Coordinating the organization of this paper takes time-consuming effort from a team that is already short on time. Some construction teams are outsourcing this mundane task and reaping the productivity benefits.

The project manager, Gary Cummins, at one such company, John Hyland Construction Company, sat down with the ARC® team to share insights on how JHC outsourced information management to improve the way they communicate.

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Challenge: Siloed Information and a Lack of Transparency

JHC is a construction management company for public and private clients, with recent projects including a student housing building, a community hospital and a public library. Cummins has 40 years of experience optimizing workflows for all phases of the construction process, and has been at JHC for a little over a year. Even before he joined JHC, he was recommending the ARC mobile solutions to project managers and project owners.

Cummins was seeking a solution that would help him and his colleagues ensure accurate communication as construction plans changed. Cummins described a school construction project which involved three versions of the same drawings. “We had two or three versions of the same drawings,” he said. “We needed to make sure that any variance from one version to the other could be seen.”

The lack of transparency into drawing variances would have serious implications for the process of requesting bids. For example, when Cummins bid out his drawings, any differences between plans had to be visible. Moreover, he needed unlimited capacity to share the huge files that held these plans.

The variations in drawings also complicated the change order process. Since subcontracts were based on the 95% bid set, there was confusion when several changes had to be made in the 100% permit set. Without a solution, this challenge would lead to costly project delays.

Cummins also told us of the communication challenges construction teams face when plan changes aren’t transparent. Cummins said, “The struggle was related to hyperlinking to RFIs and ASIs so there is one place where the whole OAC team can see and look at the same thing. Everyone thinks they have the same thing and they might not. It’s redundancy at best or it’s inconsistency at worst.”

During construction projects, hyperlinking is efficient, Cummins says. “This particular project I’m on now has a separate 8.5” x 11” book of details. To be sorting through big, bulky drawings and switching to the separate book is frustrating and time-consuming, but when you can click on the hyperlink and see the section view or detail page it really speeds up research.”

With siloed information and a lack of transparency, contractors risk cost overruns, project delays and time-consuming reworks.

Solution: Centralized Communication for Every Phase of the Project Lifecycle

ARC Projects was built to solve problems like Cummins’s. The solutions to his problems had far-reaching effects, but they were quite simple.

1. ARC Projects enabled an overlay process that allowed JHC to publish multiple versions of the same drawings in one viewable overlay.
2. Hyperlinking between sections of construction drawings, construction details, RFIs and ASIs gave team members the ability to quickly navigate project documents.
3. Unlimited file sizes eliminated clunky file sharing processes for internal and external team members and stakeholders.
4. Digital drawings combined with hyperlinking made meetings and collaboration more productive.
5. Invite tracking allowed project managers to share and control access for anyone involved with the project.

Results: Readily Accessible Information Throughout the Construction Lifecycle

Simplified bidding process, OAC meetings and file sharing

One of the challenges JHC faced was maintaining transparency between multiple plan versions during the bid process. Subcontracts were based on the 95% bid set, but several changes were made in the 100% permit set. The overlay process created by ARC Projects enabled JHC to publish a set that clearly showed changes between versions. This simplified the change order process because every subcontractor could quickly see drawing variations.

ARC Projects also ensured that every subcontractor was bidding on the same set of documents.

“We use ARC Projects for pre-construction,” says Cummins, “when distributing plans and documents to subcontractors and requesting bids from them. I find that very helpful.”

Similarly, during OAC team meetings, communication was vastly improved. Current plans, RFIs and ASIs were quickly shareable and accessible to everyone. The capability to send unlimited file sizes also meant JHC didn’t have to use FTP sites or other inconvenient file sharing methods.

Easy access to drawing sections and construction details

During a project, team members and stakeholders didn’t have to sort through bulky drawings. The ability to quickly jump to linked sections and details in a digital drawing improved productivity for JHC and their subcontractors.

“Our project engineers, foreman and subcontractors love having access to updated, hyperlinked drawings in the field. It saves time and frustration compared to taking several pages with you, just to find that you needed one more print or that it was the old version.”

“Day to day, being able to simply jump to a section view or to details, saves time and frustration,” Cummins says.

Every drawing and detail was accessible for JHC and other stakeholders with the ability to send and track invites within ARC Projects.

“ARC Projects is the way to do it. It’s still a paper world, full of redundancy and outdated information. I’d like to get rid of it, but I think it’ll be a while before we are paperless. It makes sense to have a high level of transparency for the whole team, so we can look at the same thing and view updates together. Strong communication enables stakeholders to look at the correct documents. There can be so much confusion with different version of documents–which ARC Projects solves.”

“I look forward to the paperless day, when the construction phase is paperless—starting from the building department and inspectors, to close-out documents.”

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Every company and project is a little bit different. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all document management solution for construction companies. ARC Projects is built to fit within existing workflows.
Request a demo to see how ARC Projects can help transform your business.

With business booming, mostly in the residential sector, their Building Information Modeling (BIM) department is very active turning out renderings of designs that allow clients to visualize what their project will actually look like before it’s built.

In fact, due to all that rendering activity, several months ago the in-house BIM team needed an outside resource to help them with the overflow work. But, they didn’t have one. Little did they know that the outside resource they were looking for was already on the inside.

Rendering Rescuers

The ARC service center in nearby King of Prussia has been providing BartonPartners with Managed Print Services, supplying printers and plotters as well as paper, ink, and service, since March of this year. When Regional Account Manager Steve Martin mentioned that ARC had its own BIM department — covering everything from BIM services to construction simulation and photorealistic renderings — BartonPartners took notice.

After viewing some samples and receiving a quote on a project, they took ARC on as a rendering partner.

Since May, ARC has completed several jobs for them. They did a rendering for a pool and social deck on the roof of an apartment building in a historic neighborhood in North Philadelphia.

“We sent them loose sketches of our initial proposed design as a digital file,” recounted Steve Bickel, Director of Architectural Design at BartonPartners. “They did a great job with the rendering, which helped us sell the ideas and concepts to the client.”

Other assignments followed, including one for Soko Lofts, an apartment complex in the South Kensington section of Philadelphia, with ground level parking garages and rooftop areas.

“I enjoy working with ARC immensely,” added Bickel. “Their process mirrors our internal one and that makes for a very smooth transition.”

Good Work Starts with Teamwork

Not only is BartonPartners happy with the work ARC has done, they’re impressed with their ability to produce it quickly.

“Kudos go out to Darren Boihem and his 3D team that specializes in renderings and animations,” noted Account Manager Martin, referring to ARC’s Director of Technology, BIM & Rendering Services. “They do this day in and day out and they’re extremely efficient.”

In addition to quality and speed, the architectural firm is quite taken with how ARC is able to handle the inevitable client changes.

“They’re very responsive and flexible,” said Matthew Henigan, Project Manager at BartonPartners. “They take feedback and implement it easily with the end result being a totally fluid process.”

So, when Benjamin Woo Architects needed design services help with Park Lane Ala Moana, a large condominium development in Honolulu, the firm tapped its longtime vendor ARC for the work. Since the Honolulu, HI architecture firm’s start in 2000, ARC had provided it with large format printing services, and the two companies already had a good work relationship.

In early 2014, after Benjamin Woo Architects (BWA) won a part of the $1B Park Lane Ala Moana luxury residential development, the firm’s employees quickly found the job was stretching the limits of their capabilities. Soon after starting their work on Park Lane, it was clear to the firm’s 14 employees that they would need outside help.

“We got the project going and it was a bit out of hand for us,” said Brandon Fujimura, Environmental Planner/Designer/BIM & IT Manager for Benjamin Woo Architects. “Our team for the Park Lane project was five people, and we needed 10 people on it.”

The firm started to investigate outsourcing BIM work on the project, according to company owner Benjamin Woo, who initially considered foreign firms due in part to their proximity, rather than a US firm. “We looked at companies in Asia, and then we learned ARC also provided that work.” Woo said.

Woo also learned that ARC could do outsourced CAD and BIM. In February 2014, BWA arranged a meeting to discuss outsourcing its Park Lane BIM work to ARC.

The Park Lane project is complex, and required expert professional help, so BWA leaders were cautious about who they might hire for any outsourced work. Park Lane Ala Moana is a group of residential buildings being constructed next to a commercial area, and the project included two drawing phases: construction of the commercial area, and the residential construction. In gauging ARC’s ability to deliver quality BIM work on the project, BWA gave ARC a small exercise to demonstrate its BIM skills. The ARC BIM team successfully completed the test on time and on budget.

“We were very pleased with their performance [on the test],” Woo said, adding that the longstanding connection between the two firms helped make the transition to this new collaboration effective. “Our group has a very good relationship with ARC. The relationship is mutually respectful.”

BWA had planned on doing the project in AutoCAD ®, but the firm was working with a design architect that was working in Revit™. Though some of BWA’s employees were still green in using Revit™, with only a couple of them being proficient in the software, they took on the challenge of learning more.

“We went for it, figuring it could be a good way to get everyone fluent in Revit™,” Fujimura said. “It was a great help that ARC and its BIM staff knew the language of architecture.”

In order to smooth the collaboration between the companies, ARC personalized its services to ease communications. The vendor devised a method of color-coding corrections and markups that delineated between instructions and annotations.

“It made that process go very fast, early on,” Fujimura said.

The time zone difference between the architecture firm and ARC’s team of 60 BIM experts benefited BWA, creating a nonstop work day.

“It allowed us to work on a 24-hour-a-day schedule; we would get the models back at about 9 a.m. So, the time difference worked well,” Woo said.

ARC’s BIM support services has enabled Benjamin Woo Architects to land more complex projects, Woo said. Currently, ARC is helping the company with a second project.

“We feel like ARC was part of the Park Lane design team. It also gave the developer a sense that our team was capable of doing the project,” Woo said. “I don’t think we would have been able to do this project without ARC’s help.”

Ironically, this firm, known for its attention to detail, found itself bogged down in the details of what to do with the more than 1500 boxes of blueprints, mechanical drawings, and every-thing in between being kept in a document storage facility. A plan to remove them and turn them into digital files was a top priority for a while, but it never got off the ground.

“We had been considering bringing a scanning program into the office for quite some time,” said IT Manager Josh Rosenbaum. “However, the human power it would take to do it all was cost prohibitive.”

Equally cost prohibitive were the fees being charged by the storage facility, which ranged from the monthly fee and box-removal fee to the transportation fee and box-pulling fee.

A Voice in the Digital File Wilderness

At the end of 2013, Rosenbaum got a call from Dave Clark, Account Manager at ARC, regarding printing services, which ARC has been handling for FFA for the past few years. During the conversation, Clark mentioned that they also offered a cloud-based Archiving solution.

The timing was impeccable.

Soon after, Clark and Aaron Storck, ARC’s Regional Technology Services Consultant, arrived to do a presentation for Rosenbaum and FFA Principal Troy Ainsworth.

“We explained that we could remove, scan, digitize, and host the documents at approximately the same price they would be paying the storage facility over the next seven years,” recalled Storck. “And after five years, their only expense would be a monthly hosting and maintenance fee.”

A skeptical Ainsworth asked, “What’s the catch?”

A straight-faced Storck replied, “There is no catch.”

Knowledgeable and Flexible

Not only are ARC professionals well versed in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, they also have extensive experience in conforming — the process of updating past plans when discrepancies between the design and construction phases are discovered. Conforming gives architects the most current documents for their files. And FFA had a ton of plan sets that needed conforming.

“We had hired interns to handle the job, but ARC was able to do it much faster,” said Rosenbaum. “And that translated to additional savings.”

Flexibility is also a big part of the ARC package.

To wit, the storage facility was charging an exorbitant fee for FFA to remove everything and close out their account. Not only did ARC pay this fee, but it provided FFA with the opportunity to finance the cost at very agreeable terms.

“In short, they got a flashlight and showed us the way out of a bad situation,” summed up Rosenbaum, FFA’s supremely appreciative IT manager.

Countless jobs have generated an abundance of documents over the decades that have been archived with brick and mortar storage companies. While this system has served them well, issues recently began cropping up. Along with a huge time lag between requesting documents from vendors and receiving them, there was a huge price tag.

With new technologies available, the firm realized that switching to digital archiving was inevitable. Once the decision was made, the only question remaining was which solution to choose.

JCJ went with ARC Archives. They were drawn to its comprehensive, secure, and easy-to-use system for immediate access to the most up-to-date project information. Plus, as document needs grow, ARC’s expandable, cloud-based platform would provide seamless access to critical data from multiple points and various devices.

The Perfect Partnership 

One of the most important reasons they selected ARC, however, was not related to technology but to domain expertise.

“ARC’s knowledge of the architecture world was very important to us because we were able to leverage their understanding of best practices within the industry,” recalled John Taylor, JCJ Senior Associate and Controller.

Since AIM was implemented, JCJ has seen clear differences in the way they do business, everything from increased productivity to efficient collaboration. And with features such as in-document, Google-like search and most current document versioning, information is always accurate and easy to find.

Attention to detail is another reason JCJ found ARC to be the perfect partner.

“They arranged for our records to be transported to their scanning location and allowed us to visit on a regular basis to ensure that the records were being transitioned correctly,” added Taylor.

Economical and Ecological 

The enormous financial benefits associated with ARC Archives have not been lost on JCJ. Over the next five years they expect to save about 30% on archiving costs, courtesy of decreased spending on paper, supplies, and inks, as well as maintenance on printers and copiers. And less paper waste means lower recycling and disposal fees.

Then there’s the more than 12,000 cubic feet of JCJ documents no longer being stored.

“The fact that a million pages are now being recycled where they can be used for other purposes is very satisfying,” said Ann Iseley, JCJ Principal and CFO.

Clearly, going the digital archiving route has had a profound effect on JCJ.

“ARC has given us a tool that hasn’t changed who we are at the core as a company,” explained Julia Hinchliffe, JCJ Records Manager. “What it has done is given us a tool to help us improve our operations — and that makes us a better, sustainable company.”