Customer focused quality with style Brasfield & Gorrie started in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1921 as the Thomas C. Brasfield Company and was purchased by Miller Gorrie in 1964. Since then, they have grown steadily across the South, and now have offices in Atlanta, Orlando, Raleigh, Nashville, and Jacksonville and manage a diverse portfolio that includes projects in healthcare, retail, education, office, and industrial sectors. Today, Brasfield & Gorrie is the 32nd largest contractor and the 16th largest general builder in the United States, but they maintain focus on the needs of their clients and communities to create excellence in every project they undertake.That reputation for excellence and attention to detail extends to Brasfield & Gorrie’s latest project as well: a 35-story luxury condominium called 1010 Midtown in the heart of downtown Atlanta with 30,000 sq. ft. of retail and an 820-space parking garage. The $159 million project is phase one in a three-phase plan to inject life into a neglected section of the city’s famous Peachtree Street, turning it into “Midtown Mile,” a shopping, entertainment, and living area comparable with Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and New York City’s Madison Avenue.Challenge: Perfection at every levelSince 1010 Midtown is dedicated to upscale urban appeal and its condos feature standard floor to ceiling windows, hardwood flooring, and marble countertops, engineers and architects have to get everything just right for delivery to the client in fall, 2008. That means instituting a new, efficient quality assurance and punch list systems to track and correct any construction defects.Brasfield & Gorrie’s previous quality control processes were long and involved, taking extra time both in the field and in the trailer.
First, up-to-date documents and plans were gathered, along with previous inspections and issues lists. These were then taken to the jobsite and marked on paper to explain any defects. Back at the office, notes and drawings were retyped or updated, digital photos were attached as documentation, and marked-up plans were scanned. When that was done, everything was pulled into a master list, and reports were manually distributed to subcontractors and superintendents.These steps were time consuming, often redundant, and contained many opportunities for errors to appear and propagate. Documentation was hard to track, and communication with subcontractors was cumbersome.
Starting with 1010 Midtown, Brasfield & Gorrie saw an opportunity to make this normally laborious quality control phase of construction more efficient and so came up with a list of requirements:
Brasfield & Gorrie elected to pilot two software products—LATISTA Field and its competitor—during the 1010 Midtown building process to see which system better met their needs. They worked with each software system for 60 days, using Motion Computing portable tablet PCs. One floor was inspected with each system, and the project team assessed results.LATISTA worked with Brasfield & Gorrie on the front end to establish custom quality assurance features like one-touch icons, pre-set defect language, and detailed reporting capabilities. With these, users were able to track specific deficiencies, how often they occurred, and by whom and could generate reports of this data with the click of a button. Reports could then be distributed automatically via email and viewed by subcontractors over a web portal. LATISTA also allowed plans and documents to be uploaded directly to tablet PCs and a server at the office. Plans could then be marked up in the field and would synchronize instantly with other users when the user was next in the office.
Motion Computing tablet PCs made these features available to Brasfield & Gorrie engineers and inspectors out in the field. Piloting both Motion LE1700s and F5s, tablets were loaded with LATISTA software and PDF versions of building plans and had built-in digital cameras to document any issues that were created. Tablets could connect to the quickly and wirelessly for easy synchronization, but were fully functional in offline mode as well. Plus, they were rugged, able to survive moisture, dust, and the occasional drop.