“We’re supposed to deal with architecture and engineering, not trying to find data,” explained Scott Adams, manager of practice technology from Ghafari Associates. “If we can take a slice out of the 30% waste [of time] that the industry’s saying [is spent] searching for data, by just implementing a tool like this that gets us the information, that’s just a tremendous amount of savings.”

The tool Adams is referring to is Bluebeam Studio, a collaboration solution included with every seat of Bluebeam Revu that connects project partners worldwide in real time on the same set of centralized documents. Adams set out to use the tool for collaborative review across multiple offices and projects, and, in the process, Adams began to develop internal and external dashboards which have improved the firm’s collaboration, saved time, and given the company an advantage over their competitors. “Being cloud-based, we had a lot of external clients and customers that wanted to be a part of our collaborative environment,” explains Adams. “So we’ve developed a dashboard that has quick links. We thought of it like a smartphone. An icon you just click on and it gets you to the information. So that’s really allowed us to get information quickly to our staff with one click, versus a 14-click process going through a traditional folder structure.”

Adams estimates that the dashboard system he created within Bluebeam saves each employee five minutes a day, which is equivalent to about three full days annually at a conservatively estimated cost savings of over $1 million per year. Ghafari can now leverage the power of Bluebeam Studio across several key workflows, including QA/QC, 3D PDFs, RFIs, submittals, design review, shop drawings, document management, and even onboarding new employees.

Challenges

• Ghafari was getting a low hit rate on receiving comments on a timely manner from external party reviews.
• Design reviews took too long and were not collaborative, offices were really fragmented, and data silos were an issue.
• Relying on email to search for and maintain relevant documents took too much time and led to miscommunication.

Solutions

• Data migration was addressed both internally and externally.
• Dashboards were created to organize data on two GM pilot projects, and these external projects influenced internal dashboards for onboarding and doc control.
• Having a repository where the whole architectural department or any discipline from seven offices around the globe can post their information and share it with all the global elements of the company was critical.

Results

• Ghafari’s dashboards were made to look like an app to make buy-in easier and offer a centralized document hub and single source of truth for project stakeholders, clients and owners.
• Revu saves each employee an estimated five minutes a day, which taken in total, turns out to be three full days annually at a conservatively estimated savings of over $1 million per year.
• All project partners are now working in an integrated and collaborative environment both internally and externally, and Studio has streamlined the document and commenting process and reduced printing costs.