October 31, 2008

Laptops replace drawings, clipboards on the construction job site

IAN HARVEY

correspondent

There’s a new tool showing up at the job site, but don’t expect it to out dig, out muscle or out last any of the standard issue cranes, jack hammers or nailers.

It’s a computer, more likely a laptop and or a tablet PC, which has a touch-sensitive screen for input much like the venerable pen and clipboard it’s replacing.

While such technology has been around architects and engineering offices for decades, generating CAD plans and doing a myriad of other tasks, it’s only now starting to show up at the dirty end of the construction industry – the job site.

Until fairly recently, computers were still expensive and deemed too fragile for the rough and tumble world of the job where dust, dirt, grime, solvents and hard objects could reduce it to a pile of useless junk before the foundations were poured.

Partly it’s because the technology supporting laptops, such as high speed wireless connectivity on the job site, wasn’t as available or as cost effective as it is today.

The combination of high speed connectivity, tougher machines, special software for the construction industry, and a wave of tech-savvy site administrators and coordinators is changing the way processes have been traditionally managed.

“I can be walking around a site with my tablet PC and one of the guys will come up and say, ‘Hey, the dimension for this isn’t on the drawing’ and I can pull up the drawing, highlight it, email it and get a response back while I’m still talking to him,” says Anthony Broccolini of Broccolini Construction.

Broccolini uses two main software platforms, Autodesk Buzzsaw, from one of the two dominant CAD system makers which is designed to integrate at the construction level, and the other from Vela Systems, makers of software which manages processes that were previously captured on forms by pencil.

Broccolini has been trying to integrate more computer-based systems into their business for the last year.

“Especially things like a deficiency report. You walk around, you capture the deficiencies and then you email it or print it on site and hand it back to the guys and they can start working on it. Before you’d write it down, take it back to the office and have someone type it up and it would take five days before you could turn it around.”

But teaching old dogs new IT tricks isn’t the easiest thing in an industry as entrenched as the construction sector.

“In construction, any time you show the guys some computers it causes them to pause, particularly in the field guys, on the site,” says Josh Kanner of Vela System.

That’s changing now, he says. Instead of explaining how the technology can save time and money, he can point to real world examples where the software and laptops are streamlining processes, replacing those ever-present tubes of drawings and clipboards.

The key is not just tablet PCs, he says, but the back end of the system which ensures all documents relating to a job are updated at the same time so that no one is working on an older revision.

Hardware makers are responding to interest as more manufacturers enter the field to provide rugged computer equipment and mobile field administration software to harsh and dangerous environments.

In an era where the trend is toward smaller, lighter, energy efficient machines, the rugged laptops and handhelds – with their heavy weight and oversize frames – seem like dinosaurs compared to mainstream laptops.

The key standard is the U.S. military spec MIL-STD 810F. Generally it’s cited as a standard which ensures the laptop will stand up to physical shocks and resist environmental damage.

It’s that ability to take a kicking and keep ticking which makes them ideal for companies like Terasen Gas, which assigns Toughbooks to some 260 field employees, most of whom are involving in troubleshooting gas lines.

Terasen employees download work orders and upload completions, which cuts out paperwork and give central managers a handle in real time as to where their resources are, which further boosts productivity.

“A lot of the younger people coming up now are tech savvy and they’ll end up working with the old guys who are the site administrators and they’ll adapt to the technology,” says Broccolini.

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