Standardize Digital Documentation with Revu

Sometimes disruption on a project can force a company to investigate new ways of doing business. That ended up being the case with Choate Construction when working on a project for Young Harris College in North Georgia.

The Bluebeam customer story “Choate Construction Standardizes Digital Documentation Processes With Bluebeam Revu” describes Choate Construction as an “Engineering News-Record (ENR) Top Contractor specializing in preconstruction, design-build, LEED implementation and consultation, and construction management across multiple sectors.” The firm has been honored with numerous awards and distinctions since its founding in 1989, and it has twice won the “Best of the Best Projects” award.

By the beginning of 2014, Choate Construction was scheduled to complete a $41 million project for Young Harris College. The project began in 2012, and the Bluebeam article explains that “some of the key project workflows were being done manually, a daunting task for the project team building the new social and intellectual heart of a college campus.” In addition, the project that Choate was working on was set to be the largest building that had ever been constructed at Young Harris College.

Due to manual complications as well as intense weather setbacks, Choate lost a cumulative 192 days of productive time, which was “equivalent to 30% of the project timeline.” Todd Barrett and Tim Watson, Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) Team Leader at Choate and Virtual Construction Specialist respectively, set out to “survey project needs, pilot a new digital documentation and delivery process, and train the superintendents and project team.”

Once they were able to get the Choate superintendents and site crew engaged with their plan, Barrett and Watson transitioned from manual processes to digital processes – organizing their construction documents, instantly updating their document sets, accessing information in the field, and creating and viewing 3D PDFs. Because of its transition to digital documentation, the Choate Young Harris College project was able to be opened to students in September 2014.

Choate now has a “new, company-wide standard for digital document organization and delivery using key Revu features,” and Revu has become its standard solution for PDF markups and digital documentation. “What would have taken us a week or more now only takes us a few hours,” says Barrett. “Why would we not do this?”

Since the adoption of Revu at Choate, the company has integrated Revu into its onboarding processes, has created an internal IT training program including Revu basics, and will soon include online training for Bluebeam Revu. Today, the Choate VDC team is still finding ways to incorporate Revu into a variety of workflows to achieve an even greater level of efficiency.

The Choate Construction website describes the company’s goal as “to truly connect and partner with clients in ways that add value – to both their projects and their bottom lines.”

If you’d like to explore first-hand the ways Bluebeam Revu can give your company a time advantage in its collaborative workflow, try it for yourself. You can download a full working version of Revu Standard, Revu CAD or Revu eXtreme on a 30-day free trial. When it’s time to convert that 30-day trial to a subscription or perpetual license, contact Applied Software and talk to a Bluebeam expert about your firm’s specific needs. Applied will help you champion innovation in your company.