Brian Palmquist, the director of quality management at Ledcor Construction, explained how tablets and other cutting edge technology are bringing new opportunities and challenges to construction in his Buildex seminar, entitled "Quality at the Edge – Emerging Hardware and Software for Design and Construction."
Brian Palmquist, the director of quality management at Ledcor Construction, explained how tablets and other cutting edge technology are bringing new opportunities and challenges to construction in his Buildex seminar, entitled "Quality at the Edge – Emerging Hardware and Software for Design and Construction."
Palmquist said construction is actually at the leading edge of using technology in a field setting, and explained how different tablets are suited to varying construction tasks.
3G, the network which connects mobile devices to the internet, is one of the most important features for tablets for construction use, he said. But just as important is the ability to access work-in-progress documents, as well as access to checklists, records and forms, and the latest documentationand markup.
One challenge, particularly when adding BIM to the mix, is needing a significant amount of memory to handle large documents or other media. The iPad has significant storage but doesn’t run BIM, so Windows 7 tablets are the better option in that case.
Ideal design criteria for a tablet is that it is integrated, simple and fast, as well as efficient. A tablet has to be moble, versatiles, and also relatively cheap.
Palmquist praised Ident software as a way to identify deficiences by generating a map of a floor or room plan and then providing drop downinformation such as which trade was involved in a specific deficiency, and also pointed out that after a “shift” all notations are uploaded to the web, so the “live” status of the room is constantly updated.
Another consideration is whether software working on one device will work on other devices. An app on an iPad won’t work on non-Apple hardware and likely won’t communicate with different apps. Windows 7 tablets will communicate between PCs and tablets, and so are more flexible.
BIM is mostly PC-based,so you’ll likely consider PC tablets, but they’ll need significant horsepower to be able to keep up with the heavy hardware requirements of BIM.
Mobility is of paramount importance. You either need to be able to quickly sync information between machines while on the road, or have the process automatically happen in the background.
Touching versus writing is another consideration, Palmquist said. Touching means you can only use your finger, which is not always the ideal medium for drawing or marking up a document. Additionally, in cold weather environments like Fort McMurray or Edmonton, removing a glove to touch a tablet can be unfomfortabel or even dangerous.
Upgrading is another factor. Before buying a tablet, make sure to investigate if the operating system can be upgraded. If not, you may be stuck with an inefficient device that can’t keep up a couple of years down the road.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed