The challenge
With a need to improve oversight on the Ritz-Carlton Residences project in Sunny Isles Beach, Max Sanchez was faced with a tall task.
An Assistant Superintendent for Suffolk, Sanchez had recently been put in charge of a critical path component of the project – the window wall system for the 53-story building which would ultimately drive the project’s delivery date. After a ten-week lead time for the window units to be delivered on site from Brazil, the schedule to install was significantly compressed.
“We were faced with an extremely aggressive schedule,” said Sanchez, “but OpenSpace helped me manage the installation with the trade partners and keep the project on track.”
The solution
As the installation process continued, Sanchez began to use OpenSpace on a trial basis, which entailed walking the site with a 360 camera mounted to his hard hat to capture images and have them automatically mapped to the project plans. Through this process, he was able to demonstrate the true state of the project which enhanced communication and accountability with the trade partners performing the work.
“I’d use OpenSpace to quickly pull up the image I needed with the specific trade partners performing the work,” he said. “It gave the entire project team better visibility into the actual progress and what work was still outstanding.”
Up to that point, Sanchez’s colleagues had poked fun at him for wearing a camera on his hard hat. But after seeing the positive impact of OpenSpace, the team and owners enthusiastically supported it.
Sanchez began using OpenSpace every day and found the Field Notes feature to be particularly useful. The on-site project team used Field Notes to take pictures and jot down notes during site walks to document details they observed, such as missing interior corners or caulking.
According to Sanchez, “Accountability is critical on a project of this magnitude, and OpenSpace helped me manage that process much more effectively with our trade partners.”
Accountability is critical on a project of this magnitude, and OpenSpace helped me manage that process much more effectively with our trade partners.
The results
Suffolk Construction improved its processes for managing subcontractors using OpenSpace, resulting in greater accountability and an earlier project delivery date.
50% savings
1 month
“We’re seeing organic adoption of OpenSpace on projects because the multi-faceted benefits of collecting real-time visual data,” said Claire Romaine, Suffolk Construction’s Smart Lab Director. “Project teams benefit from the passive collection of full context photos, and owners love OpenSpace’s platform to experience virtual walkthroughs of their project.”
Greater accountability
OpenSpace enabled Sanchez and his team to monitor progress of the window wall installation in minute detail and ensure that the subcontractors stayed on schedule.
Improved workflow
Based in part on his success managing this project, Sanchez was recently promoted to the role of Smart Lab Director, where he intends to encourage superintendents throughout the company to use OpenSpace because of the workflow improvements it enables.
Time savings
Sanchez estimates that using OpenSpace resulted in the project being completed a month faster than it would otherwise have been.
Reduced documentation time
Sanchez walked the site daily and took up to 76 Field Notes at a time, which he could quickly export into a PDF to share with his team. Images were captured and mapped to the project plans automatically, making documentation 10X faster than manual capture. “A 53-story building is a lot of area to cover, but this was a perfect way of tracking everything,” he said.
