Earlier this summer, our VP of Construction, Marielle Price, joined Drew Woods, Assistant Project Manager at EllisDon, and Mike Simon, Operations Manager at Brookfield on stage at CanBim Calgary to talk about how field management software improves the process of project handover from construction to operations and maintenance.

While Fieldwire was also used by EllisDon in the construction phase of the project, the focus of the presentation was to show how Fieldwire is used to improve the transition to operating Phase 1 of Brookfield Place Calgary — a 60-story, 1.6 million square foot office tower.

The move from construction to operations is a difficult process, even for companies like EllisDon (a $3.5 billion construction services and consulting company) and Brookfield (an asset management company with $285+ billion under management). Traditionally, the construction team turns over binders full of documentation to the operations team and it’s the responsibility of the operations team to comb through the piles of documentation, to figure out how to operate the building. This is a major headache for the operations team.

Trying to understand how best to manage a massive project through paper documentation alone is like teaching someone to drive by having them read the car’s owner’s manual. It might work, but there must be a better way. Instead of using this antiquated method, the construction team tracked all their drawings, changes, and documentation through Fieldwire.

This enabled the two teams to work hand-in-hand to make sure construction was completed up to standard, and then smoothly transition to the operations phase. Near the end of construction, Brookfield’s operations team was on the jobsite every day inspecting the remaining work. Whenever a deficiency was found, the operations team could quickly mark it via Fieldwire’s mobile application, and task the right team on the contractor side to fix the issue. Once the task was complete, EllisDon updated the task within Fieldwire, even uploading photos so that the operations team could verify that the problem had been corrected. This process helped the two teams to communicate more effectively than was possible in the past. Ultimately, this enabled them to reach closeout much faster.

While communication between the two teams was important, it was not the only area that was improved with Fieldwire. Managing subcontractors and providing a “single-source of truth” for everyone involved was also very important to the project’s success. By having all of their superintendents and foreman trained on Fieldwire, EllisDon was able to ensure that everyone working on the project was looking at the same set of plans. The ability to markup drawings in the field and export their as-built drawings saved EllisDon a great deal of time and kept their team on the same page. Rework and waste are prevalent on large projects. Fielwire’s unique capabilities, including the ability to export as-built drawings, not only saved time, it also increased transparency across the whole team.

When construction reached completion, the management team was able to view every detail of construction in Fieldwire. As-built drawings, completed tasks, quality-assurance inspections, and documentation of every aspect of the project became available to the operations team. While this may seem like an overwhelming amount of information, as the project owners, Brookfield’s team was able to swiftly “drill down” to find historical data. Without a tagging system, electronic documentation would be no different than the antiquated stacks of binders.

Now that the building is occupied with tenants, Brookfield’s team uses Fieldwire to track maintenance and problem areas around the building. For example, issues ranging from trip hazards to HVAC calls to damage caused by local skateboarders are all tracked and documented via Fieldwire. This not only allows maintenance to remedy the issues more quickly, it enables them to keep a record of maintenance performed on the building. They are able to identify issues that keep popping up, and take the appropriate steps to remedy them.

Whether a project is in the early stages of construction, nearing completion, or already in the operations phase, Fieldwire’s unique set of tools can come in handy. The Brookfield Place project is proof that having the right tools for the job can make all the difference.

Want to learn more? Watch the entire 30-minute discussion or request a demo of Fieldwire today to learn more about how it can help project owners seamlessly receive completed projects from General Contractors.

This week, we’re really excited to announce our new partnership with Built, one of Australia’s largest and fastest growing private construction groups, to drive productivity across all of their projects. Since being established two decades ago, Built has grown exponentially to become a $1.4 billion, tier-1 contractor. Handling everything from $400+ million construction projects, to high-end retail fit-outs for world-leading luxury brands, and even complex refurbishments of iconic buildings, Built is always looking to innovate and grow.

We’ve been working with them for quite a while — Built started trying and testing multiple platforms two years ago. They choose us for our ability to combine “plan viewing, document sharing, and labor coordination” into one easy-to-use platform. Don't take our word for it; their Managing Director said:

It’s not just about Fieldwire as a single isolated platform; Built also uses our integration with Dropbox to manage all of their plans on projects such as a commercial office tower, Barrack Place, in central Sydney and Parramatta Square, one of Australia’s largest urban regeneration projects.

Our open API and integrations are really important to the partnership, as the Chief Digital Officer of Built describes:

Want to hear more about the partnership? Check out the full press release. Want to work with Fieldwire across your entire organization, or get started on one of your projects? Request a demo today!

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 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 over a dozen 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!