WC provides oversight to ensure that projects achieve expected results, represent good value for money and are compliant with policies, laws, and ethical standards.
Multiple construction projects generate tons of documentation which must be stored, yet accessible for contracting, legal, construction management, design and facility maintenance teams.
Construction closeouts were creating a major bottleneck.
“There were points where we couldn’t even locate the information because projects were so old. That was a big problem,” he said.
With responsibility for so many moving pieces, document control is a major issue impacting liability and risk management.
In cases where they could not find the basic design build documents, there was always the danger of finding “hidden” pipelines and gas lines because they couldn’t find the documentation. Busted water and gas lines are potentially dangerous, costly to repair and impact safety – especially if they’re difficult to locate.
With so much construction going on, facilities teams were equally impacted by information mismanagement. Because facilities are ultimately responsible for prolonging the life of buildings, their role is critical for building owners.When O&M documentation and emergency plans are unavailable, facilities teams can’t do their jobs properly.
“Document control was the primary cause of disconnect going from construction to facilities maintenance,” said WC.
WC was familiar with digitizing and scanning documentation, but he needed a tool to quickly find, share, update and organize decades of documents. Many were using mobile devices like iPads, so it seemed like one piece of the puzzle was already in place. Cloud storage was the next piece of the puzzle. Making a 100% transition from moving both digital and paper documentation to the cloud, creating access to this information for all and then streamlining processes was an endeavor that needed to happen.
The problem wasn’t that information wasn’t available, it was just that data had many “homes” including computers, books, binders and hard drives. In some cases, printed information was hand delivered to construction and building sites where it was promptly lost or misplaced.
A mobile-first technology platform solution was delivered by ARC Facilities.“From project to project, the platform saves Cherokee Nation tens of thousands of dollars once you started getting into it, so you can address having things redrawn or rescanned by architects and then overall time spent in researching and trying to find documents,” said WC. “Now, we don’t have to pay the architect to go back in and create the floor plan. That could have easily cost us over $100,000 on a property with multiple buildings.”
The solution grew to include the ability to hyperlink documents so facilities could see where the layers were and track upgrades, modifications, and remodels. Mapping equipment helps everyone see both emergency equipment and shut-offs.
With expansions inevitable, growth a constant and construction and maintenance ongoing, fast access to information is vital across the Cherokee Nation landscape.
Learning lessons from experience and conquering problems with sustainable technology solutions has long-term positive benefits for WC and his fellow team members.
Managing facilities and construction projects is all about the details. With detailed plans, drawings and photos always available from one single source of truth, great leaps in productivity, effectiveness and control become yours.
Donadagohvi (till we meet again)
To learn more about how ARC Facilities can make facility information access easier for your team request a demo today.