Hoar Construction Leverages Revu to Better Communicate Building Challenges

Background

Hoar Construction, based in Birmingham, Alabama, is a provider of construction management, general contracting, program management, preconstruction and design-build services. The firm actively embraces information technology as a key pathway toward continued project improvement. For instance, Hoar is progressively leveraging the collaborative benefits of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in new and exciting ways.

Currently, Hoar is building the $400 million NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital located in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This 770,000 square foot integrated healthcare facility includes a 550,000 square foot, 181 bed replacement hospital and a 220,000 square foot clinic that will house NEA Baptist medical specialists and surgeons. The clinic building is connected floor by floor to the inpatient hospital. The project also includes 61,000 square feet of administrative offices and an 18,000 square foot central energy plant.

Challenge

The NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital is being constructed under a traditional design-bid-build contract, and the Project Architect used CAD to develop 2D drawings for use during construction. However, Hoar strongly believed that BIM could bring several benefits to this complicated project, and created an architectural and structural BIM model from the 2D CAD files to supplement the building process. This virtual construction approach generated RFIs much earlier in the process, providing the opportunity to reduce waste and potential rework and increase quality.

To capitalize on these opportunities, Hoar needed to find a solution for quickly documenting and distributing RFIs so issues could be communicated and resolved more quickly. Their goal was to:

• Enable users to quickly redline issues on PDF drawings with industry-standard markups.
• Combine the power of BIM with the simplicity of PDF drawings used in the field.
• Allow recipients to easily review and respond to questions in RFIs with minimal training.

Solution

Hoar decided to implement Bluebeam Revu, a PDF-based solution for digital project communication and collaboration. Since the project team was using PDF to digitally distribute drawings to team members, Revu could easily be inserted into the construction process as a solution for electronically communicating design challenges, issues and questions. Revu was already being used by other project teams at Hoar, and had proven itself internally as a robust solution for managing project communication.

When building issues arise, Project Managers are now using Revu to redline PDF drawings with Revu’s customizable, industry-standard tools including text, shapes, callouts, clouds and measurements. To help demonstrate clashes, team members use Revu to insert images of 3D content from the BIM model directly onto the 2D PDF. The 3D content provides additional context and clarity without requiring viewers to have access to or learn how to use BIM systems. Once completed, the Project Manager uses Revu’s document editing features to insert an RFI coversheet to the redlined PDF, thus delivering all relevant information in one simple file. Hoar has also fully implemented Revu’s 3D PDF functionality when generating RFI’s providing the project team another way to interact with the 3D BIM content.

Results

Using Revu to document issues and questions enabled Hoar to capitalize on the early detection of issues and clashes provided by the BIM model, and helped the project team resolve issues faster and more efficiently. In addition, together with the project design team, Hoar converted the traditional submittal process to a 100% digital and mobile workflow, making project communication less reliant on paper.

“Bluebeam Revu has provided Hoar with a tremendous return on our investment,” said Aaron Wright, BIM Director at Hoar Construction. “We have deployed close to 200 licenses of Revu, for a total licensing cost of about $40,000. Across our entire company, Revu has consistently led to a number of project discoveries that push how we approach communication, solve problems and drive innovation – an added value worth ten times the cost.”

Trey Darnell, BIM Coordinator at Hoar Construction, has also noticed that the use of Revu has spread across project team members who are quickly seeing the benefits of using the solution to digitize communication. “Revu’s functionality and ease of use have made it an easy sell for us in the field,” aid Darnell. For example, a plumbing subcontractor with over 30 years of industry experience realized how easily he could layout all of his drawings and specifications using Revu. Although he had been relying on traditional pen and paper processes for years, within one week’s time he had transitioned over to the digital format, saving 60% of the time typically spent drawing and scaling. “Not only has Revu helped us communicate issues faster on the NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital Project, it has enabled us to improve communication with our subs and deliver value to them. We anticipate that Revu will continue to help us work faster, smarter and without limits,” added Wright.