We’re honored to begin a new decade with an amazing base of passionate and innovative customers. PlanGrid users are currently building many of the world’s top construction projects. While our software is just one piece of the pie, helping them build better, faster, and more accurately, we know that every product improvement makes a real difference.
To help our customers kick off 2020 on the right foot, the entire Autodesk Construction Cloud™ team has been hard at work building new product enhancements and features. Today, we are thrilled to announce several key updates for both PlanGrid and BIM 360 products.
You can view a list of all of our January product updates here. If you’re interested in learning more about specific PlanGrid updates, dig in, below:
1. Enhancements to Submittals
Submittals play a critical role in preventing misunderstandings or problems from occurring during the building process, but if approved information isn’t immediately accessible in the field, construction projects run the risk of costly errors and delays.
With PlanGrid, teams can feel at ease as approved submittal information is shared with the field instantly and accessible in the PlanGrid mobile app. With zero delays, the field team can pin approved documents to drawings to ensure that the team is building with the correct materials. Now, PlanGrid is taking accessibility to the next level with the release of a concise submittal package list view on mobile.
Within the new list view, all approved submittal packages are instantly accessible to the entire project team. Submittal packages in progress are also available to only thoseinvolved in the process. Tap to open the submittal package, reference the details, or sync the associated attachments for offline viewing. With the release rolling out this week, PlanGrid makes it easier than ever to access the information you need anytime, anywhere.
2. Updates to Field Reports
Construction teams rely on documentation to keep everyone in the loop and stay informed about the status of a project. Particularly, observations that are captured in Field Reports ensure that project teams have a good understanding of what has been completed and what’s next. Today, PlanGrid launches newfunctionality to save users even more time when they set up a Custom Form or fill out a Field Report.
Custom Form Templates
Improving the quality of a project starts with an understanding of the jobsite conditions. If you’re tracking weather, laborers, or installations, noting what is impacting productivity on the jobsite in routine reports will reduce miscommunication and minimize schedule delays. Whether you’re completing Daily Reports, Incident Reports, or Safety Checklists, PlanGrid has new custom forms to improve efficiency and accuracy. With extremely customizable baseline templates, it’s now faster than ever to create standard field reports to control how information is entered from the field and gain robust insights into the project’s progress.
Additionally, if you choose to use a baseline template to create aDaily Report, Incident Report, or Safety Checklist, PlanGrid will automatically categorize the template type. The template type can then be used as a filter to narrow down the list of Field Reports and templates to easily find what you need. If the template type is not automatically added, simply choose from a drop-down list of options when creating a new Custom Form. Once added, the template type remains editable at any time.
Custom Form Questions
It’s no secret that every construction team has a different preference for how jobsite progress is reported. To accommodate the various types of Field Reports that arise, project teams can upload their PDFs to PlanGridin order to create custom Field Report templates for their team to fill out from the field. But today, we now offer an even better option.
Whether you want to create a template from scratch or choose from a list of baseline templates as a starting point, it takes just a few seconds to create a fully customizable and editable Field Report directly in PlanGrid. What’s more, the templates you create using PlanGrid’s Custom Form Builder are dynamic and built-for-mobile, meaning that the reports automatically adjust to fit any screen size whether it’s being completed using a phone, tablet, or computer.
To get the most relevant information you need from the field, PlanGrid’s Custom Forms allows you to choose from several question types as you create a new template. For instance, you can indicate if you’re looking for a text response, single-select response, multi-select response, and much more. New with this release is the ability to require a question before the Field Report is submitted, ensuring no essential details slip through the crack. We have also added two additional question types, which allows the user in the field to quickly respond to a question by selecting answers from a drop-down menu or by choosing a date on a calendar.
3. Root Cause for Tasks
On every project, chances are that you encounter the same issues or problems over and over again. These can manifest as quality problems, human errors, equipment failures, manufacturing mistakes, and more. By determining the root cause of the problem, or the set of conditions that led to the issue, you and your team can implement corrective actions to prevent recurrences from happening in the future.
Today, project teams of all sizes are using PlanGrid Tasks to effortlessly create and manage tasks for planned work or to keep track of issues that need to be resolved. When new tasks are created, the person initiating the task can include details such as who needs to complete the work, where the issue is located, a description of the event, and any supporting references such as a photo or video. As tasks move from a status of open to closed, it’s easy for project teams to stay on top of what work needs to be completedto ensure successful project completion.
New for PlanGrid Tasks is a field for Root Cause. Based on common reasons for why issues occur, curate a list of root causes that impact project coordination, design, quality, and safety. When project team members create a new task, they can now choose from a drop-down list of root causes to categorize issue types. From the Task Log, you can then filter all the tasks by a specific Root Cause and create a Task Report to gain knowledge aboutwhich factors impact the project the most. With insights like this, your team can proactively prevent the same mistakes from happening repeatedly.
Experience the Future of Construction – Today
Autodesk Construction Cloud is ready to facilitate the teams of tomorrow on the journey towards the future of construction – are you ready to join us? Request a demo, here.
To learn more about Autodesk Construction Cloud, you can also download this helpful guide.
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