Like the rest of the world, the AEC industry is experiencing exciting disruptions at the hand of technology. Replacing manual data collection and reporting processes, new SaaS technologies offer better solutions to many industry challenges. Here are four ways 4tell™’s iPlan™ AEC technology can streamline some of your most labor-intensive tasks:
Resource Planning in Real Time
The routine planning and staff allocation can be a time-consuming and tedious process. Often performed manually, it can also deliver inaccurate results due to human error and changing project needs. But AEC firms are turning to automated software to address their needs: nearly 70% of AEC firms use enterprise resource planning to help manage workflow. New AEC technology like iPlan™ helps to ease the pain and errors of manual planning. It creates automated matches between project expertise, timeline needs and your staff’s skills and availability. The software’s “smart matching” allows it to automatically assign appropriate staff based on your project’s real-time needs.
QA / QC
Quality assurance and quality control—a critical yet often inaccurate component of any AEC project. New AEC technology helps to lighten the load of the QA/QC process and deliver better accuracy along the way.
You can import project data within a database tabular format (that operates like an Excel spreadsheet). In this tabulated format, data becomes much easier to read. Gaps in data are easier to identify as well as data clashes. (Certain systems offer checks and balances to help you see if the data makes sense in connection to the broader system.) iPlan™ offers smart, real-time notification features that automatically prompt assessors to provide extra data points if needed. It also places safety stops that restrict an assessor from moving to the next step if there’s missing or incorrectly entered data, eliminating the need for repeat field visits.
Report Deliverables
Reporting is often another laborious component in the data collection and deliverable process. Traditionally, the reporting process could span several days. This meant assessors had to go back to the office, open a template and manually enter their data. Besides being painstaking and slow, the manual entry function of the old process also meant a high potential for human error. Thanks to new AEC technology, data collection and reporting has become a streamlined process. They need little more than the click of a few buttons to produce a shareable report.
Project Expedition
Related to resource planning, coordinating the smooth implementation and crossover of contractors can be a complicated and timely process. The trades often work in sequential fashion with one job only able to begin once another is complete. iPlan™ can help to simplify this process by mapping out the timeline necessary for each trade to perform their job on a task-per-task basis. This clear mapping is especially helpful in anticipating potential backlogging caused by one contractor to another. It also helps you to divide your resources accordingly.
The Convenience of AEC Technology
This new AEC technology is creating exciting solutions for many of the industry’s daily challenges. It disrupts traditional processes with new, smarter and automated approaches to building and design.
Photo: Patrick Thomas/Shutterstock, ifong/Shutterstock
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