Planning and Execution for Prefab—Bringing the Best of Manufacturing to Construction

RAGHI IYENGAR: Good afternoon, I'm Raghi Iyengar from ManufactOn, and this is Kevin Bredeson from Suffolk Construction, both out of the Boston area. So the class today, what we want to talk through, is all about bringing the best of manufacturing to construction. So the whole prefab process and understanding how to plan and execute with prefab. We've got a few things in there in terms of the learning objectives, which we have laid out. So what we are hoping to cover and we'll have plenty of time for interactive discussion, and q and a and things like that all the way through the process.

But the whole idea would be to talk through the putting together a prefab plan and how do you create a prefab plan that's well coordinated. And as you all know, as soon as any plan is put together, change is inevitable. So how do you respond to changes every step of the way. And then kind of we'll walk you through the process of tracking it all the way from your design through manufacturing in the prefab shops. All the way over to the job site, in terms of deliveries and using QR tracking mechanisms to do all of that and see how it all comes together.

And I'll provide the product perspective, in terms of what ManufactOn is, and Kevin's going to talk about it in the context of as a customer or as a construction company that's actually using the product. So ManufactOn is a three-year-old software company based in Boston. And its focus is on the whole supply chain and the prefab modular production. So if we think about the whole idea of planning prefab, managing production, tracking the materials all the way through, and controlling all of your just in time delivery to the job site.

So I don't know if you all saw in the AEC keynote address this morning, Jim Lynch was talking about industrialized construction. And we're happy to have Autodesk as a strategic investor in ManufactOn. And at a personal level, really happy about how things have progressed on the Revit front and the BIM 360 front, because I used to manage the product from a product strategy and product management for Autodesk before starting ManufactOn. So did the construction modeling features in Revit, in terms of parts and assemblies, brought the Navisworks product into Autodesk and helped put together the whole BIM 360 portfolio. Before all of the construction companies were talking about the need to do more and more prefab, they want to become more like building manufacturers. So that's when I left Autodesk to do this as a startup, great relationship with them, and now they have come in as a strategic investor to help move everything towards the industrialized construction.

KEVIN BREDESON: Yeah. And like Raghi said, my name's Kevin Bredeson, and I'm the Vice President for Virtual Design and Construction with Suffolk. Headquartered out of Boston, we're almost a $3 billion a year company. You can see here, based on our locations, heavily focused on Northeast, Southeast, West Coast. Large company, but you'll see over there in the sectors, and hopefully those sectors will start to resonate of where this starts to make sense for us. To try to tie some of this together, but right now we're continuing to look for solutions that really feed our supply chain. So this resonated with us, and we built this relationship almost three years ago to start walking on this path. So happy to show you where we've gotten to in our journey so far.

RAGHI IYENGAR: So think about there was this FMI did this study, I don't know if many of you have seen it. But if you look at the stats that the last four years, there's been a definite perception that the environment around prefab, the need for prefab, the acceptance around prefab, the awareness around prefab, has changed significantly. And it's like 77% now versus before it was a lot less. And if we look at over the last five, six years the amount of prefab has almost tripled according to that survey.

So there's definitely a lot of momentum and a lot of attention being paid to try to look at the whole prefab process. So this was a really interesting stat. If we look at it, more than 20% of the respondents to that survey said that they are doing almost 55% of their projects have prefab in it. So again, let's not think only about 100% modular, everything kind of coming together. There are so many things that are done prefab today and that is continuing to increase. Whether those are piping racks, or wall panels, or equipment skids.

You've got so many different things which people may not even think that, hey those are all being prefabbed. But they are being prefabbed, so it's not something new, but now the awareness is growing around it. The other interesting thing that came out of this study was the fact that almost a substantial percentage of the respondents said that the process needs to be improved and it's not very effective. And that's where, what we are hoping with ManufactOn, to be able to help work with the industry to help in this transformation. Because everybody is recognizing the fact that they want to do more prefab, and at the same time they are saying our processes have not transformed in order to be able to take the advantages of prefab and we need to do more there. And that's what we have been seeing over the last three years as we've have pulled together the ManufactOn solution.

KEVIN BREDESON: Right, right. So if you know anything about us, this is our tagline. I think to understand us, you have to understand what our vision is. So us trying to transform the construction experience by building smart. That's something we try to infuse in everything that we do. So culturalized, just within our firm, within the entire organization, we constantly try to fulfill this vision which is set to us by our owner of the company, John Fish. When you break down and look at the chaos that happens in the design phase, right, this is about what it looks like.

And you can tie these threads however you want across many different sectors, right. But it's very chaotic, it's very iterative, and we're really trying to get everything ready so that we can go into a construction operation. We'd slightly clean this up and what we refer to now as our planning and control process, we want to start to engage. Which all of us try to do this, especially on the general construction side. How do we engage in with the designers, working through the design management, design phase, trying to get everything teed up so it goes into construction.

So this is really trying to illustrate that. The gap for this, right now is, although it's heavily focused on plan, and we're trying to get to control side. The heavy side of control and starting to flow into that planning side is, how we figure out the supply chain? And with that comes hand-in-hand with production control. So again, that's where we started to see some definite benefit and value to partner with ManufactOn. The way we do this, we take any of our concepts, and recently featured, he and I are talking about our smart labs. And so those innovation labs are taking these best in breed kind of concepts for us.

We start to promote those and push those through more of an academic research and development type process. Early adoption that flows into a formal pilot. Once we can prove that the pilot is valid to the business, we then evaluate is this going to flow into the business as a standard, or is this going to flow into the business as more of a best practice. And then we actually deliver this service, it's marketed on an annual basis within the company, is what we define as a tool box. And so that tool box is a variety of different services based on all of our operations support groups that then deliver this value.

So the ManufactOn product in itself is providing across a lot of different support groups, and we're looking to embed it into the tool box right now. So right now, we're still in the pilot phase. I'll share with you a project of where we're at. But in terms of the solution and the success criteria that we started to produce, this is what we really wanted to address. We had a need and a desire to look into the trade partner supply chain. Just to have that visibility, because we don't have it today. So that was key to us and this provides that for us. We want to continue to plan ahead. So the plan it control process is how we factored on that planning, and we want to introduced as much prefabrication. If you heard in the keynote, 80% plus of our components in our buildings are repeatable.

We should be looking for those opportunities to prefabricate those materials. And then once we find those materials in those packages, how do we track them all the way throughout? So there's a lot of synergy between those three statements, and again finding a solution out there in the market, we didn't find anything. To my knowledge, I still don't know if there's anything out there quite what ManufactOn is offering for us.

RAGHI IYENGAR: So in case y'all have not had a chance to go to the exhibit hall in the last couple of days and got a good insight or a good demo into ManufactOn, what I thought we'll do is let me walk you through a little bit about ManufactOn. And how it ties into the process of planning and managing and executing it. And then Kevin will kind of talk about a project where they are actually using it on and providing some insights around that. So the key thing about ManufactOn is the fact that you got multiple people involved in the process. So if you think about a project, you've got your project leaders who are involved in it, the project executives, and then you've got all of the coordinators that are working on the project.

Let me take a step back here. So ManufactOn is very useful for a general contractor to work with all of the subcontractors on a project in order to try to promote and do more and more prefab and manage the process. At the same time, ManufactOn is also being used by trade by subcontractors. Just as their internal operational tool may or may not even have anything to do with the general contractor, but they're using it for managing their production in their factories, and connecting their own factory people with their coordinators and to their people in the field. Because a lot of the field superintendents, even among the trade contractors, have been telling us that we do not have good insight into what's been happening in our own production shop. And they see this as a great window for them to go in.

So depending on if you're the general contractor perspective or the subcontractor perspective, I just wanted to look at it from both of those lenses as we walk through this process for the next several slides. So in terms of ManufactOn, so you've got your project coordinators who are all looking at, deciding what will be produced, who will produce it. You've got your detailers involved in it, you've got your procurement people, in terms of materials, people in the shop, people in the field. And so ManufactOn is cloud mobile, it's on Amazon Web Services, and it's on the Android, as well as IOS, tablets and phones. Where you have information available, nothing to install on your computers, and so on.

So let's kind of walk through the whole putting together a prefab plan. So in many cases, you might start with using ManufactOn well before a design has even been created. OK, so you might actually get started saying, what if this is a project that we want to build, you may not even have a model yet, but you were just starting off in the beginning. Start identifying your prefab opportunities, and this is where, from a general contractors perspective, that's what they are thinking. Saying, if we want to do a lot of this as prefab, you're looking at the scope, we want to help on the design front, but we may not be involved in the beginning. What do we what are the opportunities can we do as means and method, what can we prefab?

And then, from a general contractors perspective, it would be OK, if we're going to prefab this, who is going to prefab it? Is it a single sub, or is it like a single trade? Or are there multiple subs that need to come together as a multi trade, a module, multi trade assemblies, and so forth. So start deciding, what's the team that needs to be involved in putting that prefab plan together. And then the question is, where are these things going to be prefabricated?

Are they going to be done in a single factory in each of those subs and come to the job site? Or is it multiple subs where something goes from one subs prefab shop to another subs prefab shop and then comes to the job site? Or is it something where the GC has actually rented warehouse near the job site, brought all the subs together and saying, let's work together as a virtual team, put a module together, and then deliver that to the job site to install. So that whole coordination of, and through all of that process, when do these things need to be delivered to the job site?

So that's the whole planning process that you go through, and that's where ManufactOn comes in. So that's what, as I described it, from a general contractor's perspective. From the subcontractor, the mechanical, the electrical, the subcontractors, how they're using ManufactOn's planning aspect of it is, actually as part of their award process, to actually win work and as part of their business development. So where what they are doing there, is they're talking to the GC saying, we have studied the scope, this is what we would like to get as a scope and win this part of it, this is what we think we can prefab, this is how we would go about doing it, this is the kind of visibility that you'll have, and control you would have in it.

So they're literally presenting a ManufactOn prefab plan as part of their interview process with the general contractor. So it's an interesting how the prefab planning is being used between the general contractors, looking at it across a whole team, and the subs looking at it as their own business development aspect of it. So now, as the design starts getting developed, whether it's with the design team, or whether it's your own detailers and your subcontractors, as part of this overall coordination, class detection. So if we think about the Navisworks, BIM 360, when we talk about coordination, that's really coordinating the design.

And what ManufactOn is really coordinating the prefab process. So as you're putting this design together, so today we have a plug-in with Revit where you can actually start defining what of these design elements you want to actually connect up to the prefab plan. Whether those are your prefab product, prefab packages, production orders, and how do you want to do it. So two different workflows here, on the one side you would have the ability to say, I want to be able to have already got a plan in place. I want to connect up my model to that in order to be able to understand, visually, how the whole prefab process is going to work.

And in other cases, you might actually start in the design, if you're very early in the process, and from the design be able to actually put together a prefab plan. And what is a prefab plan all about? It's really, this is all the things we want to do, and then what they're called production orders to say when are these things going to get produced based on when they need to be delivered to the job site. Some of the production orders could be broken down by zones and levels. OK level one, North zone, level one, South, and so forth. You're digging up the entire scope of work into manageable production chunks that you want to then deliver to the job site.

And so, once the planning is all done, everything is coordinated, everybody knows, OK coordination is done, the plan is in place, it's now time to move forward, and start executing on the project. You have the Production Manager, you've got, either the trade contractors, or the GCs that are doing self perform with their own factories. This is the entire production management that's happening in the shop. So you have the ability to detail everything out, based on what the shop foreman needs. So they can look at your spools, you'll have your shop drawings, everything the way the shop foreman needs it to be delivered to them in order to build actually produce it. So you can start creating your spec sheets, you can start supporting detailed drawings, you can start providing 3D views if you want to, and all of the instructions needed as part of this spool packages.

And so you put all of that together as part of your detailing, hand it over to your shop foreman and the gentleman, and everybody in the prefab shops, and they actually manage the whole process. And when they are completing things, all they need to do, is on their iPhones or on their Android phones, just say I'm done with this, I'm done with this, I'm done with this. And as soon as they say they're done, and they save it, everybody on the project team, from the people in the field, their coordinators, everybody knows how much progress, what has been done, and what is still to be completed.

So it's real time feedback to everybody involved in the process as to where you are in the production. And from there, you then take that, once it's all done and they say I'm completely finished with it, they run through a quality assurance process in the factory and shop, and say OK, we're all done, this is ready to go. And all that is with the ability to track this using a QR code. So every item, whether it's a panel, a rack, a skid, gets a QR code right in the beginning. And that's what gets used as a way to track it through.

So in some of our subcontractor prefab shops, you can actually walk around their shop and see different things that are already in different stages of manufacturing, or something which are already done, and see the QR code. Scan it and says oh this thing is done, oh it's supposed to show up. It's for this project, it's supposed to show up on the job site at this time in three weeks and it's already done, that's great. So you can actually walk through and know exactly where everything is, leveraging the QR code workflow.

Now, as we talked about earlier, all of the plans are great, but change is inevitable. So you want to be able to make sure that you can easily respond to change, easily communicate that change, re-plan around that change, and make sure everybody's on the same page, and continue on with it. So we have the integration of ManufactOn with Forge through BIM 360 docs, where today, you can load up the coordinated model into BIM 360 docs. And through ManufactOn, you can open up the model, and literally real time it will tell you where everything is at color coded. So the things in yellow, it'll say that those are all in manufacturing. The ones in red are already being shipped. The ones in green are still in detailing and so forth.

So you can see, real time, where everything stands. And I don't have a slide in here, but you can actually click on one of those save all panels, and it will actually say that, hey I'm a wall panel, I am part of this production order of 10 or 20 wall panels. We are being produced at this subcontractor in this factory, we are 50% completed, because 10 out of the 20 panels are already done. And we are scheduled to be delivered to the job site on this date. So all of that at your fingertips by just clicking on any one of these objects and getting all real time information about what's happening in the shop, what's happening in the field, and if there are things still being detailed heading over to the shop.

And so through that process, you can start actually thinking that, hey, if we want to make changes what are we going to do with it, and so forth. So they might say, these things are in detailing, it's not yet gone into manufacturing, if you make the change, as long as we let everybody know, it's not going to be a big impact. But if you're already gone through manufacturing and QA, and now you start making changes, there are ramifications to it that need to be discussed and addressed and so forth. There's a really interesting workflow that we deliver through what's called pausing the production.

So this was originally designed based on our customer requirements to say, owner architect meetings, we are sitting there we start talking about major changes. The project manager or coordinators say, pause production. So that way, everybody in the production process is notified, they all get their notifications on their iPhones and tablets saying, we have a problem here. We need to get this thing resolved, please pause production. So that was a way for communicating to everybody. And then once the things are resolved, then that's OK, now you can resume production again.

That was the original use based on which we created this capability. A very interesting thing was, we were at one of the job sites, where suddenly the super on the job site saw the fact that the shop foreman had paused production. Not from the owner architect meeting, but on the job floor. So you're like, what happened here, and they were like, I'm ready to start production tomorrow on this. And I still haven't got my order answered. And should I proceed or not deposit it?

The super got it on the job site, immediately walked over to the project engineer there, said, call up the architect right now. Let's get this thing answered, because we don't want to lose this window of opportunity for us to produce this and get it over to the job site. So it works both ways. It's not just owner architect contractor meetings generating these changes, but also things happening in the shop, or things happening in the field, which require the need to communicate to everyone to pause production. Add that level of detail saying, hey it's not just overall project stop production, but this area something is an issue here. Let's pause it right here and make sure everybody who was working on that part of it knows what's going on.

The other things are lots of capabilities within the product to help, in terms of managing change. So the other thing, so if you've got a really good plan, this is how you want to actually send your production into the shop. But the factory foreman might say, I really want to combine these two or three different production orders. So they have the ability to say, OK, I'm going to combine all of these, and run this as one batch through the factory. So they have the complete flexibility. It's not like, oh because that is the original plan, we have to stick to it.

So they can be creative in terms of managing and optimizing their production in their factory. As long as everything is still going to meet the milestones, the deadline for delivery, and so forth, they can start saying, I'm going to move this around, I want to combine these, I want to split this out, do these separately, and so on and so forth. So they have a lot of capabilities to be able to combine and merge production orders, split them up, and things like that. And also, something that has become very popular now in some of our subs, is them looking at things happening in the field. And not everything has been designed and planned.

And they've started finding things in the field that have not been thought through before. And so now they have this process of field requests. You do things in the field, and saying that hey I want to get this thing prefabbed, because this was not as part of the original design, et cetera. So you have these field requests that come into the prefab shops. In the prefab shop, therefore, the shop foreman is getting both planned work that's coming through their design detailing process, and originally unplanned work that's coming in from the field as field requests. And they take all that into consideration as they are managing their workload in the prefab shop.

And then the other thing is also in terms of shipments. So the thing that we talked about earlier, 20 panels. So there's 20 panels that are supposed to be delivered on December 15th. Now the super and the project engineers on the job site might say, hey you know what, we've got 10 panels already done, the nod zone of level 3's order is available sooner. Why not get those 10 panels in this week and the remaining 10 panels can come in as originally scheduled on the 15th?

So they have the ability to actually manage partial shipments, and by knowing the fact that these things are already done, they're ready, they're already being staged. And why not pull them in sooner and be opportunistic in terms of being able to get things done. So all of those kinds of things which may not be just a change in a design, but change in things happening on the job site, in the factories, that can also be things that generate all of these potential change opportunities.

And everything in the ManufactOn gets tracked, so you have the ability to understand, what are the things that have gone from detailing to manufacturing, the status changed. If the ownership has changed, where it's now going from this owner to another owner, in some cases, it might be different owners in the same company. In some cases, it might actually be moving from one company to another, so you now know who's the current owner of this. And if any of the dates have changed what are the most current dates.

You have all of the insights, the dashboards to be able to know exactly where everything is at and what's the most current information around it. So that's all related, say that you've got a good plan put in place, you're running it through the production process. You've got all of the QA work done, you're responding to changes, made sure that the plan now reflects what it does, and you continue to go through it.

And then you have the ability to actually receive things on the job. So you're sending it through the shipping process, you get a shipping order, you deliver things, and everything is tracked through a QR codes. So now, just think about it, I'm using an example here of racks, but let's say we got another example of doors and hardware. A very simple workflow, but the interesting thing is, that our customer was saying, at the end of the project, we lose like $30,000 to $40,000 worth of hardware on doors, because of things being lost, things being mismatched, and everything else.

So what they end up doing is they said, look, we're going to get the door frames to our shop, we put the hardware on it, we put the QR code on it, create a pallet of these doors with the hardware on it, send it over to the job site. So on the job site, the vendor receiving this scans the QR code for the entire shipment, so they know these are the 10 doors that are being received. And so they verify the fact, OK those are the correct doors, and not the wrong doors, but the correct doors that have shown up.

And then when they remove the pallet, each door as this has its own QR code. And as they scan it, it knows exactly which opening it's supposed to go into. And then when they go there, in case there's any instructions needed for installation, that QR code and it'll pop up with instructions for installation as well. So that's the power of being able to have all of the information delivered through the QR code. And the best part, in terms of controlling the process, is everything that's being done on the these production orders, shipping orders, you've got the activity stream where it's tracking everything. So if somebody scans a QR code on the job site, it'll record it. And so that we can go back and say, so this person scanned it in this location, at this date and time.

So if there's any confusion later, at least you have, well who saw it last, OK if it was there now, where is it at? And it gives you a little more of a traceability there. And finally, this is what we consider to be the command center for at the job site. Where you can actually control the entire supply chain from the job site. So what you have here, is things which are ready to be shipped. So all of your shipping orders, things whether they are materials coming directly to the job site, or prefab assemblies, modules coming over to the job site. Anything that's coming over the next several weeks, what's coming this week, tomorrow, the next day after tomorrow, this week, next three weeks, beyond six weeks, what's all ready to be shipped that are already scheduled.

And for those that are not yet ready to be shipped, where are they at, if it's materials, have those materials been ordered? Did those things need field measurement? Is all the field measurement being done? And where is it at in terms of materials being prepared? Or if it is production orders for prefabricated items, where are they? Are they still in detailing? Are they in manufacturing? In this case, that one is 25% complete, so you can drill down and say, which of one of those racks is actually completed. The rest of the racks are not, so you can actually click on it, see the specs of what the rack was supposed to be. And the shop foreman is actually taking a picture of that as they're going at finishing production.

So you can actually say, what does it really look like as well. So you have complete control into the overall and insight into the process from the job site. So it basically comes down to the fact that you are you what you really want to do is ensure there are no surprises driving down the for just in time delivery, make sure everything is good.

So in fact, one of Kevin's superintendents told me, he said, I have a very simple request, Raghi. All I want is, I want to tell my guys, this is what I want to be delivered, and this is when I want it to be delivered. He said, that's all is my request. And then, when the truck is on the job site, when we open the truck and I have my people here, I want to make sure that the right things are in the truck. He said, I've got a very simple problem, obviously you need to create a complex solution for it, but that's all we are looking for, is no surprises. Especially with all these tight schedules and everything else, in just in time delivery, we do not want to have any interruptions in it.

And obviously, just in time delivery does not mean just in time production. Because you need to produce just enough amount of buffer, et cetera, to make sure that your production is not holding up when you're supposed to deliver. So this is how you get the ability to kind of manage the entire prefab process from planning, through design, through detailing, manufacturing, staging, wherever it is, over to the delivery. So that's ManufactOn, so what I'd suggest, is Kevin can talk about how it's being used on a project that they are doing, and then we can open it up for questions after that, on board the product, as well as the project.

KEVIN BREDESON: OK, thanks Raghi. So we needed to test all the theory, right, and add the rubber hit the road. The Nantucket Cottage Hospital project, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, these are some statistics. $62 million health care project, about 18 months, in terms of overall construction. Project that we started this spring, but the planning for this, and we've been talking a lot about planning, started in the fall. So when we started to identify candidate projects that wanted to fit into that profile for success criteria, this one definitely fit the bill. And it was great in terms of timing and where it sat in our project queue.

So if you don't know Massachusetts, and you don't know where Nantucket is, show of hands, does anybody know?

AUDIENCE: The bottom.

KEVIN BREDESON: Right? Bottom. It's way out there. You get there by small commuter flights, which we're not going to fly materials in or by ferry. So we had a huge constraint from a logistics standpoint on this project. And we can only work within specific hours, specific time frames. Of course, we're on the cusp of winter, so we have to take that into account as well. So putting all those factors into it, it really put an emphasis on trying to find a supply chain tool that was going to allow us to pre-fabricate mainland, deconstruct, package, ship, reconstruct, install. And that was kind of the cadence that we were looking to build on this project.

So here are some insights of where we're at in terms of current statistics. And so big upfront, right? Once we started our planning, then we had to understand our buyout strategy. We had to get language, and we had to get, really information involved in our buyout packages, so that we could then solicit to our contractors laying out what they were getting into working with us. So right now, you're seeing the supply chain manager. These are all various packages are sitting in that pre-fabrication mode. Seeing some statistics of just the subcontractors, and who's involved in the process. But the training, once we got those people on board, the trade partners that needed to be trained was critical. So we've spent a lot of time with those trade partners, getting those people ramped up, and working within this environment.

And they may or may not have had a current existing supply chain management tool. So it was an opportunity for some, but also potentially an enhancement for others. And that's exactly the value criteria we try to propose to them, working with those various businesses. This is looking at material deliveries and where those sit in queue right now. And so, actively, two trade partners are working through the plan right now. You saw that aerial picture, go back two more, of where we're at right now. We're just starting to enclose the exterior, again trying to get ready for winter, so the two active trades right now, that drywall sub metal framing, and then the interiors that are starting to just get roughed out right now.

So we've got 24 prefab production orders that amass 150 total items that are sitting in that queue, and then the material orders, 63 of those which then mass up to 339 specific items. So again, that's that consolidation where we're looking to fit those packages into our overall schedule. But also knowing that, based on weather, based on delivery, based on just overall supply materials, we have the ability to shift those things around. Then the last one is looking at the shipments. So everything right here is sitting in some current status of queue ready to ship.

You can see there, it includes our steel sequence components, our electrical, any of our skin components getting ready to get this building weather tight for the winter. And so 40 shipments in total, 30 of those are fulfilled, seven are sitting in transit. So this is the kind of information, when I talk about success criteria, that we need to have visibility into. And that we want to have visibility into, not only in this project, but we want to start to take this across the enterprise and see how can we get better insight into all our projects. So I think that's it. So that's a little bit of a snapshot of where we're at currently on that project.

RAGHI IYENGAR: So we thought now would be a good time, so we've kind of covered the different phases that we had talked about. From planning, all the way through execution, and tracking it, and responding to changes. So we'll open it up for questions.

KEVIN BREDESON: Yes, ma'am? Oh, one second--

RAGHI IYENGAR: We have a--

KEVIN BREDESON: This is recording, so she's got a microphone.

AUDIENCE: Do you have any pre-manufactured panels or walls that have MEP in it, and if you do, how do you handle that with the HJ for inspections?

KEVIN BREDESON: We don't on this job right now. We look at more of the assembly level more singular on the vendor side, but we're looking to do that enhanced in the future as well. Just not on this project. Good question, though. Any other questions? Did we cover it all? Or is it just 3:15 on Thursday in Vegas?

RAGHI IYENGAR: [LAUGHTER] So, we're recording it, so if you could, yeah. [LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: So are you tracking this straight out of, I mean, do you have the ability to track it out of the CAD department, through spools, everything right into that, there's other line items that you plug into there?

RAGHI IYENGAR: Yes. So you're literally, so you can actually say, here's my spools as part of the spool package, and then you can actually track at the spool package level, or at the individual spool level. Depending on where it is, each of those get QR coded, and those spools get attached as a reference. So that the people in the shop, they can see, whether it's on the browser, or a tablet, or whatever, they can see what it is that they're spooling. Have the QR code in order to be able to know which one, what they're working on. And then once it's done, they can actually stick the QR code onto what they've created, and scan it, and then send it saying, OK, we've gone through production, and now it's ready for QA, and then where it's going to get staged before delivery.

[LAUGHTER]

KEVIN BREDESON: I don't know if you get away with [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: I'm over here.

KEVIN BREDESON: Oh, I'm sorry.

AUDIENCE: Is there specific data that needs to be embedded in the models to be able to pull into there? And is there a data that comes back into the models from that platform? Or is it decoupled and living only on the website?

RAGHI IYENGAR: So what we do is, so let's look at a workflow with Revit, for example. So in Revit, you can have these objects, you can create multiple objects, and you can either take each of the objects and associate it with the item in ManufactOn, or you can connect all of those objects into an assembly, enter the assembly to ManufactOn as an item. And then what we are doing then is, providing all of the most current status from ManufactOn, as in when things got progressing, back into the model as attributes for that object. So therefore, when you're looking at the design next, you can actually say, yeah, OK I'll just refresh it with the most current information on your desktop.

And it'll tell you that, hey, these are all color coding your model to say these are all in detailing, these things are all in manufacturing. So if you start thinking about hey, I've got a request to change the design, and it's in manufacturing right now, at least you can raise the flag.

AUDIENCE: So just want to add onto that, then that pushes data back into Revit. How is that working in work sharing?

RAGHI IYENGAR: So right now, we are doing it directly in through an update. So the plugin itself that we have, that is calling for it directly from ManufactOn and bringing it back in. So that's what we're doing now, and then of course when you load that up into docs, and then you're using the Forge viewer to look at it, there now you're in the cloud, and looking at the coordinate, the model in the cloud. And then you'll have the real time information coming in from ManufactOn in the cloud. So we keep providing that, so you don't have to worry about refreshing or anything there.

KEVIN BREDESON: And I might have heard your question slightly different. But right now, in the project, we don't have specific parameters set, like for coding.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

KEVIN BREDESON: No, not right now. But we're looking for that, coming out of pilot, to start to standardize on that as well. Another question.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, just real quick. So the QR code you guys are using right now, does that include any assembly information in that? Or is it just for tracking purposes for each product?

RAGHI IYENGAR: So it has the assembly information. You're using it for tracking, but when you scan the QR code, it can provide you relevant, and it's providing everything you need about it, including whether it's gone through QA, what is that, and all of those kinds of things. But you can provide an assembly instructions as a reference information that they can then use.

KEVIN BREDESON: It's more like a UPC match.

RAGHI IYENGAR: Exactly.

KEVIN BREDESON: Right, yeah.

AUDIENCE: So you mentioned that you can have different scenarios of the what, who, when type of situation. So have you seen any more success with either having individual subs do all of it, or having a more consolidated version of that, or having it done more in separate shops, or in one facility? Do you have any metrics on those types of successes and what's trending better?

RAGHI IYENGAR: So from ManufactOn, our customers, so far , I think they're all at different stages. So even though we've got over 60 companies using it, and I think we're $2.5, $3 billion of projects going on, but in that sense, I still think it's pretty early to be able to actually start trending things. But we do have cases where there's subs that are trying to work together on uncertain things, and they're all collaborating around things, and so forth. But the bulk, almost most of our prefab production to date has been single trade prefab. But they are talking about, now wanting to do more of the multi trade.

KEVIN BREDESON: Right. Right, and for the project that I laid up here right now, we do have everybody kind of warehousing on their own. Centralizing packing, shipping, and then we do have one landing zone where we're then reconstructing that and then getting it to site.

AUDIENCE: Is there currently any interface between this product and BIM 360 field for duplicating inspections and things of that nature?

RAGHI IYENGAR: So what we are looking at is syncing up with the BIM 360 roadmap, because we work very closely with them. In order to ensure that whatever happens, in terms of the shop QA, gets fed into the field requests, it comes into the shop and provided back. As well as checklists, and so forth, we have to work on, but the more interesting thing that we are looking at with the Suffolk and others is, once everything comes onto the job site, ensuring that after everything is received, to be able to then say, I am ready to now getting things ready for commissioning and so forth. And being able to feed it in the field and then run it through the process.