Plangrid (YC W12) Builds A New Market For The iPad: The Construction Industry
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My background sort of puts me with one foot in either camp for this particular problem set; it would be really cool to chat with you folks some time when I make it out to the Bay Area.
BTW, how did you all come to find each other?
As somebody frustrated by the lack of alternatives to Autodesk products, seemingly due to the lock in by .DWG files[1] not being an open standard, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts? Did you think about/try implementing the file format? Do you have plans for others?
Last week, I told myself I'd give the OSS CAD programs a try, downloaded LibreCAD and tried to open some architecture plans from my inbox. Could not open. Then I read came across an excellent explanation of the problem of DWGs in OSS[2], this is the most frustrated I've been for a while. The industry standard is a proprietary file format with no published specifications.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwg [2]: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/whats-up-with-dwg-a...
I guess I just wanted a place to vent out my frustration with DWG :D.
The other comments in this thread make it very clear, you have a great product. More industries need teams like yours.
By the time we get around to this, we have our fingers crossed that google's acquisition of Motorola begets a sweet android tablet from google directly.
The obvious choice of otter box came in first: http://www.amazon.com/OtterBox-APL2-IPAD1-20-C4ATT-Defender-...
Second best ipad case was the gumdrop: http://www.amazon.com/Gumdrop-Cases-Drop-Red-Black-DS-IPAD2-...
The otterbox had a stand that people liked (even though it made a clunky cover) and the gumdrop one was great for full coverage (and much better made than the griffin competitors).
Our users weren't as big of a fan but speck: http://www.amazon.com/Speck-Products-HandyShell-Case-SPK-A02...
made our personal favorite. Not as much protection but the stand / carabineer functionality is great!
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! :)
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.
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.
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.
We have a software suite for the construction industry, which has modules for inspection requests, punch-lists, occupancy planning (healthcare), room completion (healthcare), room readiness (healthcare) etc.
We also have a service around providing custom reports... however, we find that the need for dynamic data trumps the ability to simply view the latest plan digitally, i.e. we provide the ability to run a dynamic report on all inspections scheduled, performed, outstanding, etc... As well as the need to run a report that would "Show me all the rooms that have a Medication Dispensation Unit, on level two and assigned to unit Med Surge" - which outputs a colorized visio (or ZUI iPad floorplan).
The future is in granularity of reporting, rather than just blanket display, and I think this is a great step. Especially if you have many trades begining to use it. There is no reason the trades can't run multiple apps for specific purposes.
Although, I am not sure I agree with one number in the article; "For $1MM in construction, you can have as much as $3,500 in printing" -- I am only skeptical as I work on projects in the hundreds of millions (1.5B, 850MM, 800MM 100MM are the budgets for my (personally) active projects) I dont see them spending 3MM on printing for the 850MM project... but I might just not be privy to the numbers from every trade.
Here is an example of a dynamic room category report for an active project here in SF. We colorize the rooms based on type/use to familiarize the org with the spaces http://i.imgur.com/2DRah.jpg - We do a great deal more with the data and reports, this is just an example of many that the orgs use. Hospital transition planning is very complex, and costly. The vitals of the facility change a lot through the life of the project. The issue with educating THOUSANDS of people in prep for opening day such that they can SAFELY receive their first patient is critical.
Being able to very quickly synthesize and summarize vast amounts of information makes for a better, more successful project and a better, more educated and prepared staff.
Remember that while there are hundreds of people on a project team, there are thousands of people on the facility staff who are expected to move into the facility day-one and not cause fatal mistakes.
A project I am doing in Texas is 1.5MM square feet and dynamic, item-level granularity reporting is going to be key in the smooth success of the project.
I would love to see what PlanGrid can offer such large projects - and while I am a full proponent of the iPad in the field, in an industry where cost is king, I'd like to better understand how they convince construction companies of the ROI - esp. when tools and materials walk of the job all the time.
I think that Plangrid should talk to the designers (not just architects) as well; RTKL, Mazzetti, TEECOM, RLS, SMWM, SFM, etc...
If PlanGrid (love the name) wants to talk to me - my email is in my profile.
We are cheaper than just the printing costs alone, but our real value-add comes from the huge reduction in document control hours we bring. This, combined with our ability to mitigate the risk of building off outdated information, makes a huge win for almost every project if you do the math.
Let me give you a concrete example; a hospital here in SF that is building a new facility has spent 30+ million dollars on coordination and constructability issues between all the trades.
There was far less printing of plans than there was hours spent coordinating the BIM model for changes.
Now, granted, this wasa project where there was an oversight in the design as it pertained to the owners intent and a number of critical technology spaces required were left out of the design.
This resulted in many hours of coordination efforts from all the trades to get these spaces into the facility, but a fraction of this was in printing.
If you can help with this problem, coordination, you have a much larger market.
The current industry trend is to err on the side of digital design and coordination meetings with IPD models, and reduce printing and field interference issues.
What might be an interesting opportunity for your service is to notify trades when changes occur that may affect them. THEN show them the new, updated PDF.
I don't know how this would occur -- other than the pushing of a constructability log or something....
Also, it would make sense that your app is much more focused on a the smaller project (HUGE market) of residential, smaller commercial etc..
Trying to force yourselves into solving the issues of massive scale projects may be suicide.
The problem is, after all this 3D BIM work, how does that information get to the field? What are the actual workers building off of?
Paper. Outdated, expensive, paper. THATS the problem we are solving. Big projects, little projects, they all use paper, they all pay waaaay too much for paper, and they all have trouble keeping it up to date.
I don't think that is realistic.
Others are working on augmented reality interfaces to provide that updated information. Where a set of glasses connected through the construction wifi network would provide the needed updates.
Sure, there is a much larger technical issue there WRT engineering a solution, but the fact of the matter is that paper is actually a cheap way of conveying a vast amount of information VERY efficiently.
They can write and scribble and troubleshoot on the plans.
There is a LOT more information to present on 30x42.
Their batteries wont die.
Training people to absorb information off plans is thousands of years developed, efficient and CHEAP.
I think that granularity of message is important - and I think you can really excel here.
Rather than presenting the whole plan on PDF - tell them EXACTLY what they need to know BY ROOM/BY LOCATION that pertains to them at that moment.
I'd like you to see the Inspection Request Module that we have to understand this; where on a PDF/Visio of a plan an inspector can just trace out the walls that they inspected in the field at that time. This finger-trace gets captured and recorded. Then synthesized into the colorized maps I showed aboved so that the whole project team can run reports on status of the project (you can also run reports that show which trades are succeeding and which are behind in every aspect of deliverables... sometimes you just need to fire a plumbing contractor because they keep failing inspections)
Anyway - paper is not always bad. It is an extremely efficient method of conveying information.
You need to preempt the NEED for paper, not reduce it on the back-end. This is what BIM and coordination and IPD are all about. Reducing back-end paper and change-orders.
Paper is not what is bad, bad information is what is bad. Eliminate bad information you eliminate waste.
LEAN processes are good.
This.
In my former life as an architectural designer and project manager for a design-build firm, we experimented with creating document sets that provided this level of room-by-room information. The documents were color printouts on 11x17 sheets, folded and contained in a binder. 160,000 SF remodel. Labor intensive to say the least, and only possible at all because we were doing mostly finish work.
But an app could make this level of granularity practical. The advantages to all stages of construction are numerous, from takeoffs to punch lists and inspection.
..but who would want to do that! Silly me!