The challenge
As a leading owner, developer, operator and fund manager of first-class real estate around the world, Tishman Speyer is always in search of cutting-edge technology to help improve delivery and operational efficiency.
When New York-based Director of Design and Construction Eleftherios Pittas first came across OpenSpace in early 2019, he was struck by its potential to improve a number of different processes and workflows by letting field teams seamlessly capture 360 imagery.
“Using OpenSpace allows us to have complete visibility of the jobsite at any time, from anywhere in the world,” he said. “It means that I can very quickly recover specific jobsite evidence from one, two, or even five years ago, whenever requested – which is quite often.”
The solution
Pittas and his team decided to leverage OpenSpace for The Spiral—a 2.8 million-square-foot office building currently under construction in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards—starting in mid-2019. They’ve found that 360 photo documentation ensures that areas are captured from every angle and photos are easy to find.
A member of the field team simply straps a 360 camera to their hard hat and walks the site once or twice a week, and imagery is automatically mapped to project plans and stored in the cloud, which makes it simple to locate images from different points in time.
The utility of robust photo documentation became especially pronounced when the construction team started closing up walls, since OpenSpace allowed them to capture the state of the framing, electrical, plumbing, rebar and more for posterity.
“If a 2D picture is worth a thousand words and a 3D picture is worth a million words, then an OpenSpace capture is basically priceless,” he said. “Since imagery is automatically mapped to the plan, you have a lot more context and data at your fingertips, and you can easily share it with anyone on the project.”
Tishman Speyer has also utilized OpenSpace’s BIM Viewer feature, which enables a side-by-side view of actual site conditions with the model—helping the extended project team grasp the current status of the project, whether they’re in the field or in the office.
“It’s great that you can see it from an iPad or computer, which makes it accessible to less technical people who aren’t familiar with 3D modeling tools,” he said.
Tishman Speyer is proud to be an early customer and investor in OpenSpace, continuing to utilize OpenSpace on a variety of construction projects (ground-up, redevelopment, tenant improvement) across North America, Europe, Brazil and Asia.
The company also recently started using OpenSpace on a 300,000-square-foot, Washington, D.C.-based project for the U.S. General Services Administration on behalf of the Justice Department and the United States Marshals Service. OpenSpace is being used for design coordination, site inspections, reviewing pay applications, answering RFIs, updating the punch list and keeping the 60 project stakeholders who join weekly calls and can’t all be on site up to date on project developments.
Marianne Burkart, a Senior Director at Tishman Speyer who worked on the GSA project, said the technology helped them coordinate when pandemic restrictions prevented them from physically being on site. “OpenSpace proved invaluable during that COVID-19 time period,” she said. “We could be on a design call and quickly reference the captures of the space regarding site conditions.”
If a 2D picture is worth a thousand words and a 3D picture is worth a million words, then an OpenSpace capture is basically priceless.
The results
OpenSpace has delivered a more detailed history of The Spiral than as-builts or 2D drawings could provide, and this record can be leveraged by Tishman Speyer’s property managers and tenants for decades to come.
We can use OpenSpace as an x-ray to pinpoint where to focus instead of opening up a large section of wall
A better experience for customers
OpenSpace lets Tishman Speyer show customers how their office floors and mechanical spaces are progressing. “It can be incredibly valuable for a customer’s mechanical engineer, structural engineer and architect to have a permanent record of the space and how it looked when it was under construction so they’re not relying on memory or a couple of 2D photos,” Pittas said. “It’s a better way of sharing information with customer teams to help accelerate their fit-out.” OpenSpace is also useful in sales conversations for showing spaces to prospective customers.
A single source of truth
”Having OpenSpace captures to refer back to helps avoid disputes over the condition of a space when it was delivered,” said Pittas. “We always do walkthroughs with tenants before the handover, but having robust digital documentation of site conditions adds another layer of protection. It means there won’t be any questions about what was turned over and it leads to a smoother transition.”
A better handoff for facilities teams
Since Tishman Speyer plans to operate The Spiral and other buildings on a long-term basis, having a detailed history is useful for property managers. This became evident when the designs for the bathrooms changed from having hand dryers to having paper towel dispensers. Given that the construction team had already done the framing and electrical work, they decided to leave the provisions for hand dryers buried behind the wall for use in the future. Having OpenSpace gave them the confidence that it would be easy for the operations team to pinpoint where dryers should go in the future if they decide to remodel the restrooms five or 10 years from now or if a particular tenant wants them. “Sometimes those types of details are on drawings, but it’s much easier to grasp by seeing a photo,” Pittas said.
Avoidance of rework
OpenSpace lets Tishman Speyer see inside walls after they’re closed, helping them be more precise when addressing future issues. “We can use OpenSpace as an x-ray to pinpoint where to focus instead of opening up a large section of wall in a large general area—all while minimizing disruption to the existing tenant and systems,” Pittas said.
Improved collaboration among stakeholder groups
Since the jobsite was initially shut down for three months after COVID-19 hit and the number of people allowed on site was limited after reopening, OpenSpace was invaluable for keeping project stakeholders aligned. By conducting virtual walkthroughs via OpenSpace captures, a variety of people could experience current site conditions. Specifically, the GC on the project (Turner Construction) had the idea to share captures of the building’s restrooms with architects, engineers and consultants to get their sign-off before closing up any walls, since it would be “a lot more expensive and detrimental to the schedule if we forgot something” in those areas of the building, according to Pittas.
Time savings in the field
”Scheduling in-person visits with three or four different people for sign-off before closing walls is more complicated and time-intensive than letting them do a virtual walkthrough on their own time and then coordinating via email,” said Pittas. “We’d rather have the design team reviewing shop drawings or submittals instead of traveling back and forth to the site.”
