Success Story
Many companies experience the challenge of having different teams working on the same project while using a variety of tools that may not communicate with each other. Cleveland Electric found that achieving the company’s important goals was made more difficult because of scattered software solutions and workflows and the use of multiple document solutions. As Jason Stewart, Electrical Project Manager, put it, “Document control was a problem. We needed to get everything to one platform in the same location.” The company’s legacy workflow involved keeping job files on inhouse servers. SharePoint, Bluebeam Studio and Microsoft Teams were locations where project information would be held and organized. Along with the spread-out workflows, most communications – internal and external – were by email. GC communications added another layer to that.
Nathan Reinhardt, Electrical Project Group Manager, explained, “We wanted to reel all those options back in and standardize the processes. We needed to get everything in one location.” When Stewart and Reinhardt were ready to seek out that solution, the company’s IT group reached out to Applied Software, its Autodesk technology partner. Cleveland Electric chose to compare Autodesk Build and Procore, testing the limits of both. According to Reinhardt, the company also benefitted from an objective document discovery conducted by Autodesk. Cleveland Electric has a significant building information modeling (BIM) group and has been using Autodesk Revit for about twelve years. So, during the vetting process, Stewart focused on what would work best for the design team, while being something everyone in the company could use. “We wanted something that would be adoptable, Reinhardt explained, “something that would stick.”
Reinhardt explained, “Build was the right product that did everything we needed it to do. We felt most confident that it would be useable and adoptable by our users.” The fact that Build is cloud-based also solved the issue of dispersed project files. Stewart, who Reinhardt described as the company’s “Build champion,” worked with all the company’s managers in implementing Build on all new projects. In addition, a few mid-stream projects were converted on a gradual basis. Reinhardt referred to Stewart as the company’s “subject matter expert,” because he figures things out and gives the end users one-on-one assistance. The company favors a slow and steady implementation process as the best approach to success.
Five hundred of Cleveland Electric’s approximately 1,000 field personnel use technology. They, along with about 100 office workers, are now able to work together and communicate on their Build cloud-based projects without workarounds, enabling the company to continue serving customers with a high level of quality, safety and integrity.
With the partnership of Autodesk Solution Provider Applied Software, Cleveland Electric found Autodesk Build to be adoptable and usable in standardizing processes and meeting the company’s project document management needs.
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Productivity Tracking with Assemble
Construction is a difficult game,” Hunt said. “There are a lot of things that make our job difficult. Working with our own data shouldn’t be one of them.” Dee Cramer has become one of the largest heating, ventilating, and air conditioning companies in the country. With productivity tracking in mind, what the company really needed was a live feed from the project’s Autodesk Revit model. If a user could change the status of the model’s components to live feed, Hunt knew the company could track the workflow, including hours, margin and profitability. Hunt said another motivation for making a change came from realizing the industry is moving toward designers being more willing to share their design content in native Revit with contractors before projects are awarded – in the pre-bid stage.
Progressing Forward with Vault
The company’s owner is a proponent of using up-to-date software to keep the company progressing forward and found that the Autodesk trend toward doing that aligned better with Sigma Thermal goals, particularly in the use of Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk AutoCAD Electrical, AutoCAD P&ID, and Autodesk Inventor. Until 2016, Sigma Thermal was using Synergis Adept. Users found that the Autodesk Inventor integration was slow when using Adept, especially checking larger drawings in and out. Efficiency was suffering. In addition, because Sigma Thermal is ISO9000 certified, everyone in the company – not just IT personnel, designers and engineering – needed access to project files, corporate information, procedures and the employee handbook.
Revit Implementation to Stay Competitive
A few years ago, Limbach leadership began seeing an increasing demand for Revit-only projects on the East Coast of the US and the Midwest. National VDC Manager Mark Lamberson became aware of customer comments like, "Why aren’t you in Revit yet?" “We were a leading firm,” he said, “but were not the preferred company because of something as simple as that in some instances.” That spawned the decision to support the switch to Autodesk Revit and create a team to implement it. “We had to do it.” People with 30 years of AutoCAD experience had to completely change the way they did things. The company took the transition slowly, with some branches transitioning earlier than others. Lamberson monitored how groups were doing in their adoption. When Limbach began its Revit implementation, it was involved in mega-projects around the country, so the company wasn’t able to adopt Revit completely on a massive project. Implementation began in bits and pieces, and large jobs lagged behind.
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