Started by three brothers as a small residential drywall company in the late 1930s, MAREK has grown to be one of the largest commercial specialty contractors in the South with more than 1,500 employees and seven regional offices. The company prides itself on a top-down, bottom-up approach to workforce development and safety initiatives through the use of cutting-edge technology.
Paul Godwin, BIM Manager at MAREK, shares the company’s vision around adopting technology to standardize and change workflows to improve jobsite communication and the transfer of real-time data between the office and the field.
“We don’t ever want to get into a situation where someone says, “Hey, can you do this?” And we don’t have the technology or the understanding of technology to get it done,” says Godwin.
In adopting Autodesk Construction Cloud™, MAREK has been able to bridge the gap between the office and the field for better data sharing, alleviating tension around not having the most up-to-date model information to “build it right the first time.”
Watch how Autodesk Construction Cloud is helping MAREK create a better working environment by delivering services faster and on schedule without change orders.
[Video Transcript]
Paul Godwin, BIM Manager at Marek: Marek is an 80-year-old division nine subcontractor. One of our philosophies is let’s do it right the first time, let’s be customer-oriented. If the project’s successful, then MAREK’s successful.
For the longest time, it was just business as usual, doing the same things that don’t work, and we’ve made a push to digitalize. Technology has helped bridge the gap between our field and our office, making it a better work environment.
The biggest benefit is getting information quicker, faster, and more accurate to our field, the most accurate up-to-date drawings, the most accurate up-to-date RFIs, so they build it right the first time. We don’t ever want to get into a situation where someone says, “Hey, can you do this?” And we don’t have the technology or the understanding of technology to get it done.
As a subcontractor, we get a lot of exposure to different things as mandated by a GC. So then we take the advice from our field. What worked? What didn’t work? What do you want? Did this do what you wanted? And then we adapt it into what we’re doing.
With implementing Autodesk Construction Cloud, we can slice and dice a model and look at different angles and different views. The difference between seeing something in 2D and 3D lets you see what you have to build rather than guessing at what you have to build.
I would recommend for deploying a digital transformation strategy is to find something that is a pain point for your field and give them that solution, but you include them in the solution process. You make them own it. You make them the champions of it. You take their advice, you listen to them. The one thing that we do is we don’t ever dictate; this is the software you’re going to use because I say you’re going to use it. And that’s really key. If the field is the owner of it, it’s going to be successful.
Being familiar with many different solutions has helped us be more dynamic in the field, and that’s an added value that gives us an edge over our competition.
