Digitalising Communications Reduces Use of Paper and Generates Savings for Turner Construction Company and Owner on Cobb County Superior Courthouse Project

In the summer of 2010, Turner Construction Company issued a case study to share how the project team working on the Cobb County Superior Courthouse in Marietta, Georgia, was reducing project paper costs. Halfway through completion of the just over 20,000-square-metre, seven-storey-plus basement facility, Turner and the Owner reduced reprographic fees by 65% and courier fees by 50%. These cost savings were achieved by using Bluebeam Revu to digitally review and mark up the majority of the project’s submittal drawings. Rather than printing, redlining by hand and then shipping these documents to partners, project team members electronically added comments to PDFs (including text, shapes, quantity estimations and text stamps) and digitally assembled submittals by adding, deleting, inserting and rotating pages.

These figures inspired the project team to move beyond digital submittals and find more ways to digitise communication, even at a time in which traditionally a significant amount of paper is generated. "We were excited to be saving so much on paper costs, but we really want to push the limits even further to deliver an even greater benefit and cost savings to the Owner," said Winston Williams Jr., Turner Construction Company project manager. "Towards the end of a project, paper production increases as bulletins, snag lists, As-Builts and O&M Manuals are generated," said Williams. "Our team relied on the knowledge we had gained on the first half of the project to find new ways to digitise these traditionally paper-intensive processes."

Additionally, the project team took its paperless processes into the field. Using tablet PCs, project team members on the job site used Bluebeam’s markup tools to digitally track issues, create snag lists and review drawings. Turner provided the majority of the building documentation digitally at project completion to the Owner. While they would typically submit three printed sets of the O&M manual and all drawings and submittals, the team delivered this information electronically in PDF, along with one printed set. These efforts reduced the amount of paper used on the project by 84,780 pages, saving Turner and the Owner 73% of project-related paper costs. See the chart below for more details about the impressive cost and paper savings Turner achieved on the Cobb County Superior Courthouse Project.

Number of Pages Saved

• 8.5 x 11: 76,335
• 24 x 32: 8,445
• Total Paper Savings: 84,780

Paper Cost Savings *

• Reprographics Costs: 50%
• Courier Costs: 76%
• Total Paper Savings: 73%

* Percentages calculated by comparing data from the Cobb County Superior Court project against data collected from a similarly sized and scoped project that used paper submittals.