More Money, Less Problems: The Next Episode on How SSOE Uses Autodesk Construction Cloud Build

MARK LABELL: All right, well, welcome to More Money, Less Problems: The Next Episode on How SSOE Uses ACC Build. The speakers today are myself Mark LaBell. I Work at SSOE Group. I'm a leader of our operations technology practice. I've been with the organization for 16 years. I've worked in various roles throughout technology implementation, process improvement, and leading new initiatives in the organization.

Prior to that, I had some experience in the civil engineering sectors. I have about 22 years of AEC experience. And really excited today to bring you some of our journey at SSOE, and how we've furthered our Autodesk Construction Cloud implementation. And then with me is Lisa Lewis. And I'll let her introduce herself.

LISA LEWIS: Hi, I'm Lisa Lewis. I have approximately 25 years in the construction industry with an extensive knowledge on the processes of the construction industry. Over the years, I've learned that I have an unusual talent at software, so much that I've been labeled as a master user for several softwares. SSOE has provided me the opportunity to utilize my talent and expand upon it to have me encourage and train others on the software within our company. I was one of the few people who persuaded the use of ACC for SSOE, and was a major player on one of our pilot projects.

I'm very accepting of change. And I've found this to be a benefit to being a forward thinker in order to advance and improve the way we do our work. With this, I've been told I conduct magic, when all that it is, is good software that has expedited my workload. But I'm here to help Mark LaBell co-present with this presentation.

MARK LABELL: All right, well, excellent. So thank you, Lisa. And some highlights about SSOE and what we do. We're not necessarily the biggest company out there. But we're a very large midsize company. And our mission is to deliver unparalleled client value that advances the AEC industry while designing and building the future of our clients, colleagues, and communities.

So as you can see here, we're a pretty good sized organization with about 1,400 employees across 20 offices in three countries. And a few acknowledgments that we've had recently in the industry is we're a number 2 semiconductor firm, number 2 manufacturing design firm, top 10 design firm in several other sectors. And we've done over 23,000,000 square-foot of battery factories as well as 28 plants in EV projects in North America.

And that's really the cornerstone of what we've talked about on this project, is we've done the big projects, we've done the medium-sized projects and the small projects all utilizing these tools. We're really excited to show you it, albeit in a very-- some of the examples we're going to have are generic. And we're not going to-- because of confidentiality, we can't show the projects themselves. But we will show you the workflows we've adopted across all of these different sizes of projects.

So how do we get to the full implementation of SSOE with ACC? As Lisa had mentioned, we did go through a pilot progress. We found champions such as herself to be able to push forward here.

So we'll give you a little bit of backstory before we get into the demo and show you how we're doing it. So this started as early as 2017. We were doing the research on what was called at the time the next generation of BIM360.

We worked with our enterprise account team as well as many of the engineering, as well as product leads. With that next generation team, we worked on how to do [INAUDIBLE] work-sharing at that time, as well as classic field and construction management activities. And we really just gathered what the system could do on very small projects, just to see where it would come long-term as we were looking to really grow our organization, as well as being able to adopt a single source of truth to be able to conduct all of our engineering and design activities.

So from 2018 to 2020, that research really led us to be able to go through a data-mapping exercise that we showed that we had over 28 different locations we were storing project data across all the different offices we had. We went through executive management and presentations, including finance, HR, and other systems. And then we went through and got operations teams, which is our day-to-day design and engineering and architectural teams assembled, getting experts like Lisa and others, and working on what an actual rollout schedule could be.

So we went live in 2021 with BIM360 on January 1st. We rolled out a robust training program for all staff. We had roundtables and therapy sessions. We'll call them communities of practice where we got a lot of experts together to share learnings to expedite how we can go into the next phase.

Now during that, this sounds like it was all rosy, we were also known that ACC was coming out right when we were rolling out BIM360 on January 1, 2021. So right when we were rolling out what took two years of planning, we already started planning phase 2, which was the ACC ecosystem and no longer using BIM360, as you can see here on the far right, which is phase 2. So we went live with that May 31 of 2022. So that's all new projects go into the system.

We revised our training as well as the workflows to enhance what ACC offered. And we went with a more data-forward approach and less files-and-folders approach. And we are currently going through the refining of quality procedures that we will be showing you today.

So some statistics. We've done almost 3,600 projects automatically created with linkage from our ERP, our Enterprise Resource Planning system. What that means, is when you enter a project into that system, it automatically kicks off projects in originally BIM360. As you can see on the left, there's 1,400 active projects still. That started between that research date until basically May 31st of 2022.

Since May, we've opened up 1,379 active ACC projects. And a few other things to note, we have 1,368 internal users at SSOE, and 4,200 and growing external users. They're are all controlled through an external roles in our templates.

Another side note in the bottom is we've also closed and archived over 1,000 projects. So our totals there, that's where the number of 3,600 roughly comes into. We do have a bunch of closed-out projects, as well, already.

And a little bit about our platform strategy, again, we're adopting a cloud-first strategy like many other organizations. Our engineering data, and our design data, our models, et cetera, is all done in the Autodesk Construction Cloud as you can see in green, with some direct connectors to the Autodesk Vault for our Inventor projects, as well as Cintoo for point cloud data.

The red cloud in the center is what is called our SSOE cloud. That's where we're basically putting a layer of connectivity and fabric that allows us to directly import/export data from our Autodesk Construction Cloud, as well as our ERP systems, which is Deltek, Vantage Point, Dynamics, and a few others. And then it also allows us to connect to the blue one above, which is Microsoft Office 365 and our standard repositories for SharePoint.

So when we rolled it out originally, on the left in the blue is the focus. And again, that's the focus of today's presentation as well, purposely so. But again, want to share the story that we really focused on, again, the quality items of Project Home, data at the center, using standard practices and project management, submittals, RFIs, as well as document management folders and files and how we put everything in there.

We are using, on the green side, as a standard practice on a lot of our mega projects and even our midsize projects, design and model coordination. We do some field management, CA. Lisa's helped implement that in several teams, as well.

And then we do a little bit of assets. We're starting to get into it. I wouldn't say it's a standard on projects at SSOE. But we are definitely working through some learnings and getting some best practice together.

So let's first talk about some of the templates, because really to be able to scale and have the automation in place-- and even if you don't have automation in place, scale still is a concern for every organization. You need to have consistency. So we're going to go through the template process at SSOE and how we approach that.

So what makes a good template? Like most companies, everybody has a standard folder structure. You maybe had a script that set it up.

And what we did, is we took a look at that. And we did have some time spent around that. But one of the things we want to talk about first is you do have to be an account admin in the Autodesk Cloud Infrastructure to be able to set up templates. So if you aren't account admin, you're watching this video or you're attending at AU, that's the first thing you got to start with, is who's your account admin, and getting in there and being able to configure the system.

That individual, then, can hand off Edit Template rights to non-account admins. And we'll show that in a moment in a video. Also, the way we approach things and also how it's set up based on Autodesk's recommendations and how they've made the system is permissions for folders as well as the downstream data modules like RFIs and Submittals is only based on roles. That doesn't mean you can-- you don't have to follow that once a project is set up, but we did build that into our ecosystems and our decisions.

So we chose roles in our hub that make sense for our internal employees as well as externals. This doesn't mean there aren't subtasks to do later on once you create a project. But again, the roles is the limiting factor in how you do have to think about structuring this.

Also, don't forget to publish the template once complete. This is a new feature that's in ACC. It wasn't in BIM360. And it didn't even exist in ACC until about a year ago. So you do need to publish this if you want users to use it. But you can work on something in the background for a while without publishing it.

And also, make sure to check for new features every time there's a bimonthly release. So that is typically-- again, Autodesk has a cycle of being updated on every third week of the odd month. Now sometimes that does slip, but that is their targets. And they're pretty consistent on hitting those targets. So what we've done at SSOE, is we try to go in and look at these templates, and make sure there's no additional features that could impact our business as well as our automations.

So again, the overview. So this is going to be a video that I'll show here that just goes over the process of-- again, it's an existing template that we already have. But I'll just pull some highlights here.

So on the left-hand side under the Account Administration, I'll go ahead and click on our Standard Project. And when you're in there, you're going to get greeted by a configuration window. And you can see here, this is where you publish the template.

Ours, again, is already set to Yes. If want to add members, you would go ahead and click on it. I click away from this pretty quickly so you don't see our member list in there. But that's where you would go ahead and press the Add button to add additional members.

Now once you're in it, you click on the dropdown. You go ahead and go to Build. You can see that there's the Files, Issues, Forms, RFIs, Submittals, and Assets.

So we'll start with files. So again, we've dumped in a standard folder structure. The top level is what we share with externals. The next level down is what we do, our internal work, again, all engineering. And then the VBC is meant to be a quasi-share with other companies.

So to get to the permissions, you click on the three dots. And you can see here that we have permissions set up. So every new project, our standard roles are in there and what permissions they have the ability to do, whether it's manage, create, view. Again, you can see, by default, Autodesk only allows you to do roles. And this is why we spent so much time on our role configuration.

If I click to the SSOE folder, you'll see the permissions get dropped out. It's a lot smaller list. Again, those are by default. Just the standard roles we want to have, the ability to edit. Then once I get into the VBC folder, you'll see the owner under the client folder. And then the external users have the ability to come into the subconsultant folder and do editing.

Now pause that for a moment. There is a side note that once a project is set up, there is an email I'll talk about in a moment. And we do add company permissions to the folders with our automation that says, SSOE group, as a company, gets default permissions.

So again, that's the difference between roles and companies. You can't do companies in a template. You can only do roles. So that's where you do have to apply some additional legwork after a project is set up.

Now under Issues, we pretty much have a standard types. But you can do additions here. Custom Fields, we've added one. Templates, we have yet to do as an organization because we're still trying to figure out, that is a very new feature, what templates make sense. But this is a very nice feature for quality procedures. And again, Statuses, there's been some growth there, as well, where we have yet to spend some time, again, going through and seeing what new changes we need to put in place.

All right, so under the Forms button here, you can create templates for forms. And to think of this, a lot of companies have standard Word templates that they use maybe for transferring files back and forth, BIM execution plans, project plans. You can see here we've created a folder for BIM.

And this BIM execution plan is actually a form-based off of a smart PDF. We found that smart PDF importing is very robust. It gives you a lot more controls than starting with out-of-the-box. Let's call it form template in ACC. And that is a very, very nice workflow.

Again, for RFIs, you can see here we've added our standard roles, Project Controller, Manager, Project Manager, Assistant to be able to set up, manage, create our submittal-- sorry, our RFIs. So on all new projects, they have the ability to do that. Again, if you wanted to add additional roles, you can do it. But you can see when I scroll down here, only roles show up; not companies.

So just like the files, you'll have to do additional setup once a project's there. And then lastly, the advanced settings, we went ahead and toggled Reopen RFI, the Closed RFI Visibility, and the Open RFI Visibility. Because of the way we work as an organization, it's very powerful to have those on.

Lastly, we're going to go ahead and talk about submittals. So again, just like the RFIs, we want our project management staff to have the ability to manage and have sole permission for those submittals. We went ahead and changed the responses from default, because of our legal stance as an engineer and architect of record, to match our previous submittal stamps that we've had in the past. So this was a very powerful feature that was added to ACC that was not previously in BIM360.

Again the types are pretty much out of the box. We have done little to change this. It was pretty good for what we needed as a company. And then advanced settings, we made sure to turn on the closed submittals visibility so, again, all projects see that.

All right, so some final thoughts on the templates. There's a lot of information there that we did go over. Should project admins create their own projects? Now, again, it depends on your organization.

For SSOE, we have automation in place. We've turned this off because we have a system that's constantly linking and making sure our ERP systems in data sequence or lockstep with what's going on in our Autodesk Construction Cloud environment. If you're a smaller organization or don't have the automation, this is very powerful to turn on.

And again, you just do it from the Account Administration. You can see on the left-hand side there, the Settings button. And then you can just toggle that on.

Additional final thoughts, again, when it comes to scalability, templates are good. And I'm not talking just ACC templates. This is an email template that we've created with our automation.

But again, you don't have to have automation to create an email template. You can hand it off to all your account admins and say, as soon as a project is created, send this email to the people that are going to be on the project. And these are the things they need to do when they set that project up.

So we've just highlighted a few additional non-automatable or non-templateable-- that was a tongue twister there-- templateable functions within the Autodesk Construction Cloud. And make sure that people turn these on because, again, they do set the project up for success. This is something that you don't want to have to think about when you're trying to get a package out, to remember to turn on a toggle. And here's another finish part to that email.

Again, we try to review this during every release. Sometimes we miss it. You'll note here that the notifications, there is highlighting on it. There's some further discussion on notifications because there was a big update here in September that finally just hit us right prior to this recording.

All right, so I'm going to hand this off to Lisa at this point. And she's going to go over a few deeper dives into some of these techniques.

LISA LEWIS: Since I happen to be more involved in RFI submittals, the CA process, and I dig deep into a lot of the aspects of the usage of the software, I've noticed and I've had in the beginning people asking me, well, how does this affect that we're doing it this way versus this way? And I said, you know what? I'm going to perform a timed test. And I'm going to tell you exactly how much the difference in time.

And this is just in the beginning of using ACC in regards to how we used to do it. There was a two-second time difference. And I'm still brand-new at this, so I know my timed test has gotten even better over the time. So the dispute of the times became squashed. We went from Excel spreadsheets for logs to be able to use ACC as a log system and keep us in line.

I'm also going to be going over AutoSpecs today, which this is the time saver and a half. I used to work for a general contractor taking a project manual and taking it home for homework and reading it and tabbing each one of the items that I needed to put into an Excel spreadsheet to be able to say, these are the documents we need for closeout or for submittal. So now with AutoSpecs, we're letting AI do all the work. And it's an amazing piece of software that's been recently entered into ACC for us to use. Great software.

The advancement with ACC that has helped out a lot is the Home Page with a Calendar To Dos. It helps quickly figure out, for an engineer or an architect, what their tasks are or what's coming up or what's due. And say they're on about five different projects. They can look and see that they have five RFIs altogether, and maybe three from this project, two from this project, and so on. So that has helped to figure out what is in their court.

Setting up workflows, and I'll go over that within submittals-- and I know that in the future, they'll be adding workflows for RFIs. But that's in the future. So I'll show you how it works within submittals. But it has taken a lot of the guesswork out because, for me, I'm not necessarily knowing all the team members on the team that are going to be reviewing RFIs or submittals. So if I can get it told to me at the beginning, set up the workflow, and then it just keeps the process advancing a lot faster.

In the beginning, I also told you that I'm very accepting of change. And this has made it very helpful to understand each one of the advances or changes that ACC has done. So I'm always trying to look for other people who are accepting of change. And in that, my next thing is to incorporate people willing to try.

One of the areas that recently came up is Meeting Minutes. I went and I watched somebody else use it, and said, this is pretty easy to use. I think I can encourage this one person to try and use it with a little bit of my help.

This one person now uses it on all of her projects. And she is now starting to get other people to use the Meeting Minute module, as well. So like the next one says, let it spread like a virus. Once you get that one person that's willing to try, they will get another person willing to try, and another person willing to try.

Next, now we're going to go into RFIs. RFIs, to me, is just a clarification question. So we're going to go ahead. I did a little video, how you set up doing an RFI, clarifying with-- you can just do a plain question. And see, just can you pause it for a minute because I want to clarify?

So you can just do a plain question. Or you can do a question with reference material being a sketch or just a product material. But it's not necessarily the full document. It's just an attached document with something to help answer the question.

So here, let's go ahead and go into the RFI and click on the RFI. The RFI number is editable. This is great if you do PRFIs, which happen to be at the beginning of-- you can pause it-- at the beginning of a project. It's going a little faster than I'd like.

And PFRIs are not necessarily in the CA area or Construction and Administration area. But PRFIs are during design. And we have utilized one of these when we-- you can also correspond with an owner to ask them questions. So here I went, and I labeled it Campsite Electrical. And now I'm assigning Ball in Court. Go ahead and proceed.

So this is Campsite Electrical. I'm signing my mechanical, electrical engineer co-reviewer with a due date. I can put in location, location details, additional information if needed. And here's the question that they sent in regards to that RFI. If a general contractor or subcontractor has a suggested answer, they can put it in to help aid in the answer.

And here's where I can add my reference to help aid in the answer of the question or clarification. And you can just dump, upload. Add additional information to help you if you needed to do cost impact, discipline, priority.

And then I always like to assign somebody to be able to watch. My project manager likes to watch all the flows of everything that comes and goes. So that was how you enter in a RFI.

And I'm doing this based on a general way of doing RFIs. You can be a little bit more intense with the RFI with more information. Or you can be as simple as you want. And just doing a question with an answer is simple.

So let's go ahead and do the answer. So here Mr. Sparky is going to be answering the RFI. And he clicks the Submit response. And he can answer the answer to the question, yes. So each campsite is powered with 30 to 50.

If he needed to go look at the reference material, he'd scroll down and open up the attachment. But here's the response. You can add additional comments if you need it. And that was it.

And for me being a project manager, PMA-- so a project manager answered the question. I need to give it back to the general contractor or the subcontractor. That area, particularly, is easy. OK, so I would normally just take that answer if it was just yes, and copy it and paste it and send it on its way into either client software, DC software, or in an email to somebody.

So now there's another different way that an RFI can be done, as well, that is done through normal processes, is that people like to keep the RFI question within the attachment. So we're going to do it as if it was-- the question was on the attachment. So go ahead and proceed. So I'm going to create an RFI and leave it as number two. And I'm asking my question of verification. It's important.

OK, assigning my-- I want my project manager to answer this question, because he's going to follow up with making sure that the answer is correct in the size of the dimensions. And my assistant project manager. Giving it a due date.

And the question, because it is an attachment, it's just referring to please see the attached, which is going to fall into the reference area. And I will upload it by dragging and dropping the question that was provided to me by the GC. Upload the file and any additional information.

But I'm going to go ahead and hit Create. So now this submittal is created. Now we're going to go ahead and go to the response, the way to respond to an RFI as just an attachment.

And here, Notorious PM, he is going to open up the attachment. Look at the question that's on the attachment, which is, please confirm the size of the pad of site number 19. And he's going to go to his markups and attach text to be able to answer the question within the RFI.

In order to signify that this is a different form of text, because the person asking the question was in red, we want to signify a different color. So we're going to color the box blue and the text blue.

And you do not have to save anything because it automatically saves. Well, I'm sorry, you have to hit Publish. Then close out.

Now I'm going to move it through the process. So Notorious responded. He's going to submit the response.

I'm sorry, I'm doing this on behalf of somebody else. So you'll always see that, because I'm doing this video on my own, response is attached and the reference. That way it signifies to whoever that you will see the response below. Close and Distribute.

I want to let-- they're letting me know that this is complete No additional comments. And close RFI.

So in order to show you that the information remained on there and to be able to pull to download the attachment to distribute to your GC, up in the upper right-hand corner, you can download it with the three dots. It'll let you download and-- then you can pull it from your Downloads folder and attach it an email, or give it to-- or dump it into the client software.

The extras in regards to RFIs is that you can duplicate an RFI, void an RFI if it's not necessary, export the RFI, and reopen an RFI. I have had to use Reopen an RFI a few times because the answer or clarification wasn't good enough. So we reopened it, added additional questions, and proceeded on with making sure that the clarification of the RFI is correct.

There's reminders, and there's a little envelope in the middle of the screen next to Due Date, that if you click on this, it sends another notification to the Ball in Court person that they still have an outstanding RFI to respond to. The activity log is also another way that you can send out a notification by putting an @ and then the person's name. Do an @ mention, and then ask the question. And it will send them another notification, and then say, reminder, please, you have an RFI outstanding.

You can select a priority. There's normal, high, and low. That actually helps bring to their attention they need to respond to the RFI as soon as possible.

My best friend is the activity log. It allows that you can keep notes. And tracking are stored there.

So for instance, Joe Schmo decided he just going to go ahead and send out the response to the RFI earlier than clicking through the whole process. And I noticed it. I can go back and take note that Joe Schmo sent out the response through email on 10/31/23. That way, it least keeps track of what's going on with that RFI.

So the other thing that people tend to forget and they get overwhelmed is how much information some-- currently, one of the projects I was on, was there's 500 RFIs or 500 submittals. Another project I'm seeing, and it just started, was 500 RFIs within the first month. It can get overwhelming.

So I recommend to use the filter to reduce what you see when you have so much to see. And my best filters that I love are the status, which I can separate and say, OK, I only want to look at the open, and the Ball in Court. That allows me to direct the RFIs to a particular person who may have a few outstanding, and just put them all together in a list, and say, please answer your 10 RFIs.

Now talk about submittals. And submittals is all about workflows. So my biggest advice is prep, prep, prep.

The biggest thing for me is to go to a kickoff meeting, and I find out who, what, where. Who being who am I sending or who am I dealing with in regards to who's the electrical engineer, the mechanical engineer, the plumbing engineer? That way I have them, and I can get them set up in a workflow within Submittals.

What software are we using? Are we using ACC, or are we using a client software so I know how to communicate and go back and forth between them. Where, it's all-- I'm going to proceed on to Settings.

So we're going to discuss permissions, default values, types, responses, review workflows. And then I'll also show you a little bit about spec sections, which we'll follow up with in AutoSpecs, as well. So this video is on submittal settings. Up in the upper right-hand corner, you can click on the Settings. OK, and if you click on one, it brings up the whole Settings page.

So in Permissions-- so as you saw, Mark discussed about roles in here. And thought that it would be pretty interesting when we can add-- say, for instance, the roles are not significant enough. He had it in his templates. But I need just one person that's not within these roles to be able to have access. I can add now here the individual person to be able to work in the submittals.

And we go to default roles. And usually, I'm the submittal manager. So I'm going to select myself. This will help keep the process of the submittals flowing.

And the default review time is according to the contract and how many days they have to review the submittal. And then my default watchers are the people that have asked me to watch what submittals come in. So if they are needing to see those submittals for any reason, they'll pinpoint and come out to me and say, please assign this submittal to me.

So he said he pre-set up these responses within the template. And sometimes certain contracts have certain verbiage. We're still allowed to edit on this side to make sure that they correspond with the contractor's verbiage. And here I've included an extra one just because I've had that GC who just has decided he's not reviewing it. And we can void it all out.

And here they give the typical thing. But I've been able to add an extra one for mixed design. This is where you're going to set up your review template of who your reviewers are.

So I name them according to if I have an electrical submittal. So put an electrical review. And I'm going to have my main electrical engineer, which is Sparky Sparky. I'm also going to have my backup reviewer in case Sparky Sparky is out on vacation. So that's going to be a Little Spark.

I'm also going to add an additional step. This is going to be my final reviewer, which is going to be my project manager, making sure that it all coincides and is good in regards to the contract documents. So I give them two days, and I give my main reviewers 12 days. That way it equals 14 days for them, total, with what is in the contract to review.

I also like to keep my Close Submittals open. This is one of those options that they can see. Anybody can view the closed submittals.

OK, types of workflows, I wanted to go over this really quick. So anything with a red little star is mandatory for review. They are the main reviewers. And you can have one or more.

So if you're in step one, if Hot Stuff and Notorious PM are the main reviewers, they both have to review the submittal. It will not proceed to the next review step until both of those review it. Now little Big PM, he can review on the behalf of Hot Stuff or Notorious PM and push the review through. So just perhaps Mr. Hot Stuff is out on PTO, he'll need to be able to review for him.

So in other words Hot Stuff, Notorious PM, they both have to review it in order to go to Mark LaBell, which is the final review step in order to push the submittal through. So this is the other area I was going to say, is you can create spec sections during or-- I'm sorry, now. You can put them in one at a time.

So you put the spec number, the spec title, and then hit Create Another if you need to keep doing them one right after another. But within Spec Point, I'm going to show you a little faster way of being able to do it because Spec Point allows you-- it's awesome. It's a new magic trick. And then you can hit Create.

Now if you don't use it during this time of prep, prep, prep time, you can also create the spec section while you're creating the submittal itself. So we'll go ahead, and I'll show you how to do that.

So here I had one item that I had already put in. If I did not have the particular spec section, I can click Create New and create a new spec section. So go ahead. That's what I meant by during.

So I'm using that spec section. I can add the title of the specific spec submittal. And I put in what package.

I can put in a template. I don't necessarily use those. Oh, yes, I do. I'm going to click the pre-advanced templates that I've done, then select the type, which is product data.

Responsible Contractor is going to be me at this time because I'm acting on behalf of the contractor at this time to make this flow. When I'm saying this, there are several different ways that somebody can put in a submittal. You can have a general contractor put in the submittals. Or you can have a PMA put in the submittals.

So for instance, one of the projects I had, the client wanted the software-- all the RFIs and submittals to go through his software. But we still needed to make it work through our office workflow. So when an RFI came through or a submittal came through the client software, me, as a project management assistant, would grab it out of that software, put it into ACC, and then assign the workflow.

So when that happens, I now become assigned to Responsible Contractor. Then I will become the project the submittal manager, and then move it to a reviewer. So go ahead. Now I'm assigning a submittal due date, assigning a priority, and then I have my pre-done watchers, and then additional information for planning.

And now I am going to click on it. And I'm going to become the submittal manager by clicking on Submit. And in order to push it to the reviewer-- oh, we have to drop the submittal in there. And done.

So now I'm still in the-- I haven't gone to any of my reviewers to review it yet. I've got my architectural template that was just double-checking. And the other areas, there's so much that you can use in regards to helping you with this submittal. And I'm showing you right now the activity log that has showed when the submittal was entered.

And in order to review-- OK, I'm sorry, it won't let me advance to the reviewer until I copy to the next person. Now I'm just going to hit Done. OK, now as a reviewer, Notorious PM-- go ahead-- you can click on Review up above or Review next to his name.

Now in order to review the submittal, he opens up by clicking on there. You can see the submittal. And he's reviewing it right now.

He finds something wrong with it. It's not dark chocolate. He's crossing it out. And he's going to add a comment.

So it's not dark chocolate you use for s'mores. It's milk chocolate. And in order to bring it to somebody's attention, we're going to change a little bit of the color. That way they get this correct when they go to make these wonderful s'mores.

Now we're going to add a submittal stamp by clicking on Create Stamp. You can select the pre-done responses that we had in our settings. And as you can see, it had my name and the date on it of when I reviewed it. I can also reduce the size so that it fits right into the box appropriated for our stamp, OK. And now I'm going to save it.

This is a nice little feature that if I don't want to have that name, I want to have it as a different file, I can add an additional name to it or an additional word to it to make it a different file. So now I know that that's a reviewed submittal. So I actually have to change my response to exceptions noted, and done.

OK, so now Mark LaBell's got to review it. And in order for him to review it, he's going to have to go up, open up Notorious PM, and copy it down. He likes the response that was put on there, so he's going to accept Exceptions Noted. And he doesn't have to include a stamp. He just needed to review it.

And it moved on to the next step, which was me. I'm again this the submittal manager. So now I need to take that submittal, copy it down, select the final response that everybody has agreed upon, and done.

I would download-- that jumped a little fast. I would normally download-- there it is. Download in the little purple circle the final document. And take that download and give it to the-- put it in the client software, or email the general contractor or whatever other software somebody else would be using.

So resubmittal, these can be done in there. When you're up in the upper right-hand corner, there is an option to change the workflow actions, clicking on Create New Revision. And when you do that, it actually puts a Revision 1 within the title.

And then you'd repeat the steps that you would do for creating a submittal. And it would retain the workflow that you had before. But it just has the new attachment that the general contractor would have for you to review.

And like I said, the best thing that I believe there is in regards to what ACC has, is that activity log. And as you can see down at the bottom, it says Close and Distribute. Then it said how it went through the whole system. But it's a good indication of what is going on with that submittal. And like I said, you can leave notes.

OK, now onto AutoSpec. I love AutoSpec. I was asked one time to please check into this software. And I said, oh my gosh, this is a time saver.

And like I said before, I used to take home homework where I would read a project manual, tab all the pages, and create an Excel spreadsheet. And this would take me about a week to do of reading over a thousand-page document.

So what is AutoSpec? Autodesk says that it analyzes your spec documents to create an ultra-accurate submittal register in minutes. I say it's just dump your project manual into the software, do a little shake and shimmy, then, poof, you can Create List.

The lists are required preinstall meetings, submittals that have product data, shop drawings, test reports, et cetera. You can have a list of demonstration of trainings. You can have all your closeout lists what's required for O&Ms, warranties, and as-builts.

Specifies where you can-- it specifies where the item is located with a click. And it can take you directly to where the item is in the project manual for better reference. So what it does is provides you that list. Says, OK, it's on this specification, and it's in this paragraph. And it allows you to click on it, read that paragraph so that you have a better reference material of what exactly you're requesting within that project manual.

The interesting thing I just found out, and I'm madly in love with this part, as well, is that you can select different types of submittals to create a submittal register to then publish and use and build submittal module. So what this means is that-- if you proceed to the next slide. let's see if I-- oh, I'll show it in the next few slides.

I'll explain that one. But an access can be given to a member when you add them as a member. As you can see, I've provided a little place there that if you needed to edit their member access, you can see there's a little slide bar. And also the access to the Autodesk, once the member is provided with it, it would be up where you can select the Docs, Build, Insight, and Project Admin down menu.