How We Transformed Our Closeout Process with Autodesk Construction Cloud

TIM KELLEHER: Hello, everyone. My name is Tim Kelleher. I'm the operational standards and innovation manager at Brinkman Construction. Today, I'm going to share with you a case study we've gone through that shows how we've transformed our closeout practices with Autodesk Construction Cloud.

Before we get into the details of this presentation, I kind of wanted to give you an agenda of what we were going to cover today. First, we're going to start with the background of where we started, kind of what things looked like before we had Autodesk Construction Cloud, the setup of how we got to it from our old process to using Autodesk Construction Cloud tools for our closeout processes, how we manage closeout throughout the entire project. Ad then towards the end, we're going to hit on some of the specifics on our closeout processes and some of the lessons learned that we've learned as we've gone through this process and this transformation.

So before we get into too much, I wanted to introduce who we are at Brinkman Construction. So Brinkman Construction, we've been around since 2005. We're on the front range of Colorado. We do projects from Cheyenne, Wyoming, south to Colorado Springs-- don't really venture too much far outside of that geographic region.

We focus mostly on multifamily, office, health, retail, industrial, and senior living projects. And one of the things that we're really proud of that's unique to us is we're 100% employee-owned. That really shines through in what we're going to share today is our people care. We really want to not only do what's best for us as a company, but that transmits to our owners and our trade partners to make sure we're taking care of everyone else around us.

All right, so today in the class, too-- I want to make sure we get this out of the way-- is cover the learning objectives. So the first thing is we're going to learn how we apply the Issues module to close up lessons and transition into punch list of project. We're going to see how Autodesk helps us do 90% of our punch lists without typing.

We're going to go through some of the tips and tricks that Pype close out offers us to make sure that we can do our close out and close out documents as smoothly as possible while saving lots of time. It does say weeks, and that is correct.

And the last thing is we're going to try to make sure we show as much as we can on how the tools allow us to collaborate with all the partners we work with on our jobs so that everything we're doing is visible and real-time for everyone that we're seeing. So with that, we're going to go ahead and jump around.

So we are newer to the Autodesk world for project management. A few years ago, we were in a position where we had a project management platform and a lot of different bolt-on solutions to get us everything we needed from a software perspective. What made this really hard for us was, one, we had to train users on a lot of different pieces of software. And we also had a lot of spreadsheets that it took to communicate between our different systems and allow everything to communicate like we needed and get us to fill the gaps in the spots where we were missing things. And this just wasn't working for us.

And so what we determined is we need to define one platform that could do as much as possible. We went through a discovery process. We tested a lot of different pieces of software and ended up having our users test a couple of different platforms side by side and ended up selecting Autodesk to be our project management platform.

While we were going through that process of trying to figure out what we wanted and ensuring which platform was going to be the right one for us, we also identified a lot of our needs as a company. And one of the things that really came up for us, especially in comments from some of our clients, was that we really needed [INAUDIBLE].

We were doing a good job on jobs during the whole construction process. But then when we got towards the end, we just needed to improve the way we finished up. And so what that did is it put us in a position where we had a really clear goal of what we needed to do. And then we had these new tools coming in place. And so that really put us in a position to tailor our implementation around what was going to help us as a business the most.

And so when we went through our implementation process, the first thing we did was we drew a line in the sand-- said, hey, all new projects to start after this date will be in Autodesk. But the projects that had already been going on, we gave them an option. We said, hey, look, whatever you guys think makes the most sense for you, we can roll all of your project over at Autodesk build from our old platforms, or maybe just parts and pieces. And unanimously, all of our project teams wanted to have their projects built.

Some of them even went back through and pulled all their old information. So it was a really confirming situation for us. It's like, OK, look, we've got a good platform here. We also had new training to help supplement that platform with our new expectations.

And so what that really did is it set us up to, one, to have as few platforms as possible for improving our closeout process. That was something we really wanted to do. We didn't want people bouncing around between lots of different spreadsheets and different pieces of software to manage it. We tried to simplify and make things as easy as possible. Closeout is a very difficult part of the project. And so we wanted to make sure that it was as easy as it could be and let the complications live within the challenges in the field rather than the software.

Visibility is obviously a big piece for us, a part of this-- making sure that we know what's open, what's closed, what's done, what's not done at the end of the job. And there's just so many things happening at the same time. And so visibility was a key part of that for us.

And the last part was really important, just making sure that we knew we weren't going to get it all right the first time. And so we worked through it and worked out the bugs. And we just continuously modified and improved and got to the point-- so what we're going to show today of this is what we've found is the best way for us to use these tools to help the end of our projects to close out them out.

So the first thing I'm going to do is we're going to start and talk about this [INAUDIBLE]. And so one of the things you'll notice on this slide is it's titled "Precon and Setup." And I'm sure a lot of people are like, wait a second, this is the closeout class. Why are we talking about precon?

And I don't know what your company is like, but we took a straw poll around our office. And pretty much everybody that has worked for another company, their company had a similar version of a quote like this. "Successful closeout starts at the beginning of a project." So based on the research we've done, which is extremely limited, everybody in the industry has a similar mantra or quotes like this-- is "we work really hard to start closeout at the beginning of the job."

And we actually think that's true. Starting with closeout in mind at the beginning of the project is very important. And so when you think about closeouts, too, really, we kind of ended up ripping it into four main buckets of tools and tasks that we needed to maintain on the job. So when we start talking through the setup that we're going to start at the early parts of the job, these are the four main tasks, the buckets, I guess, of tasks that we see that a project needs to have and how they translate into the tools in Autodesk.

So the first thing is Task Management Outstanding Items. A lot of things go into this. It does seem kind of broad. But the way the Issues module and Autodesk works, that is actually a really good relationship between the two. Requirement Discovery/Extraction-- Auto Specs and Smart Plans-- this is really just the idea that we are figuring out what we need to do, what's going to be the end result at the project so that we can keep those things in mind as we're working through that. And Auto Specs and Smart Plans are our tool to make sure we're getting that information out as reliably as possible and as completely as possible.

The closeout log, this is really specific to an operations maintenance manual is what we call it-- has only warranties. Pype Closeout's the tool we use for that. It does a really good job of pulling all that information and compiling it and getting it out to our subs. So collaborate so we can compile it at the end and get it to the owner.

And the last piece of this is the QA/QC requirement tracking, and we use assets for that. And this is just all the little things, inspections, and types of things we have to do during a job that is really important to be able to deliver the result at the end. And so we're going to go through them in this order of how we set these four tools up, and the little things we found that makes them a lot more successful and really cuts down on the work it takes to manage these four buckets of tasks that are in your closeout process.

So with Issues-- Issues is really important to set up early and start using right away. One of the things we've found with Issues is that it's just a really good place to put all of your questions, all the things you don't understand in one spot, And So we can make sure that those questions do get answered and are resolved in the timely manner. It's one of the things that we did discover, evaluate were we closeout is the longer things were out there, the more likely they were to be completely forgotten until it was too late, and it was a big problem.

So specific to closeout, these are the main Issues types that we focus on. And the really important one that is important is design reviews. As our Precon teams are starting to work through a job, they're going to find questions. Things are going to come up.

And so our instruction to them is, you know what? If you have a question, if things you don't understand, put it on a list. It might be an issue or it might not. But it's much easier to have something on a list and determine later that it's not something you need to complete rather than, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. I was going to do something about it. And then by the time you discover that it is a problem, it's too late.

These other tool parts of this within outstanding work-- pre-punch list, punchlist, warranty-- these are all things we do track in Issues. Doesn't occur as much at the beginning of the job, but there's just a lot of value in making sure that we are used to using the same tool, and that our teams have practice with it.

The other thing that's really important with this-- and we're going to hit on this in a little bit-- is putting Issues on sheets. The drawings are the lifeblood of many of our projects. And so having the information out there visible of what we're working through as a potential issue on our job or a problem, or whatever it might be, is really important for everyone to see what's going on.

So the challenge with this, though, that we-- I'm going to talk about here next-- is how do we organize all this different information and make sure that it's manageable? So this is primarily done with an issue types in Autodesk.

And this is like when you're setting up your job, make sure you really understand how your issue types work. This video here kind of shows what the Issue types look like. In Autodesk, this list does look a little long. And I think as you get into this, you'll understand why we ended up in this position with it.

The Issues can be set up from a template, which is really helpful. So whatever you set up in your template, every job you create from that template has the same set of issue types.

When we first started doing this, we really wanted to simplify this as much as we could. So the first stab I took at creating issue types, we consolidated and moved things together and took a lot of these where you can see they're marked as active or inactive. We put a lot of them down as inactive just to make sure that list was as short and simple as possible.

So that was our main goal. We wanted it to be quick. We want it to be easy. We didn't want people to have to choose from 15 different lists and items on a list to make sure-- to find the right category for how they were going to track something. So everything you see with the padlock on that screen was part of that.

What we found, though, was to get these dashboards to work within the Insights module and to pull information like we wanted them to, the categories had to match up a little bit with Autodesk's designation than what we wanted. And so rather than going through a lot of custom reporting and the Power BI side of things, we wanted these base reports to work really well. So we ended up having to spend more time to get these to line up where they were supposed to be. And that is the safety example.

But it just goes to show how everything works together and how Autodesk has it programmed to work automatically. So make sure you understand how that works before you go too far into customizing everything and rolling it out and training people on it. That was one we narrowly missed and would have been pretty tough to manage had we not.

For the next really important thing with the Issues is issue templates. So we saw that big list of issue types. And there is a lot of information that gets put into these Issues. As part of our process when we were studying what's important with us during the closeout process, we actually took a couple punch lists from a job and our deficient work lists, trended all the Issues in Power BI, and found out that the majority of our problems were, like, 10 different things that just occurred over and over and over again.

And so this is where Issues are super powerful, as you can-- and be a little creative with it. Figure out, maybe if you can be slightly vague with your descriptions and your titles. And then we can use these same Issues and the same descriptions over and over through a template. So an issued template, it fills out all of these fields you see on the screen automatically by creating from the template in the Issues module or dropping a pin on a sheet from the Issues module.

A couple things you'll notice here is we're adding companies in. It's assigned to rather than people. That is really important because that way, it doesn't get stuck in one person's inbox. Everybody knows about it. Make sure you leave the location field blank. I'll show you why in a minute.

And then this last piece is really important where it shows you how you can put in a dynamic due date. So no matter what, I put a 14 in. So two weeks after we create this, it's going to have a due date. And it's just really helps a lot.

That way you don't have to fill out all those fields every time. And if you're careful with it a little strategic-- you can get creative-- you can use that for multiple situations. Something we've even toyed with a little bit is leaving an assigned to out. And so there's some things-- adjust trim is a great example that could apply to a lot of different companies and a lot of different trades.

So all you have to do is input a different responsible company when you're creating your punch list so that way it gets assigned to them, but everything else can remain the same. So an opportunity there to save a lot of work, a lot of typing, and a lot of clicks.

One thing that I do want to make sure is really important with this-- you don't need templates day one on a job to set up. We can create an issue. You can track things, I mean, really for a few months on a job if you really needed to without having any templates set up.

But this does help with getting really good, complete information from your field teams into the system so they don't have to type as much. And so we see everything from QA/QC items, pre-punch punch lists. Our warranty manager will even use it occasionally. So it's a really cool tool.

You do have to create them all individually, which is a bit of a bummer. Ideally, we would like to see this someday. We put it in a feature request so that we can create all of these issue types from a template, which would be much, much easier. So we have a little cheat sheet where we know what they all are. So that would be something we would like to see in the future. Hopefully, we will get there.

So one thing that's really important next is using the location. So this is going to show you how you set up locations. You're going to want to pull in the list of all the locations you're going to use on a project. You want to be a little creative with this to make sure you have every location you need in there. You don't want too many, but not too few. You can import them from a spreadsheet, which is really important.

And once you get that list in there, from that list, you can go ahead and create these boundaries for where that space lives now. And what's really nice about this is when you drop an issue pin inside that space on a sheet-- so you can see right here on the sheet where that is located-- it actually pre-populates the location field for you.

So really helpful with punch lists. That way, we can just a pin. It knows where it's at on your sheets, and really eliminates trying to make sure you get everything located very clearly. Plus there's a physical pin shown on the sheet so you know exactly where you're at.

Now, just a couple things to consider with this one-- locations are a lot of work. We're aware of that. It's also something that doesn't need to be set up day one on your project. So it's something we wait till we know a project is really close to construction to really start considering to do it.

One thing I will say is it's easier to carve the time out at the beginning of a job rather than towards the end. The other thing that I think is really important to consider is where are you going to put your locations on your sheets? I would not advocate doing this on every single sheet in your drawing. That's just too much work. You would spend so much time drawing boundaries on sheets that you would never see any benefit from the amount of time it would take.

So we picked a couple main categories where we like to draw locations. I mean, obviously your main architectural floor is the example here. That's a really good place to do it. It's easy to keep track of where things are at on that sheet. Elevations are also a really good spot, especially working on things on the exterior of a building that helps a lot to drive those locations, maybe even a structural drawing.

But don't go crazy because it is a time commitment. It's worth it, but you can go overboard really easily, especially within rooms. In a multifamily building, do you want to draw in every closet and bedroom? Or do you just want to have, overall unit?

Those are decisions you need to make for your team for what makes the most sense for your project. So just something to go into and be intentional about. Make sure you know how that's going to work so that when you get there, you don't regret spending too much time on setting this up.

So really quick, I just want to highlight a couple of these big benefits. When you have Issues set up in this way, it automatically brings in your design team and your trade partners. When you put somebody onto an issue, they're going to see it. And that's really helpful.

It's amazing how quick people will pick up the collaborative features within Issues. We didn't cover a lot of that. When you go through your onboarding training, a lot of that should be there. But it's just making sure that they can see what's going on. And if they're communicating back and forth through the system, everybody can see what's happening. And It happens pretty naturally through the system.

Having items on sheets is really important. I mean, anything that's unresolved-- if it's going to be visible in Issues, it's going to be visible in sheets. And that's really helpful because that way, we don't forget about things.

One of the main complaints we do get about this setup is that if there's a lot of open Issues on a job, people can be like, hey, my sheets are covered in Issues. What's the problem/ It's like, well, you have a lot of problems on your job you probably need to pay some more attention to.

The last part of this that's really important is, specifically with design reviews, if you're working through things with an architect or design team, if they issue a new set of sheets, we will place those in our sheets module. But the old M will appear on the new sheets where they were on the old sheets. So it gives us a really clear opportunity to double check the new design against the previous issue. And it makes it a lot easier to figure out whether something was resolved or not or if was a [INAUDIBLE] or whatever it was. But it just really makes that process a lot easier for our teams. Instead of having to thumb through like two or three different sheets and do compares, it's a really important thing.

And just to make sure this is 100% clear, we can use sheets and Issues without templates and locations. Especially early on in the job when you're not going to have those set up, that's totally fine. It's still worth it to us to go ahead and start using this system without those tools set up. Obviously, the sooner you can get it set up, the better. But you don't have to do it right away and still get a lot of benefit out of it.

While we're going through and doing our study of the job at the beginning, we always use AutoSpecs and SmartPlans. AutoSpecs and SmartPlans are really great tools to gather a lot of information out of your drawings really early in the job.

Both of these do tend to get slanted towards being a [INAUDIBLE]. A lot of project teams originally thought that they were submitted. This is how you get your submittal log out of the drawings. And that's true. But as we've played with these more and realized there's a lot more to these tools than that.

So I'm going to start with AutoSpecs a little bit. And by the way, I always start with Spec vie. The smart register's great and it's really cool, but Spec View's where it's at from my perspective. And you can see-- so the first thing you'll notice is when we go through and start messing with these filters, everything is defaulted towards pulling some of this out.

And so I like to go through and pull that off to make sure that we can see everything else that is going on with our jobs. And so I kind of have a couple different views here of how that works. But you can really do a good job of pulling out everything else you need from your spec book, from submittals with this tool.

So this is going to show an example where we were pulling some water tests, and then we'll go to mockups here next of different things that we will pull out of a mill. And so this is a great example. So in this one, it missed that we had to do sample panels, which probably is a mockup, but didn't get that.

So this tool allows us, as we're reviewing our specs at the beginning of the job, to get every requirement we're going to need, whether it's submittals, whether it's closeout, whether it's a QA/QC, whatever. Pull this stuff out of your submittal log or out of this tool so that you have more than a submittal log. You have everything you need to complete the job.

And then when you're ready to get the information out of the system, you can filter what's visible to-- and that actually will help you export out only what you need. So you're not stuck with a 5,000-item list of every single thing in the job when all you really want is submittals, or all you want is quality control.

It's really important to make sure that you're clear on that. And then, just like with the sumbittal side of it, you have to go through. You have to combine things. You have to look at it and make sure it makes sense. Some things can be combined. Some things, maybe you need a couple extra lines on.

And that just takes the human to read it and make sure they understand what the specs are, the drawings are requiring them to do rather than just trusting the system automatically. It's really good at pulling information out, but we still have to make sure we know what it is.

And so with SmartPlans, it's a real similar process here. I mean, this isn't in the main platform yet. I'm just hopeful that it will be someday. But again, looks through all of our drawings. It grabs notes and pulls out deliverables from these. And by default, it does focus on submittal stuff. We make sure that we adjust the filters to look at everything that's going to be listed in your drawings as a deliverable. And this job's a really good example because we actually did have a spec section buried in our general notes page on this sheet. And you'll see that as we dive through here.

This is really valuable, one, because it does grab a lot of good information from your drawings. Equally as important to me is it shows you where the notes in the drawings are because finding and reading all your general notes through an entire set of drawings, sometimes it's hard to find all of them. If there's something tucked away in a corner you might miss, I feel this is a good tool to help get those out.

And then like we do in AutoSpecs, it gives you the ability to sort and filter. So we can pull this information out to use later. And we're going to be doing this anyway at the beginning of the job to make sure we find our submittals. Maybe you're using it for products or something else. Make sure you look at closeout and all the other requirements, too. It's easy to do while you're in there and makes your life a lot better at the end of the job.

So now we've got a system to track all of our loose ends and the things that come up on our jobs. We know how to get information out of this system. And granted, we want to make sure this is extra clear. SmartPlans and AutoSpecs gets information. We still have to review it and make sure that it's accurate, but it's way better than typing and trying to have to search for it all.

Now, we get to start figuring out how to put those in a system where we can keep track of it. The first one I want to start out with is closeout. Pype Closeout is great. It really makes a lot of gathering your closeout documents simple and easy to find.

A couple of key things I want to hit on here at the beginning of the job is there's a lot of flexibility in how you get information into Pype Closeout. You can use their spec tool, which works very similar to AutoSpecs. They have it, input everything automatically for you. That works.

We can import from a spreadsheet. So if you get the information out of AutoSpecs and SmartPlans, you can pull that in. You can import your own list if you have a list of internal items you want to put in. There's a lot of flexibility there. So do whatever makes the most sense for you and your company.

Include specifications and drawing requirements-- very important. There we covered that already. And as you're starting to build this out, you got to keep the end in mind. Do you have phase turnovers? Are you going to have turnover your project in, like, four or five different sections? Are there are different areas you need to consider?

Scopes of work and how you buyout your job and the subs you have are is really important. So if you have multiple subs performing work out of the same spec section, you're probably going to need to duplicate those items. So just some things to think through as we go through that.

This closeout section, this kind of shows you what it looks like. Again, we want to make sure this is as clear, easy to follow as possible. But you can see right here, this is how we like to break things apart. And you'll notice we do have a couple spots here where we've duplicated stuff, makes it a lot easier to manage.

At the beginning of the job, you just want this to-- it's a little bit more than a dumping ground. It's a structured dumping ground. You want to get all of those documents and things you know you're going to have to deliver set up, ready to go, but you don't want to put a ton of time into your log yet. But we do feel it's important to get it set up early because, as you run through the beginning phases of your project, and you start having subs that are in the beginning of the project that are done really early-- I think maybe concrete or an excavator or foundation and waterproofing subcontractors or trade partners-- they're going to be done really early in the beginning of the project.

And it's a lot easier to get all their closeout documentation early. Make sure they meet all the requirements while they're still engaged with the job, rather than having to come back months or a year plus later to try and get that information with them. They've already forgotten about the job. So really helpful to be proactive there and have that set up so that when those things and situations arise, you can have a place to put them so where you don't lose it.

Last one is assets. And so this is similar-- like we talked earlier. These are the things we haven't covered yet. These are the ongoing things you have to keep track of that we want to make sure we don't forget about that we have to have proof of at the end of the job.

An example what doing here-- this is how I would create a line item for concrete third-party visual testing. We did put some customizations in here about to track this in a way that makes the most sense for us, but your company is going to have different needs. And so you just need to determine what those are.

What I like about it, though, is it puts everything in a list where everybody in our team can see it, and we know it's out there. Showing right here you can import from a spreadsheet. This is the preferred method to do it. You'll click. Import it, takes it a minute, and then you have your entire list.

And so this would be a list that I pulled out of Pype, closed out. Or Pype [INAUDIBLE] close up, sorry, AutoSpecs or Pype SmartPlans. But it gives you an idea of how we can put all the information we need in here, have it visible for our teams so we know what testing, what needs we have coming up.

Also good to compare with the owner, make sure that they're on the same page for what you're going to be doing for all your third party inspections and testing. And really the big buckets we want to make sure we get at the beginning of the job. That way everybody's moving in the same direction. We're ready to go, and have a tracking system in place that we can maintain through the rest of the job.

So that's really the focus of the next section here is like, all right, now we're going in the job. We're set up. How do we keep the ball rolling? And so within Issues, this is a really big, important thing to do. You got to keep up with it. I mean, it's really easy to start putting design questions in the work with your design team in there. And keep up with it.

Make sure that as things come up during the job, get your trade partners in there. Make sure the design teams are in there. Keep everybody up to date in the system, build strong habits so that they're used to using the system. And then if things come up, if somebody is not good with mobile technology, or they don't have an account or whatever, it's a lot easier to deal with a lot of these challenges earlier in the job so that way, when we get to the end, when these challenges are really impactful, we have a plan and know how to get around it.

The other thing that's real important with keeping top of things is these dashboards; or those [INAUDIBLE] are really good. Making sure you know if things are open. If they're not, keeping establishing that expectation that, hey, if we put something on a list and you're notified of it, you need to resolve this. It's important for us. It's important for you. It's important for everyone on the job.

And so this is a great tool to make sure these things don't slip through the cracks. These insight dashboards that are built by default are really good starting place. Some of the custom stuff you can do through the executive overviews worth looking into as well. Don't have any examples of that.

The next thing that's really important here is the Power BIs I would think. So Power BIs, it's a lot more advanced than what a traditional user can do, and I get that. But Autodesk makes it easy. These templates are pre-built, so this is an example of an Issues template that's pre-built by Autodesk. So there's a lot of filters and things built in by default.

And if you haven't messed with it, you don't know how to do it. When I first started with Power BI, what I did was I took this class. It's Microsoft's Dashboard in a Day. It's a free class they offer. It gives you a decent background of how Power BI works, how it grabs data, how it exports things out, how you can publish it, how you can use it.

So this is a good way to get started. This is the link. It is usually put on by a partner who's looking to sell services that they offer. So something to keep in mind there. Still worth it in my mind.

See how it works in a day. You're up and running. And you can grab data and maybe even mess with it a little bit and change visuals around to get what you need. This is really a great tool to use.

So there's a lot of information out there on how to set this up. We don't have time to cover that today, but very, very important way you can use to really start driving Issues on your jobs and know what's happening.

So we talked a little bit about assets earlier. Assets are very important to keep track of all these little things. So this is an example. It's actually a real example from one of our jobs of a QA/QC log that we use.

And so what we challenge our teams to do is, one, pull this up every week with your meeting with your team. We're going to meet. We're going to talk together. Let's make sure we've got the right things on the list. Are we done with the right things? If there's something coming up we need to prepare for? Make sure that we're ready for it.

And then whenever we're doing quality tasks, if there's an inspection, or if we have to take photos, or whatever it is, we really challenge our teams. Put it as a reference to that item. That way we know it happened. It's really clear what those inspection forms tie to. And it makes it a lot easier to understand what's done and what's not done, especially on a bigger job where you've got lots of people working on things together really makes that a lot simpler, and it drives that visibility.

And our internal teams can work through it together. This is something maybe we-- we don't have any of our external partners in it yet, but that's something we could totally do if we get to a position where that would be necessary.

The other thing that I like to start introducing during the phase of the project are these scheduled reports. So this is a report that Autodesk has. It's built in the system. It's not the most clear what it does. So you'll see there's this assigned item by company line on the top.

And this is a template that's built in the report section automatically, and you can schedule it. What's pretty cool about this report-- and it depends on what kind of parameters you put on the template and how you schedule it-- is it will actually generate all of these individual reports that are a list of outstanding items grouped by company. And it takes that report specific to each company and sends it to them.

So this is a great example. So we had one instance on a job-- and this is a real job that we use this one-- where all of these subcontractors had outstanding items on that they needed to complete. And it can be anything. It can be deficient work. It can be punch lists, whatever you want it to be.

And so whenever this report runs, it sends them this PDF with everything in it. And you can get copied on it as well. So you know what they're doing. Really makes communicating out outstanding Issues very clear and concise. It's really easy. It doesn't take a lot of work on our end.

And even if your trade partners are not using Autodesk, it's a PDF that they can download. And even if they're not-- the guys in the office aren't involved in what's going on in the field, they see it. And so it just creates a lot more visibility and communicates really clearly what's going on in the job, what we need, and helps everybody be in the loop. It's a really powerful tool.

And if we have to print it off for them because they show up-- they don't have an iPad; they don't know how to use a build-- we can just run this report really quick, and they're done, ready to go and you can get going. So I feel like this is a cheat to make sure that you're getting a really good information to the subs.

All right, so we've been doing all that for the course of the job. We've got teams in a position where they're comfortable with Issues. The subcontractors are used to responding to them. We're driving Issues to close soon.

So now we're at the point towards the end of the job is where we're jumping into punch. And so I've got a video teed up here that's going to show how we use punch lists on our iPads. And so a couple little disclaimers on this video. One, this video is raw. It's completely unedited. I just wanted to show how fast we can create Issues on our iPad.

So the first issue that it creates here, or that I created on this iPad, was one where a template didn't apply. So we had a unique situation where something came up on a job that we had to create a punch list item that wasn't a part of our template. So that doesn't happen occasionally. 5% to 10% of the items is what we typically see.

And so we had a piece of missing base on this. And so you'll see, I grabbed my type. I put in the description, assigned it to the company. And so you scroll to the bottom of the list, which is a bummer. It goes pretty quick, though. And then take a picture of what's going on.

And there it is. There's the base, a little shaky. But again, this is a real punch list item. And I click it. It uploads the picture, and I'm done. And then we go to the next slide.

So these next two items that we run in our punch list do come from templates. So you'll see we'll go over to find where that issue is on the sheet. We'll grab the issue pen. We'll flip over to templates. It is searchable, which is really helpful.

So we have a drywall issue, drywall touch-up, mark on the sheet where the problem is. You'll see the description, the companies. Everything's filled out that we want. It'd find it, take a picture. Again, a little shaky, but that's me. And now we're done.

And then last, we've got an issue with the cabinet door here. So we go. We blue tape it. And it's scratched on the door. So we'll look. It's like, oh, is there scratch in the list? There it is. Mark where it's at on the cabinets. We'll take a picture.

Again, on this job, we elected not to have due dates in automatically. We came back in after the fact and bulk edited-- totally doable. Again, this is actually how we did it. So I turned my iPad after I was done taking the picture, screen rotated around, and now we're done.