Clark Construction Group - Washington State University
Clark Construction Group is a respected commercial building and civil construction firm with approximately $5 billion in annual revenue and over a century of experience. In late 2015, they partnered with Washington State University to bring their vision of a new kind of teaching facility to life – the Digital Classroom Building.
Construction began in January 2016, and was completed in 2017. The DCB, a revolutionary structure with a budget of up to $55 million in scale, will be a four-story, 83,000 square foot technological hub for university faculty and students alike to nurture their curriculum using advanced digital teaching methodologies.
The Importance of Task Management
When preparing to get construction underway, Clark Construction Group Project Manager KK Clark realized her team would need to manage their time with efficiency and precision in order to stay on schedule for such a unique project. She turned to Fieldwire to ensure that happened, and the task management software has proven invaluable toward streamlining Clark’s day-to-day operations. Finding an app with task-centric software was important to Clark, as her extensive to-do list and task-driven roadmap was only going to grow, making Fieldwire a good choice to suit her needs. The intuitive nature of Fieldwire is helping Clark’s team hit the ground running with no special training on how to use the app, and shaping the growing success of the DCB project on a daily basis.
“There really is truly no learning curve with Fieldwire,” says KK Clark. “It should be that easy. Has it been that easy in the past? No.”
With building requirements that range from multiple innovative media studios to event venue space, it’s essential that every task is managed properly to reach completion on-time and produce the highest quality product. A project of this scope has to contend with heavy university traffic in addition to the basic snares of any construction site, and this extra layer of considerations is not lost on Clark. With so many moving parts, the project schedule must be flawlessly coordinated and executed. Having construction work disrupt campus operations is simply not an option, and fortunately, Washington State University chose the right people to handle the job.
“The logistics of constructing any large building on an active campus is the hardest part of this kind of project,” says KK Clark. “But it is something we do well at Clark.”
And Clark chose the right tool to help mitigate those logistical issues. Fieldwire enables them to smoothly track issues, organize tasks and resources, and stay in touch with teammates across the job site in a way never before possible.
A Modern Classroom with Tomorrow’s Technology
The Digital Classroom Building is the first of its kind for WSU – a technology-rich campus center that can both meet the rapidly changing nature of technology and accommodate the surge of new students in years to come. The classrooms in the DCB will feature interactive digital displays, including curved projection screens in a 250-seat circular lecture hall designed to invigorate lessons by placing the instructor in the center of the students. The screens will be viewable from any seat, making it ideal for students by boosting their involvement in each class. This unique layout establishes this particular hall as the heart of this new, modern facility.
In addition, the DCB will include a large open space that acts as both event space and a town hall-style venue, as well as a café for students to relax in. There will also be several lounges, work spaces, and studios for the faculty to cultivate lessons and students to access media resources for their studies. Everything about the DCB is dedicated to fostering innovation via digital tools and keeping pace with both a rigorous university curriculum and an evolving technological landscape.
Easy Adoption in the Field
Clark Construction Group has made considerable headway on the project, and Fieldwire has been instrumental in that progress due to its tremendous ease of use. KK Clark’s team was able to dive right into the app, marking up sheets and updating tasks on the fly while out on-site and syncing that data with the rest of the team once reconnecting to the internet. Offline capability allows users to continue working no matter where they are.
“Fieldwire enables our supervisors to stay out in the field, and they don’t need a computer for their work,” says KK Clark. “It’s quick, easy to use, and it is doing what it’s supposed to do.”
User intuitiveness and real-time notifications are the sort of advantages the can help keep Clark’s people steadily rolling through their schedule without a hitch. Fieldwire arranges data alphanumerically, timestamps task updates, labels all key files and sheet versions, saves checklist templates and auto-suggests common attributes, and lets the right people know when and how each task has advanced each day. Project management is no longer hindered by how long it takes to locate trades across a job site or relaying vital information by verbally passing it along. Now it’s as easy as receiving a push notification on your smartphone, so you can confidently keep up-to-date on what your entire team is doing each day on the job. Fieldwire’s goal is to cut the wasted time and disorder out of Clark’s schedule every day, and allow them to focus solely on what they do best: building.
Technology for Today
The Digital Classroom Building hit its planned completion date, and is a prestigious new addition to Washington State University. Clark Construction Group continues to forge ahead with the time-tested quality they’re known for, and Fieldwire has cleared the way of the outdated, time-consuming methods of managing their project. The DCB is just one of the multiple projects that Fieldwire will be supporting for Clark, which will lead to leaner task management throughout the day on each job site. KK Clark and her team are able to swiftly update each other on their progress, share and track any issues that spring up, and collect all pertinent data in one easy-to-use, easy-to-carry tool.
