Construction - Assessment to Quote in Minutes!

BuildTech Case Study

Buildtech is a Christchurch building company, founded in 2010 at the beginning of the series of Canterbury earthquakes. Specialising in all forms of building, Buildtech has inevitably been exposed to the complex repair and reinstatement projects arising out of the tens of thousands of buildings requiring work.

As a young and fast growing (38th in the 2014 Deloitte’s Fast 50) company Buildtech has always used technology to ensure its team of over 50 is as efficient and productive as possible.

Buildtech’s use of the Clarinspect system links their field assessment team with Head Office to turn around quotes, variation reviews and work confirmations days - and often weeks - ahead of their competitors.

What Buildtech needed

Doing site inspections for hundreds of potential building jobs meant a mountain of paperwork created by on-site form filling then many more hours of transcribing “builder’s shorthand” into spreadsheets and reports followed by laborious cutting, pasting and resizing of photos. Surely mobile technology could be used to improve this process?

The Solution

The Clarinspect system has two distinct parts - i) a mobile inspection system that allows a field worker to follow a scripted process to assess issues, record observations and to take photographs that are integrated with the specific item being inspected, and ii) a report production module that combines the field assessment data with a predefined form such as a word document or excel spreadsheet (or both). 

Because it is captured on a mobile device - along with any photographs - the information can be sent to head office as soon as the inspection is complete. Clarinspect takes the inspection data, combines it in a spreadsheet that has access to standardised pricing information and completes a draft quote that is sent to the Quantity Surveying team for final checking and approval.

This production of a draft quote happens in about one minute!

What Buildtech is Accomplishing

A great example of how Buildtech uses Clarinspect is in their work for retirement villages. As a room in a village complex becomes available for re-occupation the owner may decide it needs redecoration. Buildtech sends out an inspector to assess the room; measuring the walls and ceilings for repainting, the floors for recarpeting and any other work that is required.

Other jobs are more complex. As an example, Buildtech recently assessed a block of six earthquake damaged units in Christchurch. Before they began using their Clarinspect “Scoping Tool” each unit would have taken 4-5 hours to inspect using paper forms and a separate camera with further time (2-3 hours) taken back at the office transcribing the written information into a spreadsheet for quoting and MS Word to produce a report for the insurance company.

Michael Vermeulen, the primary scoping agent for Buildtech, uses Clarinspect to complete each unit assessment in around 3 hours. Michael comments “...not only is the assessment faster, it is a hell of a lot more accurate. The old way used ‘builders shorthand’ that was often times very difficult to transcribe!”

Buildtech has won significant business in the retirement home market because of their ability to turn a quote around for a multi-unit site in less than 20 hours.

Meanwhile Back in the Office...

Back at the office Michael checks the reports for accuracy - taking only a few minutes before the documents are sent off to Bob Nelson to complete the pricing.

Creating a complex scope whilst still on site

Because this work has pricing scales agreed with the customer the Clarinspect system presents Bob with a quotation for a highly complex job that is 95% complete. Some fields are not completed because they require outside pricing or are not in the standard price schedule. These fields are highlighted by Clarinspect in the spreadsheet Bob receives which means he can immediately focus on the crucial work.

Bob spends an hour or two “tweaking” the prices to ensure everything is accurate and the quote is ready to be presented to the client. “The scoping tool makes my life unbelievably easy” says Bob.

With complex jobs like this Buildtech uses the information in additional ways. A scope of works for the entire job is one output. Where sub-contractors are required a subset of the information from the Clarinspect system is captured to create a scope of works specific to that trade.

And the Benefits of the System?

Buildtech sees their scoping tool winning them business and enabling them to turn work around far more quickly than using paper based systems. This means their insurance customers are speeding up their processes which, in turn, means that property owners are seeing immediate progress on work that is really important to them.

Tech Breakout

The Scoping Tool enables a Buildtech assessor to inspect one room or a whole building. This is done by creating a new job or assessment and taking advantage of Clarinspect’s “Add 1” function.

This means that a new room or external feature can be chosen from a drop down list. As an example “Bedroom 2”. Once the new addition has been created the assessor can add a description of the room including measurements and features such as cupboards, electrical outlets and so on.

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Based on the type of feature that has been added a context-based list of building strategies is available to the assessor. This might be “Remove wallpaper, rake, re-paper, plaster and paint” or “Remove carpet, reinstate flooring, re-carpet”.

This 3-level assessment is, when completed, exported to a MS Word template that produces a report on the overall property and each of the features with the required strategies for the feature as well as the relevant measurements. 

Cleverly the report incorporates the associated photos with each feature. And the report is only as long as required - if there were only two rooms assessed, the report is two rooms long - there is no extraneous information to be edited out.

A call to a pricing schedule that has a standardised price for each strategy creates the finished scope with pricing, laid out in Buildtech's format.

Buildtech maintains the lists of strategies and their associated pricing meaning they can respond quickly to market changes