Brian Palmquist, the director of quality management for Ledcor Construction Limited, explained the big technological changes headed for architects involved in the construction phase of a project.
Palmquist started by suggesting that architects move to tablets, which allows for more portability and can be taken on site. Palmquist is platform agnostic, though he said he “owns the only Mac at Ledcor.”
Amongst the tasks architects can delegate to a tablet or other digital device, Palmquist listed photography, document retrieval and analysis (checking drawings and specs), checking 3D BIM models, and communicating.
He added that having a laptop with him helped tremendously during building the Edmonton Art Gallery, which was a complicated project requiring reference to and marking up of documents.
Palmquist stressed the importance of having a Wifi or 3G connection on a device if used on a construction site, because connectivity is what makes this technology useful in that context.
He also stressed the importance of a camera on a tablet device. A camera is necessary, but quality of camera isn’t actually that important.
Palmquist said most architects are late adoptors and early rejectors. But he said the one way to sell technology to a superintendant is to explain that they won’t have to go back to the site shack to get that one drawing or bit of info they don’t have on them, because they will have everything they need on their tablet.
The ideal software for architects should integrate design and construction needs, he said. Despite recent downtime for cloud based services from Sony and Amazon, Palmquist said cloud-based services (internet applications) that Ledcor uses go down very rarely.
One of the distinct advantages of collaborative software, he said, is the ability for contractors and subcontractors to all access the same data and imagery simultaneously, and to make changes.
JOC DIGITAL MEDIA
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