Very very exciting! Assuming a thoroughly brilliant execution, I'm certain that this app will find its fans amongst all groups within the design-build chain. Architects, construction managers, general contractors and trades. Even building owners and maintenance managers, perhaps.
I haven't tried the app, but having worked in both architecture and construction and now as a UX designer, I'm quite familiar with the problems it addresses. One of the biggest challenges on a construction project (even a small one) is document control and management. Though most work in architectural offices is done on computers, paper plans remain the final method of output of construction information, and this causes numerous problems.
Of course there is the cost of printing that the article mentions, but that's only one of several inefficiencies. A little background for those unfamiliar with construction: First, traditional prints are cumbersome, so they're difficult to pull out and reference in any kind of adverse field conditions. Large sheets of paper do not mix well with wind or rain. Even in good weather or indoors they're a pain to carry around and handle, so they tend to spend most of their time in the truck or trailer, often away from where they're really needed. To make them easier to carry, construction managers often make their own smaller photocopies of portions of the plans, which compounds the second big problem: keeping the documents up to date.
On a large project, keeping everyone's documents up to date is a nightmare. The more subcontractors you have, the bigger the nightmare becomes. And if you have a fast-track or rapidly evolving design-build situation, the problem is further compounded by compressed schedules. When plans or specifications are out of date, estimations are off and things get built incorrectly. You get waste, increased project costs, and the occasional lost shirt. One of my mentors used to destroy on sight any out of date documents he found people carrying. This app should be a much more elegant solution.
Essentially, paper plans are so difficult to manage that they waste a huge amount of time and sometimes result in errors. They're a centuries old, paper-based data bank and info graphic. So it's easy to see how this app could not only save time and money, but also increase quality and accuracy of what gets built: The people doing the work will have convenient access to the right information at the right time, through plans and other forms of location-based information on a device that's easy to carry.
Further, the ability to notate and communicate right from the UI has the potential to fix one of the frequently broken feedback loops in the design-build process: communication between builder and architect about unexpected field conditions or difficulties with the current design. I have no idea about the road map for the app, but there's a lot of potential here. Imagine you're able to share screens and stream video or still images back to the architect about something needing clarification, and have her be able to sketch on the plans in real time. Then the changes can be saved as a draft copy, ported back to the drafting software, modifications made and reissued as an official document (and even change orders) in a matter of minutes. The potential for this to speed construction and increase quality is not to be under-estimated.
As a designer, I'm very curious about the UI of the app and how well the UX is adapted to the needs of folks in the field. Because there are just so many variations on the use case, so many different ways that building plans are used by different people in the process. And, there is one advantage to the size of traditional printed plans. Their bigness, at times, can be a virtue when you're trying to get an understanding of the overall layout of building, and extract key dimensions from it. Of course zooming in and out is how this is handled on monitors when drafting, but I suspect the problem is a little different on an iPad size screen, the solution needing to be a little more creative to convey the needed information.
Phew, thinking about the possibilities of this app is exhilarating, and my apologies if my post is overly long. Congrats to the founding team for identifying and working to solve such a significant missing piece in the chain of the construction process! :)
Folks have been talking about tablets being a natural fit for the construction market, and frankly I don't see it (at least for field work. Construction sites are nasty places - dust, concrete, bentonite, slurries, oil & grease, rain, snow, heat these are not good things for an expensive tablet to be around.
Furthermore, the trades guys are hard are their equipment. When it's time to go to lunch, stuff gets thrown in the trunk bed or on the passenger seat of the truck as they rush off. Even if a tablet survives the abuse, those guys rarely lock or raise the windows of their trucks on the job, so I wouldn't expect the tablet to be there when the contractor gets back from his break.
First, traditional prints are cumbersome, so they're difficult to pull out and reference in any kind of adverse field conditions. Large sheets of paper do not mix well with wind or rain.
This is true, but it's offset by their disposable nature. If I'm heading out to the field and I know there is going to be inclement weather, I bring a couple of copies and if one sheet gets destroyed by weather, oh well, I just break out my second copy.
And while large sheets can be cumbersome, they allow field workers to look at a small component of a plan in an overall larger context which can be very convenient (that's why the minimum size I typically deal with on a site is 11x17). On a 10-inch tablet, you can only do that by zooming and panning a lot and that's not nearly as useful.
I've been wrong before and maybe I'm wrong now but I can't help thing that this will be a frustrating experience for a lot of folks.
keeping the documents up to date.
This is a very good point (nothing like getting an "as-built" that is not even close to being accurate) but I don't think that offsets the downsides.
>> This is a very good point but I don't think that offsets the downsides.
The downsides of out of date documents are 1% of the total cost of construction. A project may have 1-3% margin for a GC, so this is an enormous number. You save in three big ways with PlanGrid - we are cheaper than printing, faster than dealing with paper for sharing and note taking, and eliminate building from outdated drawings.
Our current set of users love having it in the field. We have superintendents tell us they can't believe they are using an iPad everyday. They have all the drawings all the time and they are always up to date - something people in the field have never had before on large projects.
Several of our customers have purchased iPads just to use PlanGrid. It's true that some will break, of course, but the cost savings offset it.
It’s funny, people often ask about whether the guys in the field are willing to trade their super high-resolution paper drawings for a smallish iPad screen, but if you think about it, it’s basically the same situation as with paper maps vs. google maps. You don’t see too many people using those old fold-out maps any more. They are too cumbersome, you always have some out-of-date version, and you never seem to have the map you need.
Architects, construction managers, general contractors and trades
I'm thinking land surveyors, too. Many jobs require working off a drawing, usually an AutoCAD or Microstation plotter printout. That's pretty cumbersome, so this could solve that problem as well. Import the geo points or the .csv file and go.
Comments
Very very exciting! Assuming a thoroughly brilliant execution, I'm certain that this app will find its fans amongst all groups within the design-build chain. Architects, construction managers, general contractors and trades. Even building owners and maintenance managers, perhaps.
I haven't tried the app, but having worked in both architecture and construction and now as a UX designer, I'm quite familiar with the problems it addresses. One of the biggest challenges on a construction project (even a small one) is document control and management. Though most work in architectural offices is done on computers, paper plans remain the final method of output of construction information, and this causes numerous problems.
Of course there is the cost of printing that the article mentions, but that's only one of several inefficiencies. A little background for those unfamiliar with construction: First, traditional prints are cumbersome, so they're difficult to pull out and reference in any kind of adverse field conditions. Large sheets of paper do not mix well with wind or rain. Even in good weather or indoors they're a pain to carry around and handle, so they tend to spend most of their time in the truck or trailer, often away from where they're really needed. To make them easier to carry, construction managers often make their own smaller photocopies of portions of the plans, which compounds the second big problem: keeping the documents up to date.
On a large project, keeping everyone's documents up to date is a nightmare. The more subcontractors you have, the bigger the nightmare becomes. And if you have a fast-track or rapidly evolving design-build situation, the problem is further compounded by compressed schedules. When plans or specifications are out of date, estimations are off and things get built incorrectly. You get waste, increased project costs, and the occasional lost shirt. One of my mentors used to destroy on sight any out of date documents he found people carrying. This app should be a much more elegant solution.
Essentially, paper plans are so difficult to manage that they waste a huge amount of time and sometimes result in errors. They're a centuries old, paper-based data bank and info graphic. So it's easy to see how this app could not only save time and money, but also increase quality and accuracy of what gets built: The people doing the work will have convenient access to the right information at the right time, through plans and other forms of location-based information on a device that's easy to carry.
Further, the ability to notate and communicate right from the UI has the potential to fix one of the frequently broken feedback loops in the design-build process: communication between builder and architect about unexpected field conditions or difficulties with the current design. I have no idea about the road map for the app, but there's a lot of potential here. Imagine you're able to share screens and stream video or still images back to the architect about something needing clarification, and have her be able to sketch on the plans in real time. Then the changes can be saved as a draft copy, ported back to the drafting software, modifications made and reissued as an official document (and even change orders) in a matter of minutes. The potential for this to speed construction and increase quality is not to be under-estimated.
As a designer, I'm very curious about the UI of the app and how well the UX is adapted to the needs of folks in the field. Because there are just so many variations on the use case, so many different ways that building plans are used by different people in the process. And, there is one advantage to the size of traditional printed plans. Their bigness, at times, can be a virtue when you're trying to get an understanding of the overall layout of building, and extract key dimensions from it. Of course zooming in and out is how this is handled on monitors when drafting, but I suspect the problem is a little different on an iPad size screen, the solution needing to be a little more creative to convey the needed information.
Phew, thinking about the possibilities of this app is exhilarating, and my apologies if my post is overly long. Congrats to the founding team for identifying and working to solve such a significant missing piece in the chain of the construction process! :)
Folks have been talking about tablets being a natural fit for the construction market, and frankly I don't see it (at least for field work. Construction sites are nasty places - dust, concrete, bentonite, slurries, oil & grease, rain, snow, heat these are not good things for an expensive tablet to be around.
Furthermore, the trades guys are hard are their equipment. When it's time to go to lunch, stuff gets thrown in the trunk bed or on the passenger seat of the truck as they rush off. Even if a tablet survives the abuse, those guys rarely lock or raise the windows of their trucks on the job, so I wouldn't expect the tablet to be there when the contractor gets back from his break.
First, traditional prints are cumbersome, so they're difficult to pull out and reference in any kind of adverse field conditions. Large sheets of paper do not mix well with wind or rain.
This is true, but it's offset by their disposable nature. If I'm heading out to the field and I know there is going to be inclement weather, I bring a couple of copies and if one sheet gets destroyed by weather, oh well, I just break out my second copy.
And while large sheets can be cumbersome, they allow field workers to look at a small component of a plan in an overall larger context which can be very convenient (that's why the minimum size I typically deal with on a site is 11x17). On a 10-inch tablet, you can only do that by zooming and panning a lot and that's not nearly as useful.
I've been wrong before and maybe I'm wrong now but I can't help thing that this will be a frustrating experience for a lot of folks.
keeping the documents up to date.
This is a very good point (nothing like getting an "as-built" that is not even close to being accurate) but I don't think that offsets the downsides.
>> This is a very good point but I don't think that offsets the downsides.
The downsides of out of date documents are 1% of the total cost of construction. A project may have 1-3% margin for a GC, so this is an enormous number. You save in three big ways with PlanGrid - we are cheaper than printing, faster than dealing with paper for sharing and note taking, and eliminate building from outdated drawings.
Our current set of users love having it in the field. We have superintendents tell us they can't believe they are using an iPad everyday. They have all the drawings all the time and they are always up to date - something people in the field have never had before on large projects.
Several of our customers have purchased iPads just to use PlanGrid. It's true that some will break, of course, but the cost savings offset it.
It’s funny, people often ask about whether the guys in the field are willing to trade their super high-resolution paper drawings for a smallish iPad screen, but if you think about it, it’s basically the same situation as with paper maps vs. google maps. You don’t see too many people using those old fold-out maps any more. They are too cumbersome, you always have some out-of-date version, and you never seem to have the map you need.
Architects, construction managers, general contractors and trades
I'm thinking land surveyors, too. Many jobs require working off a drawing, usually an AutoCAD or Microstation plotter printout. That's pretty cumbersome, so this could solve that problem as well. Import the geo points or the .csv file and go.