Australia's first WELL Core and Shell Gold Pre-certified building
Australia has welcomed the completion of its country’s first WELL Core and Shell Gold Pre-certified building in Sydney. Barrack Place is a next generation, A-grade workplace and retail precinct, targeting a 5 star NABERS Energy rating and 6 star Green Star rating. Developed and owned by Investa, Barrack Place comprises an 18-story tower equipped with the latest smart building technology – making it one of the most advanced buildings of its kind.
Barrack Place was designed by Architectus and constructed by Built, one of Australia’s largest and fastest growing private construction groups. Built, who has put innovation at the forefront of all their work, selected Barrack Place as an opportunity to implement Fieldwire’s construction management software. Due to the success of this project, Fieldwire was selected as Built’s software of choice to be used across all of their future projects.
Key Facts
- Australian General Contractor with annual revenue exceeding $1.5b
- Works on projects ranging from $1m to $400m in total value
- Selected Fieldwire as its software of choice for all future projects
Use Cases
- Document control and offline plan viewing
- Task management and coordination
- Issue tracking and reporting
- Site inspections on mobile and tablet
Uniting multiple solutions in one platform
After testing multiple platforms across various use cases and projects, Built was seeking a more advanced field management platform that allowed for mobile plan viewing, document sharing, and labor coordination across dispersed teams. “We were already using Aconex, so we initially adopted Fieldwire for internal use only. But once we saw the benefits, we rolled it out externally to our subcontractors doing the design fit-out,” said Built’s Digital Design Manager, Ryan Hanlen.
Fieldwire allowed subcontractors to access their drawings offline and pin defects directly to plans on-the-fly. Built leveraged Fieldwire's open API to integrate Aconex and Fieldwire so that all plans automatically transferred from one environment to another, through Dropbox, which integrates within Fieldwire. “We used the Fieldwire-Dropbox integration so everything we had stored on Aconex was transferred directly across to Fieldwire. Meaning everyone had access to the latest and greatest version of each plan, specification, or report,” said Hanlen. Updated versions of drawings were therefore automatically pushed to subcontractors using the Fieldwire platform, ensuring everyone was always on the same page and working from the most recent drawing set.
Managing 10,000+ drawings on Fieldwire
One aspect of Fieldwire’s plan management that Built used extensively is automatically creating sheet hyperlinks. With Investa specifying an integrated 6D BIM solution, Barrack Place had more than 10,000 drawings to manage. So being able to navigate through them without manually creating hyperlinks for each new sheet was a huge time-saver for the Built team. “All detail, section, and elevation callouts on the plans are automatically activated, making it easier for people to navigate through drawing sets,” said Hanlen.
“Due to some limitations around connectivity, especially in the basement where there was no mobile coverage, the team couldn’t otherwise get access to the plans they needed to complete their tasks on time without Fieldwire.”
Saving time and paper with Fieldwire
Having a job site based in the heart of Sydney’s city center meant Built’s site office had to be located a short distance away. Hanlen said: “We’d encounter a 15-minute downtime every time we had to leave the site to reprint a plan in the office and come back." This re-occurrence of downtime was entirely eliminated thanks to Fieldwire, and Built no longer needed hard copies of plans on site. Instead, they could update drawings and see new changes from the convenience of their phone or tablet.
To ensure productivity remained high and time wasted searching for information remained low, Built organized a mammoth number of plans into trade-specific folders and applied hashtags and categories to plans – making filtering for information much quicker on the fly.
Using tasks to prioritize work and increase efficiency
Built leveraged Fieldwire tasks to keep track of deficiencies found on site throughout the fit-out phase of the project. These tasks were pinned to plans, organized by priority level, and assigned to trades so that they could schedule work accordingly. Subcontractors at Barrack Place could access their task list offline to ensure the project continued to progress and issues were resolved quickly. Hanlen said that when it comes to tracking and communicating defects, “Fieldwire works offline, automatically syncs data, and simplifies reporting for the entire team,” including remote workers.
During the initial planning phase of the detailed building scaffold works, Fieldwire was utilized for remote reporting. Hanlen added: “We had a scaffolding subcontractor who was based in regional NSW, and due to the distance between Wagga Wagga and Sydney, they didn’t want to fly all the way to site just to do an inspection. So we did a site walk using the Fieldwire app, generated a photo report, and sent it to the subcontractor. This helped them get an appreciation for the site without actually being there.”
The time Built saved communicating via tasks went a long way in increasing job site productivity. Whenever an issue was found and listed as a task, the subcontractor it was assigned to was alerted in real-time. This way, according to Hanlen, “there was a much quicker turn-around on addressing defects because once they were found, a location was communicated, and the right person could resolve it instantly.”
Expanding Fieldwire’s relationship with Built
As a result of the time saved with Fieldwire, the platform is being used on more of Built’s Sydney-based projects. As Built continues to drive productivity across all of their projects using Fieldwire, their Chief Digital Officer, Sujeet Rana, said “Fieldwire’s ability to integrate effectively with other technology partners was a critical factor in our decision to expand the use of the platform across our business."
All images supplied by Investa Property Group © Copyright 2018. First published in March 2019.
