Collaborative Construction Progress Reporting in 4D

The names in the story are the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. But the Synchro products mentioned are real – and to make it short, please enjoy the demo video of Synchro Workgroup Project + SITE.

It’s sunny in San Francisco and Tom is sipping his coffee. Tom is the PM for a major construction project and he has to present a progress update to the project owner. One of Tom’s superintendents – Josh - checks in at the trailer, sits in at the OAC meeting, and takes a glance at the safety bulletin on the wall. Before he goes to the jobsite, he stops by the planner’s desk and picks up his iPad – yes, the iPad is loaded with his own crew’s scope of work that needs to be completed within the day - he plays forward the filtered 4D model to confirm the daily activities. He taps on the 3D Resources to update their statuses in the field, and hits the magic bottom to push the changes back before he takes off at the end of the day. “That was easy.” Josh says to himself.

Chris’s day is very similar to Josh’s, except that his crew is responsible for a different area of the project. He also takes a walk at the job site, taps on the filtered 3D Resources loaded on his iPad, and updates the 4D model at 3D Resources level. Chris also likes to type in a few lines in notes and takes a few photos before sending all data back. Chris thinks, “It’s a good day, no need to write down the work diary today.”

While Katie, the planner on site, is working on the 4D model on her computer, she suddenly realizes that new statuses have been submitted by Josh. She steps through the timeline in the 3D window and reviews the 4D model with Resource Status colors – especially those 3D Resources with newly-submitted statuses. She visually confirms the changes based on the 4D model, then goes to the associated tasks, decides whether the task statuses need to be updated, and at what percent complete. 

At 4PM, Katie takes another look at the 4D model, and notices Chris has submitted the work statuses that he’s in charge of. She drags the timeline forward, updates the schedule.

Katie pings Tom on Skype and notifies him that the daily work by Josh and Chris have been performed as per plan, and the 4D model has been updated at 3D Resource level collected directly from field and at task level which was confirmed and updated on her computer.

"Things look good. I am tired of reading the chicken scratch from the superintendents at the end of the month and then having to update hundreds of line items,” says Katie to Tom, “Also, often when I update the schedule and hit the reschedule button, things don’t look right. Then I have to adjust the logic so the project would still hit the milestone date before I can submit the monthly update for review. With this platform we can update the schedule (4D model) from the field in a timely manner."

Tom knows that he can also access the same 4D model, so he logs in on his computer, checks the update, and says: “Nice work! I simply want to know the status of those critical foundation works and get a more accurate progress report instead of waiting till the end of the month. It would be too late (to apologize) to the owner.”

This is from zero to hero.