In this release, we’re excited to introduce a whole new way of using Fieldwire — Forms. Learn more about them in our Release Webinar on August 8th, or read on! Available for our business and enterprise customers, Forms (currently in beta) is a whole new way of using Fieldwire, alongside the existing plans, tasks, and files that have already been used on more than 200,000 projects.

Why forms? Because we know you and your teams manage a number of paper files and PDFs to track different parts of your job on a daily and weekly basis, and it will save you time and money to track them all in a single platform.

Don’t take our word for it; a general contractor who's already using forms said,

When you use Forms in Fieldwire, all of your major disparate paper forms get consolidated into our easy-to-use platform. They’re now easier to complete, and you get all the benefits of our transparent tracking of who did what, when, and why. Our webinar on August 8th with Stéphane Denerolle, the Director of Product Management for forms, will walk you through the new solution.

Today, we’re starting with the four types of forms our customers tell us they use the most: Daily Reports, Timesheets, Inspection Requests, and RFIs. What’s included in each form type? (Click for a large version of the image)

• Daily Reports lets a superintendent or foreman in the field record what happened on the job site, including the weather, delays, accidents, injuries, and notes. This has been our most common feature request, and we’re glad to share a full tutorial video of Daily Reports. Read the support page.
• Timesheets are exactly what they sound like — you fill them out already on every job site, for everyone on the site for payroll; the whole process becomes more streamlined when you just need to select how many hours each person worked, add any comments, and hit submit! Read the support page.
• Inspection Requests enable a contractor to to manage inspections with a third-party inspector, such as a building inspector, fire marshal, or a owner’s representative. What needs to be inspected has always been tightly coupled with where something was done on a set of drawings, and what tasks were completed to do the work. Read the support page.
• RFIs. Traditionally, everyone on a project has used a different system to generate an RFI, and the people submitting an RFI from the field (e.g. due to unforeseen site conditions) use a different platform without a connection to the people back in the office. With Fieldwire, different stakeholders can collaborate on the same form, by requesting information from the people with the knowledge at their fingertips. Read the support page.

Moving forward, we plan to continue to bring you regular enhancements to our forms, just like you’ve come to expect from the other parts of the Fieldwire platform. In the next few months, the v1 release will include the ability to attach forms to specific points on a plan or to a task as well as automated weather data on the Daily Report form.

To get started, we’ve created some initial resources for you. Watch our video, at the bottom of this post, for a walkthrough of Daily Reports, check out our support page, or sign up for our webinar on August 8th.

Resources:

• Introductory webinar from Stéphane Denerolle, director of Product Management
• Video tutorial walkthrough of Daily Reports
• All of our support resources for Forms, including a dozen of help articles

Thank you to all of our customers who are already using Forms today and have helped us with feedback over the last few months. As one of our specialty contractors said:

We look forward to hearing from you about how you use Forms on your projects!

I love construction for what it is: a complex process where engineering, people, and materials collide to create awe-inspiring objects, even by modern society's standards. However, with many variables at play and innumerable things that can go wrong on a project, the process is often grindingly inefficient; always improving but never mastered. Well, construction is about to take a huge leap forward.

On any construction site today, whether it's a big office building or a residential project, you will see foremen taking off their gloves at lunch break, grabbing their iPhone from their pocket and reading their emails and texts. It's clear from the presence of technology found on the job site: the importance of mobile capabilities for field workers continues to grow.

Mobile technology has finally reached to the core of construction, where the complexity resides, where inefficiency happens, where it's most needed: in the field. And it got there, not because of some great IT initiative, but because people brought it with their lunchbox that morning. Now, we have powerful project management tools right at our fingertips.

People mistakenly describe BIM as a technology that allows access to a 3D building model in the field. BIM is not about technology. It's about solving the problem of collaboration in a complex rugged environment. It's about access to information and good decision-making. Fundamentally it's about organizational change.

Indeed, with the widespread adoption of smartphones by foremen and superintendents, the project team can finally achieve shared awareness. Improved access to vital information like up-to-the-minute as built drawings, gives people on-site the ability to make faster and better decisions. This is the key toward streamlined field operations.

However, if we don't break the knowledge silos and start sharing information more openly on our projects, if we don't grant more autonomy to the field teams to allow them to make decisions, if we don't adapt at an organizational level, we run the risk of realizing very little of the potential benefits of BIM.

Thankfully, construction was built, for better or for worse, with a lot of independence at the project level. That's the unique opportunity to improve efficiency in construction. As a project manager, superintendent or lead foreman you are empowered with the choice to adopt BIM on your project not as a technology but as an organizational change.

Let us know what you think at info@fieldwire.com and make sure to join the revolution by signing up below.

Other posts you might find relevant:

• Technology doesn't fail on construction sites, adoption does.
• 3 reasons why you may be the bottleneck on your project and how to fix it.

We are thrilled to announce that James Pease has joined Fieldwire’s advisory board. James is a groundbreaking leader in the Lean Construction and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) movements. He is currently Regional Manager for the Facility and Property Services division of Sutter Health in California. At Sutter Health, he is helping deliver a $6.5 billion capital improvement program by managing multiple projects that use the IPD model.

IPD projects differ dramatically from the typical construction contracts that we know. Per the American Institute of Architects, IPD is “a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction.” IPD projects are therefore inherently Lean: they reduce waste, align incentives, and increase value. Furthermore, IPD projects tend to be delivered on time and on budget more consistently!

Here at Fieldwire, we think that by reducing waste (calls and emails back and forth, walking around the jobsite, waiting for responses, etc.), we help get people back to the important and value-add side of their jobs - actually performing the work that gets our buildings and infrastructure built! We see the value in Lean construction and it has been a focus of ours since the beginning.

We’re looking forward to James’ valuable insight to help impact where Fieldwire is headed! If you want to learn more about Lean construction and IPD, please check out LeanIPD.com, where James is the Executive Editor.

Fieldwire is free for small teams on Apple iOS, Android, and on the web. Start your Lean construction journey with us!