Every construction site has its own set of complexities. And what happens in the field rarely stays in the field. That’s because a finished project will reveal its quality, or lack thereof, once the building is in regular use. So, the question then is: How can safety and quality managers trust that work is on schedule and still meeting the necessary construction quality management standards?
The answer is communication. That’s why we’ve built some important field collaboration tools into Autodesk Build to help field teams stay on the same page, at any stage. This is by no means a comprehensive list of barriers to achieving optimal project quality but does help highlight some key features requested by customers using Autodesk Build in the field.
Project photos enable your teams to document events, track progress, and even improve health and safety on the jobsite. However, the process of managing all these photos can be tedious, particularly when you’re dealing with hundreds of images–if not thousands.
With Autodesk Build, Autotags automatically tags your photos with the features present in the image. Powered by machine learning, Autotags recognizes key elements in photos (e.g., fixtures, equipment, lighting), then automatically adds the relevant tags as metadata. Once tagged, you can easily filter all project photos based on specific tags.
This saves time and helps you quickly find images for review to evaluate progress while doing your safety or quality checks.
Project forms—which can come in many forms including checklists and daily logs—are an essential way to collect required project data and information.
Naturally, everyone wins when you empower your teams to complete the necessary forms in a timely manner. With form templates, you can create a set of standard project forms, making it easy for your team to start filling out the correct form. And, with Autodesk Build’s mobile app (PlanGrid Build), team members can easily fill out the form on their phone or mobile, in addition to the web. This makes it easy to team to fill out the necessary forms in the field or office.
Once your team has identified the correct form, getting the right people to fill it out is critical. Collaborative forms can be assigned to specific companies or roles so the right people see the forms. With comments, you can improve collaboration and coordination amongst stakeholders while filling out a form.
Forms in Autodesk Build makes it easy to collect the necessary information on time.
For field teams, staying on top of assets—from construction equipment and materials to system components and moveable equipment—is a top priority. Team members must see to it that all construction assets are tracked, inspected, and accounted for.
Software like Autodesk Build can streamline asset and equipment tracking by enabling you to create, categorize, and track the lifecycle of project assets from design to handover on the web and via mobile. This can help reduce the time it takes to access asset data in the field, perform commissioning and resolve defects, and reduces the time it takes to move into operations.
Using the Asset Detail Report, you can filter assets and quickly generate information about a specific asset, such as reference details and thumbnail photos.
We recommend this free educational video from our Learning Center to learn how to track and manage your assets.
Project issues need to be resolved as quickly as possible to prevent delays and cost overruns. As such, you need to make it easy for field teams to create, manage, and resolve these issues.
With the Issues tool on both web and mobile, you can quickly create an issue when you spot it. With the ability to attach photos, videos or reference project Files, Forms, Assets or even RFIs, you can easily include all relevant information to ensure a fast issue resolution.
Once those issues are in the system, you can quickly locate relevant issues by searching or filtering several fields including: assignee, locations, due date, custom fields, status, and many more. Each item or issue can quickly be searched for and found by anyone needing the info. This ensures that your team can quickly identify, locate, and resolve the issues as quickly as possible.
Check out this free educational video explaining how to use the "Issues" tool in Autodesk Build.
Field collaboration doesn’t have to be complicated. Establishing tight workflows, and adopting solutions that support them, you’ll enable teams to work smarter and remove common barriers that hold up project progress.
Discover how Autodesk Build can help you improve efficiency in the field, office, and everywhere in between. Request a demo today.
