When Construction Looks Like Manufacturing

Collaboration is the cornerstone of any successful construction project, especially a large project. It is the key to ensuring that all parties involved are working toward the same goal with as few setbacks and costly errors as possible. Healthcare and hospital construction are some of the most demanding construction projects out there. Because of all the rules and regulations to promote a safe and healthy environment for patients, these projects can be extremely complicated to construct.

Penn Medicine and Balfour Beatty/L.F. Driscoll Joint Venture (JV) recently teamed up to build a state of the art inpatient hospital called the Pavilion. Tackling this project meant embracing new methods and championing innovation. Balfour Beatty honed in on ways to improve safety for workers, speed up the construction timeline and ultimately provide the best results for the University of Pennsylvania.

A top concern for this project was keeping workers safe and staying on schedule while working within the urban construction site. In order to combat these issues, Balfour Beatty utilized prefabrication and modular processes whenever possible.  Due to the relatively high uniformity of bathrooms within hospitals, modular bathrooms provided an excellent opportunity to reduce traffic and risk on the construction site. The bathrooms were manufactured as units off-site in a 60,000 square-foot warehouse. According to Andrew Menyo, Balfour Beatty’s project manager overseeing this offsite manufacturing, there are many benefits to prefabrication, “[It] can reduce site congestion, increase quality, schedule certainty, and cost certainty.”

Another important criterion of the Pavilion construction was that it would be built using as much local labor as possible. By utilizing prefab and modular processes, Balfour Beatty was able to ensure that more Philadelphia-area labor was used.

Constructing the bathrooms off-site also allowed for quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) to be completed before the units were transported onsite. Quality checks and many other aspects of the job were made easier through the use of collaborative technology. According to Menyo, “One key software throughout the project was Bluebeam Revu, which the team used as a collaboration tool, to communicate during large team huddles as well as with folks out in the field.” Bluebeam Revu can be used to eliminate design defects through its markup and collaboration tools. By using Revu, architects, engineers and contractors can more quickly complete thorough quality reviews with improved accuracy. On a large project like the Pavilion it was crucial to prevent defects that would affect the project timeline. By utilizing modularization and embracing technology, the project was able to stay on schedule and under budget.

In order to achieve the highest possible result, all construction teams must collaborate and communicate throughout the project. Bluebeam Revu provides solutions that can benefit every stage of the project lifecycle. Real time editing speeds up design review; collaboration tools result in accurate quality reviews; markup and editing tools simplify submittals; it even simplifies project handover once construction is complete through smart digital operation and maintenance manuals.

Interested in seeing how Bluebeam Revu can boost collaboration on your next project? Try Bluebeam Revu for yourself with a full working version 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.