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How OpenSpace Helps CEC Save Time and Improve Communication with GCs

By Chris Balandran

December 14th, 2021

CEC

As a full-MEP-T contractor, CEC Facilities Group frequently needs to show accurate job site conditions before starting work. Having thorough, easy-to-navigate photo documentation to quickly show GCs true site conditions became a high priority, and ease of use was just as important as functionality.

“Our field team’s time is valuable and anything new that we introduce needs to provide equivalent or exceptional value to our team,” said Jared Peinado, Director of Project Controls at CEC. “If there are a lot of steps involved using a piece of technology, the field teams will be reluctant to implement and continually use that tool/technology.”

After vetting and implementing other construction technology solutions, CEC’s field teams started deploying OpenSpace on job sites including an 80-million-square-foot solar farm in a remote area of West Texas. On that project, the team is responsible for making 2 million connections and putting in hundreds of thousands of zip ties in the course of daisy-chaining thousands of panel rows together. 

Before having OpenSpace, the 10-person QA/QC team would have been taking photos with their phones of each connection in order to fulfill their inspection requirement. Now, they can simply strap a 360° camera to their hard hats and walk, allowing them to multitask as OpenSpace captures in the background and pins imagery to the project plan. 

“This is huge for our QA/QC team,” said Peinado. ”It allows them to spend more time looking at things instead of worrying about paperwork.” 

CEC’s main use case for OpenSpace right now is reducing exposure to risk and improving communication with GCs. 

“The accuracy and completeness of the documentation puts us in a strong position to defend ourselves against project delay allegations,” Peinado said. 

By helping CEC prove they weren’t the cause of an original delay, OpenSpace also puts the company in a better position to request overtime if the GC is intent on speeding up delivery. 

Robust 360° photo documentation is also useful in day-to-day interactions. For example, if the GC’s Project Manager says during a meeting that a certain area is ready for electrical, CEC can simply pull up a recent photo to demonstrate what remains to be completed, which gets everyone on the same page faster. 

In the course of introducing OpenSpace to several teams, Peinado has found that it’s highly intuitive, even for older colleagues who aren’t highly tech-savvy, and ease of use has been a key differentiator. For example, while Matterport can be useful for providing as-built conditions to a client during the handover process, it’s too complicated to be used for daily site documentation. 

To learn more about how OpenSpace helps CEC save time and improve issue resolution and communication with GCs, download the case study.

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