Fieldwire and Building Design

Building design and construction is ever-evolving, with projects great and small constantly coordinating many moving parts all at once. More and more focus is placed upon high performance building design and energy efficiency, but achieving such a detailed level of coordination requires complex interaction between countless technical disciplines, project managers, and contractors, all with often conflicting requirements. A successful building project doesn’t just happen, it takes contributions from people across both the design and construction phases of the project. And what better way to get everyone collaborating smoothly than to get them all working together in a mobile construction management program like Fieldwire?

Task Tracking Across the Project Schedule

Collaboration is key to the successful management of design teams. Structural, architectural, geotechnical, and building services consultants (to name a few) all need to touch base with each other and design managers throughout their tenure on the job. Facades, ventilation, acoustics, and landscaping all play an increasingly important role in the overall building design as industry focus continues to shift toward green building and user comfort. This can lead to a number of additional design requirements.

Fieldwire allows for each one of these perspectives to remain transparent with all of the others, so no one is left in the dark regarding what other team members are up to. All queries, ranging from high level design coordination to specific design issues, can be designated by urgency, and the category and hashtag management systems built into the app make it very easy to organize tasks by discipline. This makes it simple for each consultant to view a list of tasks that belong to their team. Tasks can also be linked together so that assignees can identify when their work directly affects another’s, and users also have the ability to place tasks directly onto project drawings so that the location of each item is never in question. Start and End dates also clearly define the duration of each task, which the entire team can view on a calendar for simple scheduling needs.

Real-Time Accountability

The success of construction projects ultimately relies on the sum of its parts, and Fieldwire helps ensure that everyone is doing their part to get the team closer to completion. By assigning specific tasks to each respective user, you can create accountability within your Fieldwire project for every issue across the job site. When a task is first assigned to someone, they are notified both by email and mobile push notification about this event. Similarly, whenever that person updates the task with new data, the creator of the task is also notified. This keeps all pertinent parties in the loop regarding the task’s progress and lets you know in real-time when significant information is available. Fieldwire transfers data from device to device via the cloud, so as soon as new data is added and synced, it’s accessible to everyone in the project then and there.

The ability to create customized categories for project trades or disciplines also helps keep tasks clear and distinct from each other, so your crew will know right away where to look for the issues they’re responsible for. Categories allow for easy visibility and filtering, as do hashtags, another grouping tool within Fieldwire that enables your team to track and locate desired tasks quite easily. Just assign categories and hashtags to tasks so that you and your team can parse out the relevant ones while working, as well as filter for them during report generation.

Adapting with Project Phases

As projects transition from one stage to another, different contributors can come to the forefront or recede to less prominent roles, but the need to track their efforts doesn’t change. Fieldwire helps you keep an accurate, living record of your work throughout the various phases of the project. Specialty consultants or contractors might need to provide updated design input for security or safety standards, or clients might have an evolving range of requirements that need to be met regarding the building’s future use. To accommodate these design developments, any changes or on-the-fly additions can be documented within Fieldwire.

Markups can be added to plans to address any revisions, and measurements can also be included with precise annotations. Sketches, specifications, and other relevant documentation can be pinned to plans and organized in a library of uploaded files. If a task needs to be transferred to another person or discipline as the design progresses, they can be updated with a few clicks in the app so that the appropriate consultant or trade is alerted. Tasks also contain a timestamped history of every update, so you will have a chronological record of everything that has transpired since the task’s creation. Any checklists or comments will be there for easy viewing, and if you need to make an inspection or go on a walkthrough across the site, Fieldwire’s convenient mobile apps will make it a breeze to jot down notes or add site photos as often as needed. The ample suite of tools and features available in Fieldwire make it possible to adapt to any sudden circumstance or phase of construction without breaking your stride.

In order to cultivate efficiency and reliable building design, the flow of communication and information tracking needs to be steady and unimpeded. Fieldwire helps make this happen throughout your team by strengthening methods of collaboration, both in the office and in the field. This ensures coordinated documentation and guarantees that your team’s contributions will be maximized in order to achieve the best building design possible with every project going forward.