tracks revisions. Its Standard, Contract Management and Enterprise editions extend from files and communications into RFIs, submittals, changes and additional integrations.

Konekt, launched in 2023, takes the proposition into a cloud-hosted platform. Its current package names explain the divisions: Info Track, BIM Track and CA Track. Info Track handles communications, files, search and tasks. BIM Track concentrates on model coordination. CA Track covers construction administration. Newforma sells a family of related workflows, rather than one feature with a handsome login screen.

ConstructEx is the cloud construction-management product, with RFIs, submittals, document control and field workflows organized by user role. An owner following reviews, an architect issuing information and a contractor managing submissions have different jobs. Product choice should follow the job, along with the location and maintenance of the records.

The public customer catalog includes Corgan, WSP, BDP, Jestico + Whiles and HMFH Architects. Newforma says it serves more than 1,500 firms worldwide. The range matters more than a logo parade: design offices, engineering teams and construction collaborators need to share information while retaining their own responsibilities.

04 The model needs a conversation

The company’s BIM capabilities have an acquisition behind them. In February 2021, Newforma bought BIM One, including BIM Track. That brought model coordination expertise into a business already concerned with the documentary life of a project. Konekt combines the two areas.

A model can show a conflict. Resolving it requires a location, a viewpoint, a description, an owner and a status. Newforma supports IFC and BCF, openBIM formats used for exchanging models and coordination information. BCF can carry the conversation about an issue separately from the model geometry. That is an unusually practical form of diplomacy between software systems.

The Solibri integration makes the idea concrete. Its BCF Live Connector synchronizes issues bidirectionally with Konekt, connecting model checking to shared tracking. A finding can retain its model context while becoming something another person can act on. For a mixed project team, the benefit is being able to discuss the same problem without everyone adopting the same authoring tool.

05 A quote, a pilot and an awkward question

Newforma’s core platforms use sales-led pricing. Project Center is licensed per user; editions and connectors shape the purchase. A buyer should ask for a quote covering the intended deployment, integrations and workflows, then count internal administration and training as part of the bill. The Shive-Hattery savings figure describes reported benefits, not the price of installation.

For comparison, an existing public page lists individual legacy Mobile App Suite subscriptions at $24.99 a month or $249 a year for multiple projects. That narrow offer is separate from Konekt and Project Center procurement. It would be a splendidly economical mistake to treat it as the company’s platform price.

The copyable experiment is small. Choose one RFI or submittal workflow. Count repeated entries and time spent retrieving its history. Connect the relevant tools, verify permissions and project mapping, and compare the same work after the pilot. Then ask a colleague who did not handle the item to reconstruct what happened. A record earns its keep when someone else can use it.

These are practical evaluation suggestions, not reported customer procedures. Their limits are straightforward. A small team with little repeated administration may gain less. Unsupported integrations, poorly mapped projects or inconsistent capture can leave gaps. A searchable archive cannot supply an approval nobody recorded. Nor can software settle who ought to approve a change; the firm still has to assign that responsibility.

06 The inbox gets an assistant

Newforma’s history begins with six co-founders working in Concord, New Hampshire, in May 2003; its first office opened in May 2004. Battery acquired the company in 2017. Ethos Capital became its majority investor in April 2023, the year Konekt launched. In 2025, Peter Cannone became CEO and Info Track arrived. The direction is visible in the sequence: more of the project record moves into connected cloud services.

In July 2026, Newforma announced a seven-year AWS collaboration covering cloud modernization, AI capabilities using Amazon Bedrock and work toward FedRAMP readiness. Readiness is a development objective, rather than a claim of authorization. Its engineering partner zeb supports migration assessment and AI work.

The public AI page describes an upcoming Email Filing Assistant. It would propose where a message belongs and whether to capture it as an RFI, submittal or issue, with a person confirming. The modesty of the task is appealing. A machine that helps file the right correspondence may contribute more to a project than another impressive answer nobody can trace.

There is a human thread in the corporate story, too: Newforma established a Women’s Leadership Council in 2019 for leadership development and professional growth. Buildings need people who can take responsibility. Their records need to survive those people moving on. Newforma’s enduring proposition is to make the explanation available to the next person who opens the drawing.