Atomatic Mechanical (of Chicagoland) – a full-service mechanical contractor, prides itself on providing quality workmanship, innovative designs and reliable service for commercial, institutional and industrial projects. With outdated project data management processes, Atomatic was looking for a cloud-based solution that would standardise processes to increase collaboration and accountability across its teams.
Old data management methods were not sustainable
When Jack Fitzgerald, executive vice president, joined the Atomatic team, there was no structured system or standards in place for document management, leading to poor data management:
“You can’t have a high-performing business if you don’t have a team to support and deliver. And for the team to deliver, everyone has to work together. There has to be collaboration,” says Fitzgerald.
To get to a place where their processes were optimised, Atomatic needed to standardise technology to drive consistency in reporting project information for greater collaboration and accountability across its projects. Atomatic evaluated several solutions based on meeting the following criteria:
- promote collaboration
- are easy to use
- create accountability
- tracks patterns in data for continuous improvement
It’s these capabilities that led them to choose Autodesk Build within Autodesk Construction Cloud as their connected construction management solution.
Eliminate grey areas and ensure project certainty with Autodesk Build
By standardising the process of creating RFIs, RFQs, and issues with Autodesk Build – an important component in the Autodesk Construction Cloud package, Atomatic teams can uniformly document project data. This allows Atomatic to seamlessly track the status of a deliverable to know where communication is occurring or not, and execute projects consistently and with better results.
“The goal is to capture data to understand what makes projects successful and then repeat the process,” Fitzgerald says. “We want to get to a place where we know what’s working well and what we need to improve, and that only happens through structured data. The sooner management is informed about problems, the sooner they can fix them before they negatively impact customers.”
With Autodesk Build, Atomatic can aggregate data from different roles in one place. By capturing project information as early as the bid phase, Atomatic can seamlessly move that information downstream once the project is awarded and underway. This process enables easier collaboration when reviewing information or asking questions related to project scope, saving time and increasing quality.
Each new project replicates Atomatic’s master project template in Autodesk Build to ensure its success. This process simplifies project start-up while giving Atomatic rich data to measure efficiency and optimise its approach for future projects.
“Autodesk Build removes the grey areas, removing subjectivity from what we do and making our work more objective. This enables better decision making, whether internal or external decisions, allowing us to see patterns in the data to help us develop.”
– Jack Fitzgerald, Executive Vice President
How connected construction management saves time and money
By automating some of the monotonotonous tasks with Autodesk Build, Atomatic teams spend less time trying to figure out how to use technology and more time in the areas that bring value to their customers and their projects. Fitzgerald gives an example of how Autodesk Build saved Atomatic $75,000.
The company was contracted to supply 38 roof exhaust fans on a large-scale project when the insulation on the edges of the exhaust vents began to fall off. After contacting the supplier to report the problem, it said that Atomatic was to blame for letting the edges get wet and that it would cost US$75,000 to repair the damage.
But by pulling timesheets from Autodesk Build, Atomatic documented that it was raining on the day the goods were delivered, and the team captured photos of the items delivered on an open flatbed truck. Once this information was handed over to the supplier, they covered the costs. This eliminated any headaches and time that would have been wasted to find the culprit.
With real insight into their data, Atomatic can identify where projects are going well, where they are starting to go wrong, and ensure they are promoting proper practices in all future projects.
“We wanted a true technology partnership and to work with a company that valued our contribution to product development, and that’s what we found in Autodesk. We see the strength of the solution’s capabilities in all of our projects, from design to delivery. And not only does this data unification enhance collaboration, it also improves what our teams deliver to our customers.”
– Jack Fitzgerald, Executive Vice President