Case Study: Cianbro Achieves Paperless Jobsite at Destiny USA

Integrated solution from Vela Systems and Autodesk automates electronic plan delivery and field activities on Tablet PCs

Destiny USA, Syracuse, New York

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While there is broad agreement in the construction community that green construction is a worthy goal, Cianbro, an employee-owned company based in Pittsfield, Maine, has gone far beyond simple talk. As the general contractor for the Destiny USA development in Syracuse, NY area, Cianbro has been charged by the developer to follow a cutting-edge sustainable construction plan that includes the use of biodiesel instead of fossil fuels, the recycling of 97 percent of construction waste and a paperless worksite.

This is no small project. Destiny USA is being developed by The Pyramid Companies, the largest developer of shopping malls in the United States. The goal is to create a global vacation destination in an environmentally sustainable manner. Elements of the project include a 1.3 million square-foot expansion of the current mall (a $350 million project), a power plant, and a $450 million, 39-story, 1300-room hotel on the banks of Lake Onodaga.

To deliver a project of this scale with such a high level of environmental expectations successfully, Nick Goss, CIO at Destiny USA, knew that he would need to innovate.

"The situation we were faced with was that construction was still using the same techniques and methods that would be familiar to a 19th century builder." Goss said. "Field staff were walking around with out-of-date paper plans to build things we no longer wanted to build because change orders had not yet been incorporated into them. We needed a quicker, more accurate system."

Goss and his team needed to capture data in the field and then effortlessly connect it to a construction management system which would then, in turn, update plans, specifications, safety records and punchlists so that personnel on site would always have access to the most current information. He turned to three companies to turn this vision into reality.

Motion Computing provided Cianbro with Tablet PCs that allow users to write directly on the screen and enter information with a special pen. But good hardware is useless without the right software, and for this part of the solution, Cianbro relied on collaboration between Vela Systems' field software and Autodesk's Constructware, a construction management solution. Vela Systems' mobile field software replaces the notebooks and tubes of drawings normally carried by construction personnel. Cianbro field personnel can write directly on the screen in their own handwriting, which the tablet can display as pen strokes, highlighter marks, or automatically convert to electronic text. The software suite includes modules that replace each of the field tasks that take place on a job site, including work lists, punch lists, field reports and safety inspections.

Engineers from both Vela Systems and Autodesk worked together to ensure automated integration between the field software and Constructware. As a result, Cianbro can put an entire trailer load worth of documents onto the Tablet PC, and any notations made to documents in the field are automatically synchronized with the master documents in Constructware. All participants in the DestinyUSA project know the exact status of issues on the site and, when tasks need to be done, subcontractors can be put on the job immediately. Not only has Cianbro's adoption of this new technology all but eliminated paper, but it also improves the efficiency of the entire operation.

Cianbro saves time conducting quality and safety inspections, and the software also automatically notifies personnel when inspectors need to follow up on recorded safety violations or quality issues, ensuring that sub-contractors are held accountable. Additionally, the technology provides Cianbro's executives with much greater visibility. For example, Cianbro can manage safety compliance and quality for multiple sub-contractors on an individual project or across their entire project portfolio.

"Having all information consolidated in Constructware is a key advantage," said David Fay, technology manager. "It gives us a controlled, well-organized environment for information."

The technological innovation hasn't stopped there. Vela Systems and Cianbro will integrate Vela's products with Autodesk's Navisworks product to leverage field data in the building information model (BIM), a new construction concept called Field BIM®. Current Field BIM applications under development include linking Vela Materials Tracking with BIM to track critical path materials, Vela-authored issues, RFIs and other field data into the Navisworks model collaboration environment.