Paperless Builders: The Why, What, and How of Construction Technology

PAPERLESS BUILDERS

PAPERLESS BUILDERS

The Why, What, and How of Construction Technology

HAMZAH SHANBARI, PHD

Copyright © 2024 Hamzah Shanbari

All rights reserved.

PAPERLESS BUILDERS

The Why, What, and How of Construction Technology

ISBN

979-8-88926-169-8 Paperback

979-8-88926-168-1 Hardcover

979-8-88926-167-4 Ebook

BUILDER(S) is a registered trademark for Paperless Builders Consulting, LLC

For the betterment of the industry…

Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: CHANGE IS HARD

PART I: WHY?

CHAPTER 2: SAFETY

CHAPTER 3: COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER 4: PROGRESS

CHAPTER 5: RISK

PART II: WHAT?

CHAPTER 6: DIGITAL DOCUMENTATION

CHAPTER 7: DESIGN VISUALIZATION

CHAPTER 8: REALITY CAPTURE

CHAPTER 9: INTERNET OF THINGS

CHAPTER 10: ROBOTICS

CHAPTER 11: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

PART III: HOW?

CHAPTER 12: B IS FOR BENCHMARK

CHAPTER 13: U IS FOR USERS

CHAPTER 14: I IS FOR IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

CHAPTER 15: L IS FOR LEARNING

CHAPTER 16: D IS FOR DRIVER

CHAPTER 17: E IS FOR EVALUATION

CHAPTER 18: R IS FOR REPORTING

CHAPTER 19: (S) IS FOR SCALING

CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION

Greetings,

Thank you for picking up this book. If the title piqued your curiosity, that might mean you have something to do with the construction industry—also referred to as the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Some people refer to it as the AECO industry, adding the operations of facilities. I prefer to keep things short and simple because simple is almost always better. In my humble opinion, the construction industry encompasses all the others in the sense that no construction project starts before the complete design by architects and engineers. On the flip side, construction projects do not exist in a vacuum, as the facility under construction will naturally transition into a facility that requires operations. So, from here on out, I’ll refer to it as the construction industry. Moreover, anyone who contributes in any way to the construction of a facility is a builder. This includes architects, engineers, owners, trade partners, general contractors, suppliers, technology providers, inspection agencies, fabricators, utility providers, municipalities, insurance brokers, bankers, and others. We are all builders!

But wait, Paperless Builders is printed on paper. What an irony, and I totally understand that. The world is moving toward the digital age more and more, including electronic and audiobooks. However, most book readers still enjoy a printed version. This can be attributed to liking the feel of a physical book, disconnecting from the fatiguing digital world, and the ease of sharing and displaying on a bookshelf. Regardless of the reason, printed books serve as a good reference designed to last a much longer life span than construction documents.

Let’s go back to you, the reader. You are awesome! You have probably heard about the revolution taking the construction industry by storm lately. Tons and tons of construction technology companies are looking to revolutionize the industry for the better, creating safer, higher-efficiency, and better-quality buildings that shape the way we live, work, and enjoy our lives. The construction industry truly affects every human being on the planet, and possibly even outside this planet in the near future.

Even though we are seeing a boom in technology advancements in many different applications, the construction industry has been slow in adopting these technologies at scale. This is mainly because we’ve been building facilities the same way for a very long time, and a lot of these methods and processes are entrenched in the souls of those performing and managing them. Change is not easy, but it’s coming, and it’s coming fast.

If you go to any jobsite today, you are bound to stumble upon paper, one way or another—from the large sets of drawings to the dozens of binders containing more information. Stored in the jobsite trailer, papers serve as a reference to the folks in the field. They refer to them when they have a question or when they want to verify one thing or another, and that’s one of the main obstacles standing in the way of digital transformation. A typical project may host the following sets of paper, to list a few:

Construction Drawings: These are usually printed on thirty-six-by-forty-eight-inch sheets of paper and contain up to fifty pages for each discipline. Each of those sets weigh around twenty pounds or so. They are either placed on a tilted desk or hung on a special rack to be pulled out when needed. These sets are large, bulky and consume a large space in the jobsite trailer. These include, but are not limited to, architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and civil drawings.

Specifications: All of the design information cannot be placed on drawings, which is why designers and engineers add a specifications document that would supplement the contents of the drawings. These sets vary in size between one hundred pages and up to almost a thousand. The document is usually printed in letter-sized paper and stored in a binder somewhere close to where the drawings are. Several versions of the specifications can pertain to each discipline.

Shop Drawings: These are detailed drawings provided by manufacturers and contractors that show exactly how specific components (like prefabricated elements, steel framing, or custom cabinetry) will be fabricated and installed.

Reports: Building inspection reports ensure compliance with building codes and specifications at various construction stages, while specialty inspection reports provide expert evaluations of specific aspects like geotechnical and environmental conditions.

Forms: Daily construction reports document daily progress and activities, change order forms authorize scope adjustments, RFIs seek clarifications on drawings or specifications, and submittal forms are used for material and equipment approval.

Safety Documents: Safety plans and manuals outline project-specific safety protocols, while incident/accident reports document any on-site safety incidents, ensuring a safe work environment and compliance with safety regulations.

Quality Control Documents: Quality assurance/control plans set out procedures and standards for maintaining project quality, and punch lists itemize work that requires correction before final acceptance, ensuring the project meets contract specifications.

Commissioning Documents: Pertinent for projects involving complex mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems, these documents detail the process for verifying and documenting that the installed systems perform according to the project requirements and design intent.

Closeout Documents: Warranty documents provide information on material and workmanship warranties, O&M manuals offer guidance on system maintenance, and the final project report summarizes the project’s execution, challenges, and outcomes, serving as a comprehensive project overview.

Why paperless? Well, several reasons:

Paper is permanent: Once a paper is printed, it’s disconnected from the source, the output is final and unchanging. Not only can you not write back on it to update the source, but more importantly, you cannot continue to pull the latest version of the drawing that may contain different information than what you have. This disconnect is the main reason paper needs to go and be replaced with a digital format that may or may not look and feel like the paper we’re used to.

Paper is heavy: it’s physically daunting to carry the amount of paper required to convey how an entire facility is to be built. Not only does paper weigh a lot, but it is also large since details and big-picture drawings require a large piece of paper to be displayed properly. Therefore, you will not see someone on a job site dragging along a full set of construction documents. What you would see is someone carrying maybe a smaller version of a subset drawing set that shows a specific discipline only.

Paper is disorganized: all information that gets added to a piece of paper needs to be relayed back to the central record via double-entry. Paper is very much analog and all our information is stored in a digital format that allows for expansion and updates; and no, scanning paper is not really digitizing it, it’s merely saving a digital copy of it, mostly without extracting the actual data within it.

Paper is deforestation: as sustainability is becoming more and more prevalent in our world, the continuous increased use of paper creates a massive waste and aid in cutting more and more trees. Although some of the paper that were printed to execute a project will end up getting recycled, most of it will be thrown away after completion. Construction already has a bad rap when it comes to waste and carbon footprint, and paper is certainly not helping the case.

Paper is costly: The costs associated with paper don’t just end with the purchase. They spiral into the realms of printing, storage, and the hidden expenses of fixing mistakes that stem from outdated or incorrect information. Every time a new iteration of the drawing is released, new printing costs accumulate.

Paper has no place in the future, but it could also have less space in the present. Paper needs to go, and we need to embrace the digital era that would ensure all parties are on the same page, digitally. The embrace of digital processes will enable the construction industry to unlock massive pools of higher safety, increased efficiencies, and superior quality outcomes.

I’ve personally driven this digital transformation within The Haskell Company for the past 8 years, and have implemented several paperless processes and solutions in previous roles spanning over 15 years. My passion for driving paperless processes come from a frustrated place where running a construction project without having the latest information causes several pain points. I’ve evaluated over a thousand solutions directed toward the construction industry, or adjacent to it but can be applied with small tweaks. Out of those, I have driven implementations of over 200 solutions that address specific problem statements, 20 of which scaled and became a standard operating procedure. I’ve seen the ups and downs of evaluating and implementing such solutions and have found ways and tips to allow projects to move forward with digital implementations.

That’s what led me to compile all those lessons in this book. The intent is to share my experiences and tools I developed with the broader industry in an effort to speed up the digital transformation. The book is intended to help mid-to-small-size companies in the construction industry evaluate, implement, and adopt digital solutions. The book is also intended to act as a way to compare methods of approaching the digital transformation journeys in companies that already started down that road.

The book will take you on a journey of explaining the problem statements in the industry, followed by digital solution types and ending with a framework of evaluating, implementing, and scaling these solutions to work toward a paperless future. Understanding the problem is half the solution in itself. That’s why I decided to start by explaining the why behind the movement toward a paperless industry. Part I of the book explains many problem statements in detail. The construction world is plagued with several pain points that can be traced back to old processes that rely heavily on paper to complete.

The book’s second part covers the different technology types that can address the problem statements in Part I. These solutions are available in the market and ready to be implemented. There are very few problem statements that do not have an off-the-shelf solution. Part II will cover many types of technologies and how they can address specific problem statements. In an effort to remain neutral and not have this book come across as salesy, no solution providers are mentioned by name. A simple web search with the term of any specific technology type will yield many results to choose from. Another reason I chose not to name any technology providers is the constant change in the construction technology landscape. Many startups would pivot, rebrand, or get acquired and integrated into a different solution.

Part III of the book will unveil the proven framework I’ve used over and over again in evaluating, implementing, and scaling technology solutions. The framework BUILDER(S)™ is a simple and on-brand acronym that highlights sequential steps to take in your digital transformation journey. The framework is easy to remember and addresses many obstacles you may face when evaluating and implementing technology solutions in your company.

My hope for this book is that it will become extremely dated and highly irrelevant by 2030. So, if you’re reading this book beyond 2031, I hope you get a giggle at the archaic ways we’ve built things in the past. Even some of the technologies introduced in this book, as the latest at the time, may have been replaced by completely different and more efficient ones. The technology world moves fast, and if you’re not catching up, you will find yourself way behind without even realizing when that happened.

So, thank you again for picking up or downloading this book. Now, go and make your design and construction operations paperless.

Best,

Hamzah

CHAPTER 1

CHANGE IS HARD

One of my first assignments as a Manager of Construction Technology and Innovation at Haskell was to implement a research and development project we worked with an academic institution on developing. The mission looked simple on the surface; we’ve already established the use case and the technology behind it and found a suitable project to implement it in. The developed technology solved a real problem statement in the industry, struck by incidents between workers and equipment. The idea was to attach Bluetooth Low-Energy sensors to workers via a belt clip and similar sensors to all equipment on the jobsite. These sensors would detect proximity between each other and alert both parties on the imminent danger of a real issue that accounts for over 47 percent of all fatal incidents in construction.¹ The idea was novel, exciting, and worked really well in the lab. The project I was charged with implementing had been struggling to keep up with the schedule, and the project team rotated several superintendents in an effort to bring it back on track. The project team finally appeared to have found the right man for the job, a 56-year-old veteran in the industry who has seen the good, the bad, and everything in between in his career that spanned close to 4 decades. We’re going to refer to this gentleman as Stan.

I’ve visited jobsites during my days as an owner’s representative and some more in my virtual design and construction (VDC) role. I’m familiar with the processes and dynamics of a typical jobsite, but I have been disconnected from that for quite some time. My first approach to contacting the jobsite team is to email all parties involved, including the project manager, assistant project manager, superintendent, assistant superintendent, and the regional safety manager responsible for this project. The email was lengthy and contained details on the proposed timeline and requirements to set the solution up.

The project manager responded to the email since I also copied the VP of Construction and our CFO, saying that they would welcome such innovative technology to be tested on their jobsite. No one else cared to ask questions or even respond. My reply to that email was clear that I was planning to be on the jobsite at a specific date and time to start the implementation, I even outlined what assistance I would need from the jobsite team. Again, no response. I took that silence as a no-objection and planned my travel.

When I arrived at the jobsite, no one seemed to have any inclination of