Construction Confessional is a candid video series celebrating the people in construction. In each episode, we get an inside look at the people behind construction as they share their stories, triumphs, and struggles.
In this episode, we hear what Melissa Schlteis, Virtual Construction Specialist at Miron Construction, and Shi-Chi Liu, Preconstruction Engineer at Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company have to say about connected construction, collaboration, and their favourite tunes.
Transcript:
Define connected construction.
Melissa: I would say connected construction really means a single source of truth. So one thing that I've noticed, even in my short career in construction is that not having a single source of truth can really disorient your project. So when I started, we were sending a lot of emails or having to print drawings and get them to the job site after they'd been approved. And now we can share RFIs or submittals or plans with people all the time directly on either an iPad or their phone or their computer, and everybody's looking at the same information at the same time. There's no question that you're on a different version than what you should be, which can save time and money for everybody.
Shi-Chi: Connected construction. That's a very good question. Probably means try to be as transparent as possible. Based on my working experience, a lot of time issues are caused by misunderstandings. And also a lot of time we can mitigate those issues just by communicating, right. Just to ask some, not even good questions, ask whatever you need to know really. Yeah, pretty much. It just being transparent and try to add this many questions that you need.
How do you collaborate with your team?
Shi-Chi: Since we have multiple headquarter like I just mentioned, we'll pretty much just use Teams…. Pretty much Teams and Skype.
Melissa: So currently we're using a lot of the BIM 360 products. I've worked at Miron the last six years and my job, a lot of the time has been coordination with subcontractors. My first project started about a month ago in Model coordination, so being able to use things like the issues module or the meetings module, or part of the PM module is really helpful. So that streamlined communication, rather than calling somebody up or sending them 10 emails to try to answer the same question.
What do you listen to while you work?
Melissa: I listen to a lot of podcasts when I work. Sometimes I'll turn on music, to something just something that. For some reason I could just have that in the background and it's interesting.
Shi-Chi: I want to say M-83 and Of Monsters and Men, it's a band from... Is it Iceland, I think?
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