Explore the critical issue of mental health in the Australian construction industry. Discover the staggering costs, both human and financial, and learn about initiatives and strategies aimed at supporting the mental wellbeing of workers. From training programs to workplace culture, find out how the industry is coming together to create safer, more resilient environments.
Discover the answers to your most asked questions about Bluebeam. Unlock insights into Bluebeam's innovative solutions bridging office-field communication in construction projects. Experience the power of Bluebeam Studio and Cloud for heightened collaboration and convenient document management on-the-fly.
What is Bluebeam used for?
Bluebeam develops construction software solutions that help architects, engineers, and builders to communicate better between the office and the field. Any workflows that would have traditionally been completed on paper like quantity take-offs and design reviews, can now all be done digitally in Bluebeam.
What is Bluebeam Studio?
Bluebeam Studio is a collaborative workspace that’s built into Revu, so, you can have all your project information there like your drawings. You can even have other Excel files, and other formatted software saved into there. Or you can also go to Studio Sessions, which is a PDF collaboration space, where you can invite other people to do live markups with one another and then effectively report on this. So, it is a live collaborative space.
What is Bluebeam Cloud?
Bluebeam Cloud is a cloud-based web and mobile platform that enables users to use the documents they have in Revu on the go. While you’re onsite, you can post RFIs, manage documents, and complete defect inspections.
Can Bluebeam add up measurements?
Definitely. First, you’re going to make sure your drawing sheets are calibrated so you have the right scale involved. From there, we’ve got a whole range of tools you can use. We have area, polylength, you can do volume, you can do counts and so forth. But everything on the PDF is a 2-in-1 source of information, it’s in the markup list, and that will add up on the fly.
As an extra little bonus, you can create a legend on the drawing sheet of specific markups or measurements, and it’ll add them up on the fly as you do it live, so that’s a nice little workflow too.
Can Bluebeam work on a Mac?
Bluebeam Cloud is a web-based solution so it’s usable on any web browser, on PC or Mac. For iPad users, we also have Revu for iPad. And they all collaborate with Studio Sessions.
Can Bluebeam open DWG files?
What Bluebeam has is an add-in for AutoCAD. And essentially what we’re doing is converting to a PDF. So, convert the DWG file to the PDF, which then can be used for markup and collaboration.
Who owns Bluebeam?
Bluebeam was founded in 2002, and in 2014 we joined the Nemetschek Group of brands, which develops software solutions for the entire AECO lifecycle.
Bonus Fact! Did you know that Bluebeam’s first solution, “Pushbutton PDF” was originally designed by engineers from NASA, who were really frustrated with the PDF solution they were using at the time?
Does Bluebeam use OCR?
Yes. OCR is optical character recognition and that’s where the software will convert text that isn’t a vector or real text inside the PDF, it’s an image of text or numbers, into actual text and numbers that can be searched. Which is a really powerful workflow for anyone doing quantity take-offs or searching for particular information inside a PDF.
Where is Bluebeam located?
Bluebeam’s head office is in Pasadena, California. And we’ve got teams all over the United States, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and here in Australia.
Is there a free version of Bluebeam?
There is a 30-day free trial and it’s important to note that collaboration is part of the DNA of Bluebeam. Anyone with a licence can invite a guest collaborator to join in on the Studio Sessions.
Is Bluebeam a one-time purchase?
There are three Bluebeam subscription plans, and you can mix and match them – based on different roles in your business. They’re all billed per user, and they’re billed annually. And with that subscription you also get access to Bluebeam University, tech support and unlimited secure storage.
A pioneering new initiative is helping architecture, engineering, and construction professionals get the very best value from their digital editing tools.
A pioneering new initiative is helping architecture, engineering, and construction professionals get the very best value from their digital editing tools.
Cloud-based automation tools have become essential for architects, engineers and civil construction planners, but many firms aren’t utilising them to their full potential because their employees simply aren’t aware of all the features they offer.
The reduction in administration and enhanced data analytics made possible by minimising manual processes can transform operational efficiency, but often there’s even more functionality that could be unlocked.
Such missed opportunities can be costly, hindering growth, innovation and ultimately profit. But one company has found an ingenious way to address the issue through a strategy of ‘knowledge sharing.’
Construction software leader Bluebeam began the initiative two years ago and has seen spectacular results. It involves workflow-specific educational sessions that help teams gain even more value to drive better results.
Additional customer support
“They’ve been a great chance to showcase aspects of our digital editing tools and explain how they could do even more to help large-scale businesses,” said Shanoc Halliday, Bluebeam’s Enterprise Customer Success Manager.
“It’s not about giving them the hard sell as they already subscribe and receive free Bluebeam University training. It’s about additional support for those larger businesses with unique requirements to open their eyes to possibilities. After all, if you don’t know about something, you’re not even aware you’re missing out!”
Bluebeam has been at the forefront of the digitalisation of the construction sector for more than 20 years. It’s currently used by more than 2.5 million people in 160 countries.
Its collaborative end-to-end project solution platform Revu allows multiple stakeholders in different locations to simultaneously review and amend PDFs with searchable mark-ups through the whole process of design, build and handover. They could include anything from a builder’s site plan analysis or a library of concrete mixes to architectural diagrams of office furniture placement or drainage plans for a new highway.
The concept of knowledge sharing was born out of Bluebeam’s Australian operation when it discovered some industry-leading organisations weren’t utilising the software to its full potential.
“A common phrase we hear is ‘We’re only using 40 or 50 percent of the software’ so it’s wonderful for us to be able to walk them through functions that’ll make their jobs that much easier,” said Halliday.
The team set out to partner with customers to help them identify and address knowledge gaps with a customised educational program.
Improving customer experience
A series of 30-minute product awareness meetings on key topics were delivered, each carefully curated for different audiences. Each session typically attracts an average of 150 employees, with hundreds more viewing them afterwards. And demand is growing.
For Aurecon engineer Abdul Rehman Khan, the bite-sized knowledge shares helped improve the efficiency in his day-to-day work.
“The sessions ranged from intermediate to advanced levels, with very useful work hacks using Bluebeam tools that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise,” he said.
It’s a sentiment shared by Ryan Lenihan, Digital Delivery Technical Director at Jacobs.
“Bluebeam’s expertise, dedication, and enthusiasm were consistent throughout, and the knowledge shares have been invaluable for our teams.”
Some groups prefer highly-detailed technical information, while others look for more of an overview.
“They really want to get the most out of their technology investment to boost their competitive advantage,” Halliday said. “Knowledge sharing is all about improving their experiences, so we’re guided entirely by individual needs.”
Feedback is gathered so the content can be finessed to make it as useful as possible. The response has been so positive that Bluebeam is rolling out the scheme to applicable customers globally.
“There’s also scope for expanding it into in-person, upskilling workshops,” said Bluebeam Technical Sales Engineer Yashar Rahmati. “Sharing our passion for knowledge is something we really enjoy because we see every week what a difference it makes. I love it when I hear someone say ‘Wow, I never knew I could do that!’ It also helps us as we can only be successful if our clients are successful.”
This article was originally published on: Create Digital
Stacey, the ‘Bluebeam Guru’ Revolutionising Drafting at Inertia
Imagine pointing to an entire folder and subfolders of drawings and bringing the section cuts, elevations and plan notes to life (from 2021)
Illustrated by Rae Scarfó
One of the most challenging objectives when transitioning from paper documents to digital is overcoming the comfort we developed flipping through a set of physical drawings. There’s just something intuitive about keeping a finger on the plan sheet while you quickly jump back and forth looking at the sections or detail sheets.
After all, our fingers have been saving pages since we were first introduced to coloring books as children. It can also be difficult to navigate through digital plan sets if they are not created properly.
In addition to using AutoMark to update digital page labels, possibly the most powerful tool to ease document navigation is Batch Hyperlink in Bluebeam Revu. I’m always excited to show this to experienced users who don’t know this tool exists. To be fair, it is only available in the Extreme version of Bluebeam Revu. If you have Revu Extreme and don’t know about Batch Hyperlink, get ready for an eye opener!
So, what is Batch Hyperlink and what does it do? Imagine pointing to an entire folder and subfolders of drawings and bringing the section cuts, elevations and plan notes to life. When you’re looking at a plan and want to look at a section cut on a different sheet, you simply click on it and you’re there.
You can use the Previous View Button to quickly jump back to the plan sheet.
You don’t even have to place your finger on those pages. Remember those times you thought, “If I only had a few more fingers?”
As a bonus, if your cover sheet has a Sheet Index, you’ll notice that it has come alive with links to every page in the set.
If you work with small-format fabrication drawings where the drawing number is actually the piece mark number, you could also use Batch Hyperlink. In the case of steel fabrication you might have 11×17 drawings with a mark number and bill of materials.
All these assembly mark numbers are then referenced on an erection plan or elevation. Revu will find those mark numbers as if they are section cuts and connect each piece on the plan to the sheet with the fabrication drawing.
As with every tool in Bluebeam Revu, there are several creative ways to use Batch Hyperlink.
Troy DeGroot
Troy DeGroot is a Bluebeam certified consultant, Bluebeam certified instructor and implementation specialist. Troy works with project managers, BIM/VDC managers and CEO/CIOs to increase productivity, predictability and maximize software adoption.
Here are 11 Revu tools to ease the punch walk process.
The formally trained structural drafter, AutoCAD, Revit and BIM whiz—and overall experienced industry veteran—sits at the intersection of innovative construction technology and customer adoption and success
Shanoc Halliday is a rarity in the construction technology industry.
Most technology companies are loaded with software engineers to build the actual tools, marketers to generate awareness and demand and salespeople to get them into customers’ hands.
Halliday serves in none of these roles. He doesn’t write software code or have professional experience in marketing or sales. Yet his position is critical in today’s construction industry, where implementing and using digital tools has become essential.
Halliday acts as a pivotal translator and subject matter expert between the people who build construction technology and those who use it for their work. Before working at Bluebeam as an enterprise customer success manager (CSM), Halliday spent nearly 20 years in various roles in the engineering and construction industry as a structural draftsperson. He used this time learning and applying nascent technologies, starting on the drawing board and progressing to managing building information modeling (BIM) in projects ranging from residential to large shopping centers and office towers.
These days, Halliday is part of Bluebeam’s Customer Success team, serving the Asia-Pacific region, tapping into those decades of experience as he helps current industry customers discover, improve and optimize their use of the company’s suite of tools to make their projects more efficient.
“What keeps me excited is the customer feedback and knowing that you’re making a difference in their day,” Halliday said.
Analytical upbringing
Now living in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, Australia, about 43 km (24 miles) east of Melbourne, Halliday works from a home studio in the back garden he built himself. Thousands of people worldwide have been invited to visit his studio via web meetings. “When I am part of a web meeting, it is an opportunity to bring people into my ‘virtual’ home. I have my tiki mugs, art and plants in the background, so it feels like my guests have been invited over in person.”
Halliday’s first entry into his computer aided design (CAD) career was with a local sheet metal company. Starting on the shop floor with laser cutters and punch presses, Halliday saw it as a chance to stay employed while further educating himself in mechanical engineering and CAD.
Halliday worked at a few different sheet metal companies, ultimately moving from the factory floor to the office using CAD/CAM software. Then he did a stint in a precast concrete detailing company. However, his big career change happened when he applied to work in Melbourne, Victoria, at a structural engineering firm. “It was interesting going from a sheet metal company to modular and precast and then to engineering,” he said. “At each step, I was able to take my experience and apply it to the new job. I know it’s not the normal career steps, but that was my journey.”
While at the engineering firm, Halliday was given his first exposure to 3D modelling, a then-emerging technology in the construction industry called Revit, known as a building information model (BIM). “I understood very quickly that Revit would be no walk in the park,” Halliday said. “Unlike AutoCAD, which is a blank space and users add content, Revit is a database that gets manipulated to present as drawings.” So Halliday set his employment sights on a company that had already begun its BIM journey.
Halliday started working at Robert Bird Group in 2008, where he spent almost five years building his craft and getting promoted to senior structural draftsperson. He managed the drafting for big construction projects throughout Melbourne, most notably the Melbourne Emporium luxury shopping complex.
Halliday left Robert Bird to become a drafting team leader at Arcadis. Again working primarily on large construction projects, including Eastland Shopping Centre, a three-year project covering 5.67 hectares (14 acres) of land. “Eastland was the biggest project I have ever worked on in sheer size and staff geolocations,” Halliday said.
This is also when Halliday first discovered Bluebeam, but only using it as a basic drawing markup tool. “To be perfectly honest, I was a real hack at first,” he said. “I was a beginner at best. I remember accidentally opening the Markup list and being overwhelmed.”
Halliday had intentions of taking his BIM knowledge further to work for an engineering company that specifically wanted to employ a BIM manager. Instead, a friend convinced Halliday to work for A2K, a construction industry software reseller and trainer, to help other companies develop BIM standards. He took the job, spending the next five years travelling across Australia and Asia, training architectural and engineering consultants on construction industry technology and discovering a new passion for educating others.
While at the reseller, Halliday became a Certified Bluebeam Instructor (BCI), an experience that ultimately opened his mind to the incredible capabilities of the software. “I had always thought the PDF and Revu were simple,” Halliday said. “But I came out of the course with my mind blown,” he added, specifically when he discovered the power of Bluebeam’s real-time collaboration tool, Studio Sessions.
Building customer relationships
Halliday started at Bluebeam in April 2021 as a technical sales engineer (TSE), working with customers throughout the Asia-Pacific region to get the most out of Bluebeam’s software. More recently, in August 2022, Halliday was promoted to enterprise customer success manager (CSM)—a role he said perfectly combines his deep construction technology experience with his passion for sharing knowledge.
Halliday now spends most of his days working on expanding customers’ awareness of what Bluebeam can do to make their jobs and lives easier. As the capabilities of Bluebeam continue to grow, Halliday and the rest of the CSM team work directly with clients to understand their awareness of Bluebeam’s functionality and workflows and opportunities where they can get more from the software.
”I start clients with Tool Chests, Layers, Markup Lists with Status options, then move them to Studio Session for collaboration,” Halliday said. “This enables data collection for the design and construction review. Clients can then create a PDF report or push data into PowerBI for a historical and accountability dashboard.”
Halliday’s industry experience, ability to learn and understand the relationship between various construction workflows—not to mention his personality—have made him a special contributor at Bluebeam. “Shanoc’s passion for this industry and creating processes and standards don’t seem to come with an off switch,” said Andrew Gaer, Bluebeam’s director of customer success management. “He is always on.”
In addition to being a superstar in helping customers understand inventive ways to use Bluebeam, Gaer said Halliday is invaluable as an educator to his internal colleagues. “In addition to working directly with customers on their specific workflows, he has created a series of Knowledge Shares to show people what they can accomplish with the right application of available tools. Internally, he’s organized regular Tech Corner sessions to bring together all subject matter experts to share ideas, concepts and discoveries.”
Working at Bluebeam has allowed Halliday to tap into his natural proclivity to help people and build relationships while drawing from his acumen in structural drafting and construction technology. One of Halliday’s favorite aspects of being a CSM is hearing what everyone is doing and gleaning from their best practices. “I’ve got this great opportunity to see how a whole range of people are using software and pulling that source of information together to improve existing or create new workflows,” he said. “With the creation of Bluebeam’s new CSM team, I get to use my acquired knowledge to improve client and end-user experience. I can’t think of a better job.”
Don Jacob, Bluebeam’s co-founder, reflects on the lessons learned from starting a scrappy company in a garage in 2002 that has grown into a global enterprise helping construction industry customers all over the world work more efficiently
In 2022, Bluebeam celebrated its 20th anniversary. As one of the company’s founding team members, I wanted to use the occasion to reflect on this incredible journey.
It’s profound to experience growing a company from inception, with a handful of people passionate about software, to close to some 400 employees all across the globe today. The memories and milestones along the way have made for an unforgettable journey.
I wanted to briefly share some of the lessons from the early days that have formed the backbone of what has made Bluebeam such a great company, serving millions of customers in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry across the globe.
Lesson #1: Power of Teaming
Like many technology companies, Bluebeam was founded in a garage/warehouse in 2002, when the AEC industry was in a much different place. In fact, Bluebeam started in a completely different industry, manufacturing and aerospace design. Eventually, we realized there was a much bigger and broader need in the AEC industry.
As a small company, everyone must be involved in all aspects of the business, doing whatever it takes to complete software releases on time, making a sale and doing whatever else is needed to keep the doors open and bills paid for another month. In these times bonds are formed and the DNA of a company is made.
We all worked together, regardless of title, to achieve the company’s goals. Those moments of making the big decisions as a company raised us to the next level. We spent more time together in those early years than we did with our families. I sometimes even joke that Bluebeam was my first child.
I think of the time when, after going to tradeshows over and over with the same small pop-up display, we looked like all the other vendors with their own tiny displays. So we thought, ‘We’re going to go big,’ so we made the commitment to get a 40-foot by 40-foot custom-designed booth. This way we could be out there with the big boys.
It’s amazing in hindsight that this seemingly minor marketing decision drove so much business for the company.
This “going big” mentality in our marketing forced us to live up to the hype with our software. So, at the AIA Miami show in 2010, we showed up with an announcement about something new and big: Bluebeam Studio.
Studio transformed us as a company. It was our first entry into cloud computing, and it enabled a whole new form of collaboration in the industry. It also shaped Bluebeam for many years to come; to this day, Studio remains an essential part of construction projects worldwide.
Another highlight from those days came with every new major release as the engineers would demo the features. I remember these as electric, unifying moments. The meetings were charged with energy; we were finally unveiling to the company the latest and greatest of our products. These events generated great excitement, seeing what shortly would be in the hands of our customers.
These examples highlight the close collaboration, partnership, excitement and support for each other in the early era of Bluebeam—coming together to support functions. It didn’t matter who was doing what; we were all there to support one another.
Lesson #2: Embrace “Scrappiness”
Early on, especially with the minimal financial resources we had, scrappiness—in short, doing more with less—was a key characteristic in every aspect of the business. When a company grows, however, you can’t stay scrappy in the same way. When you are small, you never have enough resources; when you are large, resources are dedicated elsewhere with competing interests.
At all phases of the company, doing whatever it takes to get the job done requires working around hurdles and always being willing to overcome the persistent challenges that will inevitably arise.
Lesson #3: Stay Close to the Customer
Knowing the customer and the market, and building the intuition and a close connection with users, are all vital ingredients that help a technology company like Bluebeam, no matter what stage of growth you’re in. Not only is it important to listen to the customer, but in construction you have to actually go to the jobsite. Walking in customers’ boots and observing how they work is essential to truly being able to address their needs through technology. Doing this influenced the uncountable small and large decisions that were made as we continued to improve our software.
I like to think that this intensive customer-centric approach is part of the reason Bluebeam continued to grow during rough periods for the economy. During the Great Recession of 2008-09, when the construction industry needed to enhance its efficiency to survive, Bluebeam was there with a solution. The industry needed to re-evaluate how project documentation could get done so projects were completed faster.
Enhancing Revu with real-time collaboration in Studio played a big role in solving this industry challenge, minimizing paper, speeding up project reviews and widening the opportunity to bring teams together more efficiently. By having a deep understanding of customers and the industry’s needs at this perilous time, Bluebeam was able to build solutions for a major industry problem.
Bluebeam has had such a productive relationship with the industry because, in many ways, our customers are an extension of our team, working together to advance the industry.
Lesson #4: The road is never straight; expect the road bumps; enjoy the ride
The hurdles, however difficult they may feel in the moment, are also opportunities. We learned early to adjust, adapt and learn; to be agile in our thinking in the business. This mindset has been vital to our continued growth. Having a direction is important, to be sure, but having the confidence to adapt and adjust in the face of challenges is just as important.
It can be somewhat scary when the path you originally planned changes out from under you, either because of market conditions, learning more about customers or industry changes. Still, having the confidence to adapt and move forward to me is what separates the companies that survive from the ones that don’t.
Bluebeam was forged in tough economic times, right after the bursting of the initial internet bubble. We grew again during the Great Recession nearly a decade later. And, more recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic sent the industry into remote work, our cloud-based ecosystem was there in what was certainly a fast and difficult transition.
It’s in these times that our customers were looking for ways to streamline their operations to evolve and survive. We at Bluebeam wanted to help in those times, and we continue to grow together as the industry progresses.
As I reflect on the opportunities and challenges over the past two decades, I’m encouraged by the ever-expanding opportunity within our industry. Construction technology wasn’t really a thing in 2002, and it’s amazing to see how vital and important a focus this area has been as a cornerstone for society.
Finally, it’s been incredibly rewarding to see all the great people who have been a part of shaping Bluebeam. So, too, I think Bluebeam has left a mark on our current and past employees, hopefully instilling in them a part of the specialness that is Bluebeam.
It has been gratifying to have influenced these people and to see them paying it forward by carrying elements of the Bluebeam DNA with them as they advance in their careers both here and elsewhere, inside and outside the AEC industry.
The former accountant has the unique perspective of helping determine how nearly every dollar is invested to enhance the technology company’s continued growth and value to the construction industry
Erika Saniano can predict the future.
Well, not exactly. But for 40 hours or so each week, Saniano tries her best to look deep into the crystal ball of how Bluebeam’s financial future can help make the company’s ambitions today come to life.
As a senior financial planning and analysis (FP&A) manager for the construction technology company, Saniano and her team are responsible for bridging the gap between what investments are needed to seed the company’s growth and its financial forecast in the quarters and year ahead.
It’s a job that puts Saniano in the unique position of knowing where almost every dollar at the Pasadena, California-based company is spent, from engineering to product marketing to IT and customer support, and it gives her a front-row seat for just about everything that the company is working toward in a given year to make its evolving suite of technology consistently invaluable to the construction industry.
“In FP&A, since you’re trying to predict the future, you really need help from the entire company,” said Saniano, who is based in Los Angeles. “My team and I talk to every budget owner, which is about 65 people, from every department at Bluebeam. Tell me what you’re striving for as a budget owner, and I can help figure out what our budget needs to be to make those plans a reality.”
The language of numbers
Saniano’s path to becoming one of the lead financial analysts and planners for a global technology company took an untraditional route. In fact, if Saniano had stuck to the field she initially chose in college, she might be writing code as a member of Bluebeam’s engineering team, not managing the company’s finances.
Saniano grew up in Vernon Hills, Illinois, a suburb about 40 miles north of Chicago. Her mother was born and raised in Mexico, and her father was born and raised in Japan. The child of two non-native English speakers, Saniano said the family didn’t naturally communicate with words. “But when it came to math, we were always right, because it was the same language,” Saniano said.
Math came natural to Saniano as a result. “There’s always a right answer,” she said. “Words or paragraphs can be subject to interpretation—but with math, you’re either right or you’re wrong.”
Saniano attended DePaul University on Chicago’s northside. She double majored in mathematics and computer science, though neither subject was instrumental in determining her eventual career. Instead, it was the odd jobs Saniano held while attending DePaul that served as the catalyst for the field she eventually made a career out of—accounting.
“I worked as an auditor at a shipping store, I worked at a hotel as a receptionist and as a restaurant cashier,” Saniano said. One of the jobs asked Saniano to pay some invoices, and the accounting duties began to snowball. Suddenly, Saniano started taking on low-level accounting jobs and working her way up, each time starting at the bottom and, again, working into some sort of managerial role.
Erika, middle, with Bluebeam colleagues.
That bottom-up mentality helped Saniano accrue accounting jobs in a variety of industries, from gigs with Allied Business Schools to Clear Channel Radio to fast-casual dining chain Cosi and dating website eHarmony.
In 2015, Saniano started as a senior accountant with an up-and-coming technology company, Bluebeam—again starting at a level that was technically below where she left off at her previous career stop.
“I talked to Rich Lee, who was the founder of the company, as part of the interview, and he questioned it: ‘Why would you want to take a step down?’” Saniano recalled. “When it comes to companies like this, I like to look at what they have originally. I start myself at a lower level, look at what you have, and what can I fix? I like to understand the company first, and then work my way up.”
Securing opportunity
Accounting, like math growing up, appealed to Saniano because of its unambiguous characteristics. It’s a fact-oriented, rules-based discipline. Money in, money out. Everything that happens in accounting is clearly recorded. The discipline also relies heavily on routine. Month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, the same patterns take place each time period.
To Saniano, accounting’s characteristics also represented security. “I always had multiple jobs when I was young, because I was always afraid of not having a secure life,” Saniano said, adding that she also observed her parents deal with bouts of financial insecurity. “That’s why, when I got into accounting, I was like, ‘This seems secure.’”
Regardless of a company’s performance, it will always need accountants. “Even when companies shut down, the accountants are the last ones there shutting the door,” Saniano said. “So accounting just stuck with me where I’m like, ‘This is a safer path for me.’ Oddly enough, I was really good at it, too. So why wouldn’t I stay with it?”
Like her past roles, Saniano continued to work her way up as an accountant at Bluebeam. Less than a year after being hired, Saniano was promoted to manager. And for two more years, Saniano thrived in the rules-based, routine-oriented world of recording revenues and expenses, and helping manage annual regulatory audits for the growing company, which by this time was now owned by German conglomerate Nemetschek Group, adding to the accounting team’s complex responsibilities.
Time for change
Yet, as time went on, Saniano said she wanted a change. “I had been doing accounting for so long,” Saniano said. “I wasn’t bored with it, but I just wanted something different.”
Luckily, Bluebeam was on the verge of creating a new team dedicated to financial planning. If accounting is responsible for recording what is happening—money in, money out—financial planning is the opposite. “FP&A is future-looking,” Saniano said. It’s forecasting a company’s future financial performance and planning budgets of spending for the year accordingly.
At any other company, Saniano may have never been considered for a role in FP&A. Accounting and finance, while related, are considered completely separate and different disciplines to the people who work in them, Saniano said. The fields nowadays require different degrees and experience; transitioning from one to the other is extremely uncommon.
Bluebeam, after listening to Saniano say she was interested in making the change, didn’t follow such conventions and gave Saniano a chance on its new FP&A team. And just like with her accounting jobs prior, Saniano would again start at a lower level and work her way up.
Saniano said the fact that Bluebeam would even give her the opportunity speaks to the people-focused character of the company, which she added has been a big reason why she’s remained with Bluebeam for so long.
“I feel like everyone knows Bluebeam is great,” Saniano said. “But they don’t know those back stories. Well, there are opportunities where you can move roles and try something new if you’re interested. I think that’s really rare. I’m really happy that I got the opportunity here at Bluebeam to do that.”
Today, Saniano lives in a world that is the complete opposite of the one she came up in professionally. Although there are still routines and rules around budgets, reporting and planning, being in FP&A is far more nuanced and creative.
Saniano spends most of her time not tabulating credits and debits alone in her office but communicating across the globe with Bluebeam’s different leaders, listening to their goals and helping them procure the financial resources needed to allow their teams to operate and contribute to the company’s continued growth each year.
The role has allowed Saniano to expand her overall business acumen. By interacting with executives and leaders in different business areas and helping them achieve their goals, she’s also developed valuable relationships with colleagues all over the world.
“I like talking with the rest of the company,” Saniano said. “Now, moving into FP&A, I’m talking to high-level people about where we think we’re going in the future as a company—and talking about the future is fun.”
Meet Andrew Gaer, Bluebeam’s director of customer success.
The avid social media creator has brought a fresh and newly relevant perspective to connecting construction industry workers with Bluebeam’s evolving suite of technology
Look at the resumes and LinkedIn profiles of today’s technology industry marketing leaders and it would seem intuitive to credit their success to prestigious business degrees, extensive experience at an early-stage startup or Big Tech, or specialized credentials in an emerging area of expertise.
Jannike Reinholdsson, Bluebeam’s regional marketing manager for Northern and Eastern Europe, boasts a resume and background that defies these expectations.
Before landing a job in construction and soon thereafter at Bluebeam, Reinholdsson was working in fashion and as a makeup artist and lifestyle blogger—experiences that don’t necessarily check the expected boxes of a would-be marketing professional, especially one focused on the construction industry.
Yet Reinholdsson is indisputably one of the construction technology company’s special marketing talents, with a fascinatingly unique background that has given her an unmatched perspective when it comes to selling software to the construction, architecture and engineering industry.
Reinholdsson has not only come of age as a marketer without a university degree in the field—she doesn’t have a university degree at all. In fact, Reinholdsson is a proud high school dropout.
Instead of formal education, Reinholdsson, who is based in Stockholm, Sweden, has built her career on pure grit and guile.
By diving headfirst into pursuits of interest to her and accumulating knowledge, experience and relationships at each step along the way, Reinholdsson has propelled herself into her current critical role as Bluebeam’s chief marketer for a region that is paramount to the company’s continued growth and success across Europe.
“Working in marketing has always been a childhood dream for me,” Reinholdsson said. “The creative part has always been something that makes me tick.”
Forging a path
Reinholdsson grew up just outside the small Swedish countryside town of Ulricehamn, a little more than an hour’s drive from the Nordic country’s second-largest city, Gothenburg.
Interested in fashion design at a young age, Reinholdsson focused her high school studies on the subject, even building skills in computer-aided design (CAD) software as part of the curriculum.
She quickly found formal education uninteresting, however, and dropped out of school before graduating. “It wasn’t for me,” Reinholdsson said of high school, adding that she’s proud that she went on to build a successful career despite not having formalized credentials.
Reinholdsson moved to Gothenburg and took a job in retail while taking some classes on the side. She then moved to Malmö, a southern coastal city in Sweden just across the eastern end of the Öresund Bridge, near Denmark.
There, Reinholdsson got a job as a team lead at a customer service company, while also starting to train herself to become a makeup artist, a personal passion. Soon thereafter, a colleague based in Stockholm called Reinholdsson about a role for one of the company’s new customers, construction firm Skanska.
“So I moved to Stockholm,” Reinholdsson said, “and I was helping out with conference technology and Skanska’s own visualization center.”
Reinholdsson’s ability to quickly learn software began to make an impression on her new client, and Skanska colleagues soon started throwing more technology her way. She started to learn more industry tech tools like Solibri and Navisworks.
“All kinds of software, it’s very logical to me,” Reinholdsson said, adding that it took her about a week to learn the two technology tools.
“After a couple of months, it was a department manager who was like, ‘Hey, you have some talent for this. Do you want to become a BIM coordinator?’” Reinholdsson said. “And I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know much about construction.’”
Reinholdsson took the offer, starting a full-time job at Skanska as a building information modeling (BIM) coordinator—an emerging and critical role in construction involving the generation and management of digital representations of built environments.
Mastering construction tech
It wasn’t long into her time at Skanska that Reinholdsson came across yet another piece of software: Bluebeam Revu.
Reinholdsson, who quickly established herself as a software expert at Skanska, learned Revu because she was asked to lead internal trainings on it and other industry tools, although she had never used Revu at the time.
The combination of working on BIM and internal software training crystalized into a robust experience in construction digitization, culminating in Reinholdsson being a member of the team that created Skanska’s Digital Hub, an endeavor dedicated to improving how construction uses technology for solving industry-wide challenges.
While running communication, social media and public relations as part of the Digital Hub initiative, Reinholdsson took part in the first Bluebeam User Group (BUG) meeting in Sweden, which Skanska hosted at its Stockholm office.
Reinholdsson’s interest in Bluebeam peaked when she discovered on LinkedIn a job posting for a regional marketing manager for the Nordics. “I read the role description and I was like, this is me; this is my role,” she said. Like with all her jobs to this point, although she didn’t necessarily have the formal marketing background preferred in the job posting, she applied.
She got the job, combining her love of technology with her childhood dream of working in the creative side of marketing and communications.
Broadcasting authenticity
Reinholdsson’s role at Bluebeam for Northern and Eastern Europe is that of a well-rounded marketer. She is responsible for everything from content marketing and social media to digital media strategy and everything else in between for the region.
Her job also involves many nuances, as Reinholdsson works to translate Bluebeam’s global marketing programs and initiatives into a localized lens that best speaks to customers in her region. “Every day is like something new,” she said.
The job is something Reinholdsson is well-equipped to do, thanks to her direct experience in construction technology from her time at Skanska, but also due in large part to her past pursuits as a makeup artist and evolution as a lifestyle blogger and social media savant.
As connecting with customers and prospective customers continues to evolve in today’s increasingly digital age, it’s become critical that marketers in the industry have a solid pulse on the channels that are effective in reaching people with messages that resonate.
For her part, Reinholdsson has spent much of her life exploring the forefront of emerging media, art and culture, and today she remains passionate about navigating the intersection of personality-driven online content creation with brand marketing.
Outside of her work with Bluebeam, Reinholdsson is a fervent content creator on Instagram (@jannikeviola), where she posts and curates content about her life, makeup and fashion, music and culture.
And although she no longer runs her own lifestyle blog, preferring instead to focus on social media, the experience taught her critical insights into how to use online publishing to cultivate an audience through entertaining and educational editorial content—something Bluebeam does with its blog, Built.
In all, Reinholdsson said these creative endeavors have taught her the value of perhaps the most important characteristic people crave these days from brands: authenticity.
Authenticity is at the center of everything Reinholdsson does, whether it’s her work with Bluebeam or her Instagram content. It’s why she loves using social media to show off her personality, her fashion sensibilities and her tattoos, of which she has many, with more on the way, she said.
“It’s important to show people who you are and then connect that to your role at Bluebeam,” Reinholdsson said. Buyers, to be sure, want to know about the product, she said, but they also want to know about the people behind the product, and sometimes the latter is more important.
Authenticity is also a big reason why Reinholdsson said she loves working for Bluebeam. “I joined Bluebeam because of the people,” she said. “Of course Bluebeam is an awesome product, but if it wasn’t for the people I would never have been trusting of the company in a sense.”
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Trustworthiness is another essential characteristic marketing leaders need to focus their messaging on to customers these days, Reinholdsson said. This is yet another lesson she has learned through her experience with social media.
“Followers [on social media] want to see if you are a trustworthy person,” Reinholdsson said. “If you’re just there to sell, to make a profit, you will not stay long in any industry you’re involved with these days.”
Reinholdsson ultimately sees her role at Bluebeam as one that continuously communicates the company’s people-focused approach to technology to its customers—whether it’s through more traditional marketing channels or the growing and evolving list of new ones. She said Bluebeam’s products—and the people she works with to help build and promote them—ultimately make it easier for her to communicate that message.
“It’s a kick-ass product,” Reinholdsson said of Bluebeam. “That is so nice to work with … to actually enable people to save time and money using. To be able to take manual processes and digitalize them to improve construction workflows and help people work smarter—that’s cool. That’s why I work here.”
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Andrew Gaer has experienced the construction technology company’s rise from punchy startup to global enterprise, focusing on intentional relationship building with customers every step of the way
Andrew Gaer started his career in irrigation science, working to ensure that whatever needed watering, from lush residential landscapes to vast acres of treasured agriculture, received the proper amount to flourish and grow.
Gaer’s career at Bluebeam, now in its second decade, has also involved a lot of nurturing and growth. Except instead of engineering and designing water systems to make sure landscapes remain green or crops yield hefty harvests, Gaer has had a front row seat for Bluebeam’s growth as a business, from scrappy software startup to established global construction technology enterprise.
Bluebeam has overseen and nurtured Gaer’s growth, too. He’s risen from one of the construction technology company’s early-stage, jack-of-all-trades employees to its director of customer success, a critical role as Bluebeam continues to expand globally and enhance its product portfolio.
“I’ve always felt like I matter at Bluebeam,” Gaer said from his home office in Orange, California.
Nurturing a career
Gaer’s role at Bluebeam has, in many respects, been the same for the 11 years he’s been at the Pasadena, California-based company. While his job titles have changed and his responsibilities have shifted and grown, Gear’s job can be boiled down into two words: helping customers.
Exactly how Gaer, a Southern California native, has helped Bluebeam’s customers over the years has taken on many forms. And his career path leading to Bluebeam certainly didn’t presage a rewarding career in construction software.
Gaer graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, with a degree in landscape irrigation science, a field that “seems like a pretty obscure thing to major in,” Gaer said. Still, it fulfilled his childhood interest in building.
As a kid, Gaer was always building stuff, from PVC pipe-fitted surfboard racks to a driving range net to help him work on his golf game. And after initially attending college for geology, Gaer said the practicality of learning how to design, manage and operate water systems eventually became more appealing.
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“It was a mix of engineering to understanding flows and friction and pipe sizing and fluid dynamics, and all of these other things,” Gaer said.
After college, Gaer dove into the field, working first as an irrigation systems design intern for a few months before taking on a full-time role as a field technical and landscape irrigation consultant. Gaer then went to work for a soil moisture sensing technology company for several years before managing maintenance crews for a local landscaping firm.
Gaer even spent nearly a year as owner of his own water management and irrigation business. It was also roughly around this time that he received a master’s degree in business, as he looked to expand his professional acumen outside of the narrow field of irrigation science.
But with a baby girl on the way, Gaer decided, with some encouragement from his expecting wife, that he needed something more stable than entrepreneurship could provide, so he began a search for a new full-time job.
“My wife had a frank conversation with me: ‘Hey, we’re going to have a baby. Why don’t you get a real job?” said Gaer, who went on to have two more daughters.
Finding Bluebeam
Gaer had one criterion for his next gig: It had to be in an office. “I was tired of working out of a truck, having worked in the field for seven years by that point,” Gaer said.
He came across a posting on LinkedIn for an account specialist at Bluebeam. Though he had never used the company’s software in his irrigation and landscaping work, and the potential commute from Orange County to Pasadena initially seemed daunting, Gaer said he was intrigued by the job.
“I was so compelled by it being a software company, and being a young software company, doing this work in the AEC [architecture, engineering, construction] industry, which is what I came from,” he said. “And it’s a technology that helps people do their jobs better, easier and faster.”
In fact, the more Gaer said he learned about Revu, Bluebeam’s flagship program, the more he wished he knew about it during his irrigation jobs. “Oh man—this would have helped me so much,” he recalled.
“And then when I interviewed, the culture at Bluebeam was so apparent, and it was just a great fit for me,” Gaer continued. “So I jumped at the chance. And, luckily, they brought me on board.”
Concierge approach
Gaer’s initial job with Bluebeam, which had about 50 employees at the time, was simple: learn Revu and answer the phone when it rang with customers’ questions.
Sitting at a desk about 15 feet away from Bluebeam’s founder and then CEO, Richard Lee, Gaer’s days were sort of like a game of roulette: He never knew when the phone rang what sort of customer problem he would face on the other end of the line.
“I could pick up the phone and it could be a company that had 1,000 users,” Gaer said, “or I could have picked up the phone and it was an estimator who had no employees.”
“What was so fun about it was we could just spend time with people and figure out their problems,” Gaer continued.
There was no better way to learn Revu. “I learned a lot by just asking good questions and hearing what people were doing,” Gaer said. “And then that got me to understand how different construction trades worked and what their days looked like.”
This “concierge approach” to working with customers was intentional, Gaer said, and it was central to Bluebeam’s success, which began to kick into overdrive shortly after Gaer came aboard.
Customer volume started to pick up, and then it would pick up again, and again. Stretch revenue goals were easily eclipsed year after year. Bluebeam rewarded its employees with not one but two trips to Hawaii to celebrate the success. “We would ask ourselves, ‘Is this happening because of us or in spite of us?” Gaer jokingly said. “There was nothing we could do to stop it. It was just growing like crazy.”
Bluebeam’s continued growth—the company now has more than 500 employees globally—came with formalized and expanded roles for Gaer. He eventually became part of a group within the company called technical account management, which would continue to help customers through its concierge approach with Revu and its steadily evolving capabilities.
Gaer ultimately took on the title of director of technical account management, leading a team of people and collaborating with Bluebeam’s growing sales and marketing apparatus as the company started to expand beyond the United States.
In 2014, about three years after Gaer joined the company, Bluebeam was acquired by Munich, Germany-based Nemetschek Group, a technology conglomerate whose portfolio includes many other software companies in the construction industry and beyond.
Today, Gaer leads a newly formed customer success team, which essentially continues to do what Gaer has done at Bluebeam from his first day: help customers.
“It’s a little more of a targeted approach,” Gaer said. “It’s a little bit more ownership of the accounts, but with the same goal: to help customers understand what it is that they’re trying to achieve and how they can achieve it through user education and user awareness, and helping them to build out processes that can help them get the most out of the software.”
Looking ahead
What keeps Gaer at Bluebeam, through all the growth and inevitable change that comes with it? Throughout his tenure, Bluebeam has gone from a punchy, founder-led startup just making a name for itself in a small-but-growing construction technology industry, to a global enterprise owned by a large, publicly traded company.
Gaer’s answer is straightforward: Bluebeam has always invested in him, so he is happy to continue investing in Bluebeam.
“I’ve had a lot of managers that have really taken me under their wing and helped me to develop my career path,” Gaer said. “So I’ve always felt very supported by leadership and the company as a whole.”
And even though Bluebeam is now far larger than when he first started, Gaer said he still feels the culture has the positive elements of a startup—its continued growth being one of them.
“We’re still growing and we’ve got this whole new phase that we’re growing into,” Gaer said. “So there’s still lots of opportunity to be had here.”
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