The Newest Avenger – BIM 360 + eSUB. Better together. Better results.

Everyone loves a good superhero story. The superhero protects the public from the evil supervillain. Even better is when multiple superheroes, similar to the Avengers, band together and create a superpower. In the same vein, what if we took the leading construction solutions, eSUB and BIM 360, and integrated them together? On their own, they have tremendous abilities to deliver profitable construction projects for their users. But combining their capabilities as an integrated construction solution would create a super powerful solution that no one can defeat. Similar to the Avengers combining their forces to become “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” integrated construction solutions of eSUB and Autodesk combine forces to become “Construction’s Mightiest Heroes.”

eSUB: Defender of Subcontractors

eSUB is built out of a consulting firm with over 30-years experience working with subcontractors on risk mitigation. A thorough documentation process includes field data collection. Because of that, eSUB has helped many subcontractors mitigate risk and avoid claims.

Through its mobile applications, eSUB users capture critical information from the field: job site photos, issues, delays, time cards, material installed, and more. Activities initiated in the field are shared in real-time with the back office. Project managers use this real-time information to gauge labor productivity. With that information, they can make strategic decisions to keep a project on schedule and within budget. Most importantly, field information and project documentation is standardized and stored in a central repository to keep all team members—field, project management, and accounting—on the same page.

BIM 360: Manager of the Entire Project Lifecycle

When people think of Autodesk, the superhero that comes to mind is design and engineering superhero. Naturally so, with its leading solutions of AutoCAD and Revit. However, Autodesk’s BIM 360 is a superhero to be reckoned with as well. BIM 360 is a unified platform that connects project data from design, construction, and handover.

As a leader in design software, BIM 360 does an excellent job of facilitating design collaboration and reviews. The system keeps track of the latest drawings, documents, and models. This ensures that project teams always have access to the latest versions. This is critical to collaboration and reducing rework.

There are a host of other important modules and features in BIM 360, which is why it is a leader in managing the entire project lifecycle. However, BIM 360’s true superpower rests with its open API. BIM 360 features an open platform that connects a contractor’s data and workflows from other systems to BIM 360. In doing so, BIM 360 sets the stage as the common data environment to sync data between separate systems to automate workflows and deliver valuable insights.

Autodesk + eSUB as Construction’s Mightiest Superheroes

Autodesk made a strategic financial investment in eSUB. These leading superpowers have combined together to attack construction’s biggest villains including:

Villain 1: Rework

A recent study by FMI and PlanGrid documented that $65 Billion of total US construction spending will go towards rework by year end. $65 Billion! eSUB and Autodesk BIM 360 tackle rework by delivering drawing and document management directly to trade contractors in the field. eSUB customers utilize BIM 360 for drawing and document management and can access the latest 2D and 3D plans from BIM 360 directly from eSUB. From those drawings and models, users can annotate markups and attach to RFIs. This helps to address potential issues before work begins to save money and lost hours on rework.

Villain 2: Siloes

While project delivery is the result of collaboration and teamwork, many work within their departmental siloes. There is a disconnect between the field and the office. The field team is often too busy doing work on the project to document activity. This creates a lack of visibility to the office team. Even when information gets into the office, departmental siloes exist hindering the sharing of information between the office. The Estimating, Project Management, and Accounting teams have their own systems. As the field data collection and operational system for a subcontractor, eSUB captures that information and shares information between estimating and accounting through integrations.

Villain 3: Disjointed interests

Unfortunately, disjointed interests among various stakeholders create roadblocks to collaboration and hinder project delivery. Autodesk BIM 360 and eSUB deliver a platform for Integrated Labor Delivery (ILD), a model to enabling collaborative workflows between project stakeholders—owner, architect, general contractors, trade contractors. Trade contractors collaborate directly with the design team to deliver more constructible designs and collaboration during pre-construction. Moving into the construction phase, eSUB captures information from the skilled trade contractors in the field to facilitate transparency and real-time collaboration with owners, architects, and general contractors.

Villain 4: Lack of accountability

As risk in construction projects shifts downhill toward the specialty trade contractors in the field, its critical for workers in the field to document to uphold accountability. Through eSUB’s field-first communication, specialty trade contractor’s accountability and professionalism to general contractors and owners are drastically increased. Using the BIM 360 platform to facilitate transparency, all stakeholders receive visibility into cost and progress through eSUB’s real-time field data.

Conclusion

In the short-term battle, the newest Avenger of BIM 360 + eSUB delivers a valuable integrated construction solution to subcontractors to manage field data collection and operations. Most noteworthy, in the long-term fight of saving the universe improving construction project delivery, BIM 360 + eSUB align all stakeholders for collaboration and transparency to deliver projects in a more timely, cost-effective, and cohesive manner.