Adopt Digital Drawings to Reduce Re-work
Jim Rogers
Teaching construction professionals to integrate safety, quality, and productivity with over 2 million on-line learners
In the last issue of Thoughts from the Field, I discussed focusing on a single concept to improve the construction industry. I postulated that concentrating efforts towards the elimination of re-work would result in improvements to safety, productivity, and quality. If you missed that discussion, you can read it here.
With the elimination of rework in mind, I want to take the opportunity to revisit a topic that I have been discussing for several years now; the switch to digital drawings. I have covered this topic in many of my LinkedIn Learning courses, even featuring a project that was an early adopter of the all-digital concept in a course called Construction Management: Technology On The Job Site. This project utilized Bluebeam ’s Revu software and equipped the field personnel with iPads to ensure that everyone on the site was working from the proper set of construction drawings. In some respects we have come a long way in the 5 or 6 years since this project was completed, but in others, we are still lagging behind in total adoption.?
Why are Digital Drawings So Important??
Not everyone agrees with me on the adoption of digital drawings, and there are some valid points for paper drawings. 2D renderings (blueprints) can be difficult enough for some people to visualize in the field and process the image into its real world 3D result. Scaling those drawings down to something the size of a phone doesn’t help. I have been there myself, walking a project and trying to make notes on a tiny digital drawing on my phone, with my finger, down a couple levels where there is no cell service or Wi-Fi. The experience was less than optimal and I ended up grabbing the paper drawings that allowed me to see the entire floor plate in one view, and a pencil that allowed me to make as many notes as I desired without fear of running out space.
It was comfortable, it was the way I had walked projects and taken notes for many years. My intent was to simply take the notes, make my observations, and then add them to the digital drawings later when I had a larger screen and a mouse. Ironically, there are several things immediately wrong with that decision. First, I was deliberately committing to doubling up on my work. Which is exactly the way I had always done things, and the way that many (most?) project managers and superintendents continue to do things. We go about our day making notes on paper drawings, in our notebook, on our hands, in our minds; and then at the end of the day we spend another hour of our time translating all these observations into a daily report and maybe adding some markups to the digital drawing. Everything we do in that last part of the day has already been done once in the field, we just failed to capture it properly.
After immediately committing to doubling up on efforts by using the paper drawings that I was so accustomed to, those blueprints began doing what they often do, causing confusion. Some of the openings in the field didn’t match the drawings. There was a wall detail that seemed constructed wrong. And we made some (incorrect) assumptions about the post-tensioned reinforcing because all we had was a structural drawing, and not the approved post-tension shop drawings. As we were trying to reconcile what we were seeing in the field with what the paper drawing was telling us we were supposed to be seeing, someone asked the all to familiar question, “which revision are those drawings?”
That’s not the latest revision.
More wasted time. Back to the phone to get the latest version of the digital drawings. Only I hadn’t synced before descending down into the lower parking levels and the version stored locally on my phone was several weeks old. Not wanting to make the same mistake again, we walked back up the ramps to get a signal and sync the drawings.?
How Does this Story Make the Case for Digital Drawings, and…what does this all have to do with eliminating rework?
This example is an all too familiar scenario in our industry. This kind of confusion and extra effort caused by not having the proper information in the field results in constant re-work. Keep in mind that re-work can take many forms. It may be in the form of doing things twice, as in the case of collecting data all day and then having to spend time transferring all that information into another space. At best, it’s a duplication of efforts. At worst, it can result in poor quality and inaccurate reports as information gets improperly transferred and/or we can’t remember all the details.?
Working from the wrong set of drawings is also one of the biggest causes of re-work due to simply building the wrong thing: putting a sleeve in the wrong place, missing a new detail, misinterpreting something for which an RFI (Request for Information) has already been issued. This classic and all to a familiar scenario results in more work tearing out the incorrectly built feature, designing a fix, getting more materials, and scheduling the work to put it back correctly, all while the clock continues to tick. This isn’t productive, it costs money, quality takes a hit, and potential exposure to hazards goes up because I am doing work that shouldn’t have even needed to be done in the first place.?
Utilizing a shared set of digital drawings that is maintained and kept up to date can help eliminate much of the re-work discussed so far. On the job site featured in my technology course, the project owner mandated the exclusive use of digital drawings in the field. The clause was included in the general contract, and pushed to the sub-contracts. Trade partners were required to have access to the digital drawings in the field, and spotting anyone using paper drawings on the site brought immediate attention. It was a fast track project, utilizing a “big room” concept, with the owner, design team, and trades all working daily to make decisions, updates, and revisions. Drawings were kept up to date in the central command environment, and accessing a current digital drawing was an assurance that you had the correct instructions in the field.?
The communication was also two-way, ensuring that the people in that central command had the latest information in the field. Crews were trained to communicate using the shared digital drawings. If one trade partner submitted an RFI for a detail, it was noted as a markup on the drawings. This ensured that another trade would see the outstanding RFI the moment they looked at the plans, even if the RFI was unanswered or still in process. If field adjustments were made, those notations were immediately added as markups so that the design team could take those adjustments into account in their future detailing. If we walked the site to make inspection notes, those notes were added as a markup layer to the drawings. This insured that the designers and supervisors in the office would not only see them, but that they always knew where to find them, eliminating all the time typically spent endlessly searching for information on a construction project.?
What About the Issues Mentioned Earlier?
In my earlier scenario, I described the issues we had with digital drawings that caused us to revert to the old paper drawings. In order to successfully adopt digital drawings, these challenges must be addressed up front in order to eliminate issues. Not too long ago, some of these issues would have been insurmountable, or at least very expensive to address. Today, we have the tools available to address the challenges, but it requires advanced planning. The project I have been discussing required each crew to be equipped with an iPad. It was mandatory and required in the contracts. This gave each crew a device that was more suited to utilizing the digital drawings than just using their phone. They also addressed things like syncing and data access in their preplanning, and trained the crew leaders to add markups and notes.?
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All of this can be very project specific, but the solutions are readily available. From tablets that are large enough and have a high enough resolution to properly view large format construction drawings, to Wi-Fi access points that are made for construction projects. The solutions are available, you just have to decide which solutions fit your circumstances and then go implement them.?
Additional Information for the Trade Contractors
I see many (maybe even most) general contractors making this move towards digital. One of the bottle necks seems to be trade contractor adoption. I can’t tell you how many projects I see with the general contractor utilizing a digital solution, and then still sending paper RFI’s to every trade, along with paper drawings every time there is a revision. I want to be clear here, turning this information into electronic PDF documents and then emailing them to every trade is not the solution (and I see that, too). It’s not just that we need drawings and documents to go digital, we need the workflows to go digital. Emailing PDF drawings, RFI’s, and revisions is not the digital solution I am advocating here. Doing this still limits the people who have access and it requires them to manually process all this information in the same manner we have always used for paper documents. I am advocating here for the use of a single set of shared digital drawings, and I have demonstrated this concept in several of my LinkedIn Learning courses. Look at the benefits:
First, the general contractor maintains everything! They are already required to do this to maintain the project. Doing it using a shared set of digital drawings that can be accessed by everyone just means that the trade contractor doesn’t have to duplicate the efforts. Just log in and access the project documents to see the latest information. Include layers like RFI’s, inspection notes, and even safety issues, and this shared set of drawings, which have to be referenced by the crews in the field in order to build, become a single source of truth with enough information to avoid doing things more than once.?
As a trade contractor, how many times have your crews built something incorrectly because they didn’t have the correct information in time?
Digital Drawings, utilized with digital workflows and the proper infrastructure can be a huge step towards the elimination of re-work. It is perhaps the single most important step we can take in the construction industry right now. It is also the basis for many of the next steps that we will need to take.
Has your company gone digital? What challenges have you faced? Let me know in the comments below, and please share this article! This is information that is vital to the success of our industry and it needs to be in the hands of as many people as possible. Click “share” to get it out there.?
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2 年Ya lost me at using iPads and Bluebeam. The Bluebeam app for plans is terrible. I can't figure it out, the desktop version is the best thing since sliced bread and the app is the worst thing ever. Ya can't use sets on iPad so why bother. GCs don't bother to learn how to use sets because they don't want to spend time updating in two different places. They just use PlanGrid or Procore. It's a shame because sets is a great feature in Bluebeam desktop but ya can't use it on their iPad app. Bluebeam looses so much revenue do to this incompatibility. Seriously I stopped reading after you mentioned that about iPads. I hope the article doesn't say Hey Bluebeam app can now use sets.
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2 年This is informative sir. With the rise of digitization in all industries, its a welcoming idea to adopt digital drawings. I fear a time shall come when people won't want to read plans on paper.