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Using Autodesk Construction Cloud to Break Down Communication Silos

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Descripción

Frustrated by communication breakdowns slowing down your architecture, engineering, and construction projects? Discover how Autodesk Construction Cloud can revolutionize the way your design teams collaborate. This cloud-based platform goes beyond software limitations, fostering seamless teamwork anytime, anywhere. Imagine a central hub for all project discussions, meeting minutes, and reports, keeping everyone informed and aligned with the project. Autodesk Construction Cloud streamlines workflows by automating tasks and managing documents efficiently. The result? Improved communication, boosted project efficiency, and a significant impact on your overall project delivery. In summary, this session will equip you with the knowledge to centralize communication for complete project transparency, enable real-time collaboration across disciplines, and streamline workflows for maximum project efficiency.

Aprendizajes clave

  • Describe core functionalities of Autodesk Construction Cloud for improved communication and collaboration in AEC projects.
  • Utilize Autodesk Construction Cloud to centralize document management and data sharing.
  • Identify strategies for streamlining workflows using Autodesk Construction Cloud to boost project efficiency in AEC teams.

Orador

  • Jeff Thomas III
    Jeff Thomas III is a seasoned Technology Consultant at US CAD with over 27 years of architectural experience. As a repeat speaker at Autodesk University (AU), Jeff brings a unique perspective to the industry, having earned a B.A.S. in Industrial Design. His expertise lies in developing efficient processes, guidelines, and standards to streamline design and construction projects. With a deep understanding of the Autodesk AEC Collection and Construction Cloud, Jeff has successfully implemented solutions across a variety of sectors, including retail, commercial, civic, and residential architecture. Prior to joining US CAD, he held leadership roles in design technology at architectural and multi-discipline firms in Southern California, where he developed comprehensive CAD and BIM standards and implemented various technology solutions. Jeff's extensive knowledge is complemented by his experience as an instructor and industry speaker, as well as his Revit Professional, AutoCAD Professional, and Autodesk Certified Instructor certifications.
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      Transcript

      JEFF THOMAS III: Thank you for joining Using ACC to Breakdown Communication Silos. My name is Jeff Thomas III, and we'll go ahead and get started. On the agenda today, we're going to go through an introduction. So I'll set the stage for what we're going to be talking about today, give a brief introduction as to who I am, and then once we get into it, we'll talk about what is Autodesk Construction Cloud.

      In order for us to talk about how we're going to break down those communication silos, we'll really need to set the stage as to what is Autodesk Construction Cloud. Then we'll jump into the actual meat of the presentation, which is breaking down the communication silos, centralizing document management, streamlining workflows. We'll do a bit of a case study or demo, rather, and then talk about the benefits of Autodesk Construction Cloud. And then from there, we'll go ahead and conclude and I'll open it up for questions.

      So about Jeff. Who am I? My name, as I mentioned already, is Jeff Thomas III. I'm a technology consultant here at US CAD. I have over 27 years of architectural experience. I've been married to my beautiful wife, Samatra, for a number of years, before we both went gray, as you can see in the top photo, and what we look like today. And then I have twin daughters, Ocean and Summer. Summer's married with a daughter of her own. We also have two dogs, Sasha and Styles, that we take camping every time we go camping.

      My expertise as it relates to the industry is optimizing BIM workflows, developing processes, guidelines, and standards. I have a deep understanding of software implementation, specifically as it relates to the ACC collection and Autodesk Construction Cloud. My experience also goes into successful implementations across various sectors. Leadership roles in design technology in both architectural and multi-discipline firms.

      I've developed both CAD and BIM standards over the course of my years in the industry. I also am and have been an industry speaker as well as an instructor. My certifications include Revit Professional, AutoCAD Professional, and Autodesk Certified Instructor. So let's get into the introduction. Let's just imagine for a moment that you have a project and this project has-- you've lost your plan sets or your team members are working on outdated information. Or maybe there are some critical decisions that are delayed due to miscommunication.

      What is the problem in this scenario? Well, that could be anything from siloed information, outdated processes, or a lack of transparency. What I like to call an outdated playlist. The updated playlist for us would be bringing in ACC. ACC offers comprehensive solution to these communication challenges by providing a centralized platform for collaboration, document management, and project management.

      Autodesk Construction Cloud enables AEC teams to break down communication silos, streamline workflows, and deliver projects more efficiently. Now that we've set the stage for what we're going to be talking about today, what is ACC? Or better known as Autodesk Construction Cloud. I'd like to show this slide here when I'm talking to our clients about Autodesk Construction Cloud, because it helps to understand that it's more of a platform.

      Autodesk Construction Cloud is a comprehensive, cloud based platform designed to streamline collaboration, communication, and project management for our industry, for the AEC industry. It provides centralized hub for all project related information, enabling teams to work together more efficiently and effectively. What you'll notice over to the left here is the list of products that you'll typically see that's a part of your architectural, engineering, and construction collection, your AEC collection.

      To the right of that, you're going to see BIM Collaborate Pro and then you'll see Autodesk Takeoffs and Build. What I typically like to refer to those as is BIM Collaborate Pro is on the design side of things. So during the design phase of your project, that's where all of the work would be done on that side within the platform. Takeoffs is going to be in your pre-construction phase where you're doing estimating and takeoffs. And then Build is once you get into the construction phase.

      What you'll notice when you look underneath all of those, under Docs and then Insights, this is really where we're going to be spending the bulk of our time. We're talking about the communication or breaking down those silos. You'll notice that Docs spans all three phases of the project. So it doesn't matter if you're on the design side, if you're in the pre-construction side or if you're full-on into construction with your project, you have the ability not only to deal with document control but your document versioning as well as your document approvals.

      And then there's mobile apps that you can take with you, whether an iPad or your cell phone or what have you, and access all of this content pretty much anywhere in the world at any time. The other part that you'll notice is Insight. Insight is going to be what we oftentimes refer to as the Dashboard.

      That's going to have all of the information about your project right at your hands, at your fingertips, again, whether you're talking about on a mobile device or on at your computer, where you can have access to all your reporting, all the data surrounding your project communication, as well as any of the Construction IQ, which would be the AI implementation that Autodesk has added to the platform itself. So some of the key components as it relates to ACC would include a suite of tools specifically for design collaboration, as we mentioned, project management, and field coordination.

      So if you find yourself or as you find yourself in any one of those areas within your project delivery, the suite of tools will work for you. It's a mobile friendly platform for field operations, including issues, tracking, inspections, document management, a cloud based takeoff and estimating tool that helps teams create accurate cost estimating for bids, and also a platform for subcontractor management, bid invitations, and contractor management.

      So if you think, again, of any of these, wherever you fall, this tool itself will be useful for you and your workflow. So what are we really going to talk about when we start talking about breaking down those communication silos? By implementing a tool like Autodesk Construction Cloud, you no longer have those silos where you're talking about tools that are-- whether you're talking about email and some other maybe texting app or instant messaging or any of those types of things as you're trying to communicate internally or with your external partners.

      By having everyone in the same platform in a centralized hub, you can break down some of those particular silos and focus on making sure that everybody has real time access to all of the data for the project, regardless as to whether you're talking about inside of Autodesk Docs, BIM Collaborate Pro, or Build. Again, the design side, or the construction side, doesn't matter. All of this data is real time accessible for everyone that's been granted access to the project can access at any moment that they need.

      The improved communication really goes down to looking at things like the My Home. And Insight has these various dashboards, and I will show that when we get into the show and tell of this here, where you have the ability to see everything within your project, not only from your project address to the weather on your project, whether there are any issues or RFIs or submittals that are pending or past due or even at risk of being past due, if you have any risks associated with your particular project.

      All of that information is right there at your fingertips, again, anytime, on any device, anywhere in the world. And then correspondence. Really, correspondence just is-- if you think of email archiving, there are a lot of very powerful tools out there that allow you to be able to archive your emails. One of the challenges that you'll find with some of these tools is that it doesn't necessarily always bring the email correspondence or the communication directly tied to your project.

      And so correspondence and meetings, what this does within the ACC platform, is it allows you to have a centralized location for all of your project data, regardless as to whether or not it's your Revit model, your AutoCAD file, or your email communication, or your meeting minutes, et cetera. So again, we'll talk about that as we get into the show and tell portion of that there. What does this mean, though, if we can bring all this data into a centralized location and have everybody working on the same platform?

      Well, it really speaks to consistency. It speaks about centralized document management. And consistency is important for a number of reasons. Consistency allows us to be able to ensure that we have a single source of truth. This is a word, or phrase, rather, that has been pretty much brutalized throughout our time within the industry, but there's some value in making sure that everybody understands whether or not they have the latest information when they need it.

      So having a single source of truth is great for project efficiency. And then also version control. What happens when the client reaches out and says, hey, you know that version three that we talked about four months ago? I think we want to go back and look at that. I think we want to bring that up and maybe do a comparison between that and our current version.

      Well, within the platform, you can easily do that. You can look at every version that you've ever created for the project and compare it to your current state and see how that compares, whether or not you want to restore that as being the current version, or just do a comparison and some kind of mash up of the two. What else does centralizing document management and consistency ultimately bring? It brings us the ability to automate processes. If we are consistent with the way that we do things, then we can start to automate some of these processes.

      When you look at it from a programming perspective, we need standards, we need consistent locations, we need consistent naming conventions, those types of things, to be able to automate processes. And then the platform in and of itself brings also just some automation within it where you can be automatically notified of changes, you can track certain things, you can run clash detections automatically, those types of things. So there's a lot of automation that's already built into the platform, but you can absolutely expand on that.

      So when we go from there, we're really talking about getting into workflow efficiencies and streamlining our workflows. And one of the things that I like to talk about when we talk about streamlining workflows, oftentimes we look at it from a project perspective, let's say our design workflow, how we go about designing. But what about how we go about managing our tasks, how we go about tracking our issues.

      When we think about being consistent and streamlining workflows, one of the biggest bottlenecks that we'll often run into is we're not quite sure who's responsible for what, when, and where, and whether or not they did it. And there's often this debate about who's tracking that information. Did you take notes or did this person take notes? Well, we have the ability within the platform to create issues to track all of those things.

      We can track who's responsible for it, when it's due, if there's other individuals that need to review the content. All of these things can be done directly within the platform. So being able to develop workflows that work around the way that ACC is structured is going to be hugely beneficial in breaking down those communication silos, making sure that everybody understands what goes on, when it's due, who's doing it, and how it needs to be done.

      And again, when we have that consistency, then we can start to automate some of the reporting. There's issue tracking reporting. We can create reports of which company has issues open, which company's created the most issues during a specific phase of the project, all of those types of things, so now that we can have a more in-depth conversation with that organization to address whatever those issues were. Maybe there was some concerns about clarity and understanding or something like that that we can start to mitigate if we have those conversations early and often.

      So we'll go ahead and jump into an overview of the platform, and I'll show you how it's all connected. I'm not going to necessarily get into all the details of the platform, but we'll just jump into the communication related pieces and how that's all connected. What you'll notice here is you'll see Insight. Insight is the module that I'm on here. You'll see my home and a few other modules down here if you look over here to the top left. But we're in the Insight module, and this is where we're going to find my dashboard.

      These dashboards are completely customizable, but one of the things that I wanted to point out is that, by default, when you first open it up, you're going to have your My Dashboard. It'll have your project address. It'll have your site weather. It'll talk about or display if there's any potential quality risk, if you have any potential safety risk, things like that. And you can see this particular project has a low adoption risk, meaning that people aren't adopting the platform.

      So we can start to look at some of these particular risks and start to hone in on some of the more detailed information. We can look at our safety issues and see that two of them have been completed, two are in progress, and 20 of them are open. So we have 20 open issues that likely need to be addressed. I'm going to go back to my dashboard for a second and look at some of these others. We have our project issues. So if there are any issues that we tagged as we created them as project related issues, they'll show up here, any ones that are RFIs or submittals, and then open RFIs and submittals will show up here as well.

      And then any ones that we tagged as design related issues or design packages will show up here. And then I'm going to go ahead and switch over to risk. When we go there, you're going to start to see this is basically going to give us some insight into where our project might be at risk, whether we have water risk issues, overdue issues. You can see that that's red, so it's letting us know that's a major issue.

      If it's a low risk, it'll usually be green. If it's a medium risk, if you will, it'll be yellow, and then red would be a high risk. We can see if we have issues that are code compliance issues, critical component issues or documentation, incomplete issues, overdue issues, or overdue reviews. There are some documentations we submitted for review and it's overdue. If we wanted to look at the code compliance one, for instance, if we click on that, it'll show us all the ones that have been tagged, essentially, as being a code compliance issue.

      And we can switch between the document and complete issues. And to go back to the code compliance issues, let's say that I want to look at that issue directly. I can go ahead and click that and then see what's going on with this particular issue. In a quick view, if I want to get into more detail as I'm reviewing it as a project manager or an executive, I can go ahead and click on that link, and it will take me in the platform directly to that specific issue for us to see exactly what's going on there.

      So you'll notice now, right here, it's showing me that specific issue, number 136, that I clicked on. I can see that it's an ADA issue, and I can see that it's a design deficiency issue. And I can start to look at any of the commentary that may have been added by the person that submitted the issue and be able to track all that information here as well. I'm going to go over to the Build tab here.

      And when I go over to the Build tab, you'll notice that there's two other links over to the side that I want to talk about. I'm going to talk about all of these, but I wanted to mention meetings and then correspondence. For meetings, if I want to create a meeting, I would simply go ahead and select that. And I'm going to go ahead and do one from a template because we can set up templates for our meetings so that if we have recurring meetings or certain style of, let's say order in how we do our meetings-- maybe we're going to talk about this same subjects at each meeting for our particular project.

      We can go ahead and have that weekly coordination meeting, for instance. And then you'll notice that each of these sections, or what Autodesk likes to refer to as topics, each of these sections here allows us to be able to keep track of, OK, at the beginning of the meeting, we're going to talk about the project schedule, then we're going to talk about site coordination, and then we're going to talk about potential schedule impact, and so on and so forth. We can add a link to our, whether Zoom or Teams meeting, or whatever platform you're using for your virtual meetings.

      We can also add a location like we would typically do. Time and date up here as well. And then you can provide a description for your meeting over to the far right. We can select our attendees and invite them. If we wanted to invite attendees, we can invite attendees that are either members or non-members so we can invite people that are part of the project, or we can add individuals to the meeting that are not a part of the project. So they can be invited to the meeting and join the meeting without having to have access to the platform.

      Our references. If we have any documents or anything that we want to attach as reference documentation, whether it's one of the reports we will be talking about a little later, you can do that if it's a specific file or a sheet or anything like that. We can add that information to the meeting as well, and then any additional items will show up here once the meeting starts. If we add a line item, let's say we want to talk about delays. We want to talk about meeting delays or something like that. We can go ahead and select that. This is an open topic.

      And then I want to assign that to myself here. And so now I'll get a notification. This allows me to be able to be the responsible party for that particular topic, whether you decide in your meeting that I'm going to be the one that's responsible for taking care of that issue that we discussed in the meeting, or maybe I'm going to be the one that's talking about that particular issue in the meeting, or both. You can have that information assigned to me. We can also put a due date on there if we'd like.

      We could attach documents if we want to upload or drag and drop them here. And then lastly, we can add references, as we talked about before, where we can start to add RFIs or submittals, or if there was a particular issue that had to do with project delay or something like that, we can go ahead and select those respective issues and attach them to this particular topic here.

      One of the interesting things about this is that when we're looking at all of this and we're talking about communication, how does this all relate to communication, well, obviously, when we're talking about meetings, we're talking about communicating with our project partners. But the other thing that's really interesting to me is that all of your correspondence and communication can be tied directly to your project data. So you'll notice that we're not talking about issues and how they're set up, but we are talking about being able to bring those issues into our communication and tie it directly back to our project.

      Once the meeting is over, you can easily go ahead and switch that into, instead of a meeting, it can be your meeting minutes. And I'll just go ahead and click on some of these. I believe this one here. You'll notice that we have our meeting agenda and then we have our meeting minutes that can then be shared out with the rest of the team there. I'm going to go down to correspondence, and for correspondence, the interesting thing about this is that every single project has a project email.

      So once I go here, the very first thing that I would usually tell people to do on the project is to go to this file from email, select project email address, and then copy that and paste it into your email correspondence. So in Outlook or whatever email platform you're using, anytime you're sending out an email that's specifically related to the projects that you want to capture, you just add that to the CC field for that particular project. And then that information, if it's sent out via whatever other email platform you're using, it'll show up here within the correspondence tool within the platform.

      That allows us to be able to track any communication that's specifically project related. And you can see from my colleague Brian here, he actually sent this directly from Outlook. If I'd like, I can go ahead and respond to this here, to Brian, and literally just say, this is my response, and add any attachments if I'd like, whether I'm choosing files from the computer or from the project to address that particular communication or issue that Brian has had with this particular project.

      And I can go ahead and do that and then hit Send, and that correspondence will now be a part of this thread here. If you have ones that have multiple threads, you'll notice that it has this arrow here.

      So that just shows that there are multiple responses within there, and you can go ahead and see that. It allows you to be able to show not only your ID but whatever the correspondence, just like your email, I think your subject, and the first few lines of whatever the email thread is, whether or not it has any attachments, who it was from, who the recipients are, the sent date, and then if there's a status or due date that's been associated with it, that information will be there as well.

      Lastly, in here, I'd like to just talk to the schedules a little bit. Again, not going to get into all the detail here, but you can have multiple schedules within your project. And then when you go into the schedule, if you're familiar with your traditional Gantt chart, this is where you're going to be able to create that. And this one, in particular all of your task items here, and then your specific task duration, whether there are any overlap so that they're running concurrently or whether they start and stop at the end of any completed task as well.

      And you can look at them via day, week, month, or quarter or year. So if you wanted to get into more detail, you can look at it on a daily and start to look at those tasks that way. All right. So let me go ahead and go back to my PowerPoint here. All right. So now that I'm back at the PowerPoint, we're going to go ahead and talk about some of the benefits. What are the benefits?

      The benefits of Autodesk Construction Cloud include enhanced collaboration. Autodesk Construction Cloud fosters a real time collaboration among team members, regardless of their location or role. The platform provides a centralized hub for communication, ensuring everyone is on the same page and reducing misunderstandings. By automating tasks and streamlining processes, Autodesk Construction Cloud helps teams work more efficiently and effectively.

      The platform provides access to real time data and analytics, enabling teams to make informed decisions based on accurate information. This is where you're going to have your data driven decision making. By reducing errors, eliminating manual tasks, Autodesk Construction Cloud can significantly improve project efficiency. And if all of this, all of the aforementioned benefits are done, or if you receive or complete these benefits, then what that really leads to is that's going to be talking about things like reduced errors and rework.

      It's going to be talking about cost savings, being able to save money and time by not having to do redo the work or do rework, if you will. And with that, we'll go ahead and talk about our conclusion. In summary, basically we talked about Autodesk Construction Cloud providing a centralized platform for all project managers, breaking down communication silos. The platform enables real time collaboration among team members, improving efficiency, and reducing misunderstandings, as we talked about earlier.

      Autodesk Construction Cloud automates tasks and streamlines processes, leading to increased efficiencies and cost savings. The platform fosters improved communication and transparency, ensuring everyone is on the same page. Again, going back to that consistency. Autodesk Construction Cloud provides access to real time data-- again, the data driven decision making-- and analytics, enabling team members to make informed decisions.

      So what's the call to action? What's next? My hope is that from this, what you'll do is you'll explore the platform in a little more detail, specifically as it relates to communication and your workflow management, if you will. Not necessarily the design workflow, but the auxiliary parts of what we do, whether we're talking about managing RFIs, managing submittals, correspondence, et cetera.

      And then you'll discuss it, have some internal discussions about what does that mean for you and your organization, and then finally, reach out. My QR code is there with my contact information here at US CAD, and I'd be more than happy to assist you with any questions you might have about how to implement this at your organization.