How A Single Source of Truth Enables Better Collaboration and Quality for POB

POB is a building contractor focusing on turnkey projects where they work in collaboration with their clients to find the best possible outcomes. With a work culture that mixes professional pride and outstanding results, the team has expertise which covers the entire value chain of a construction project. POB delivers new build projects, rehabilitation projects, concrete work, smaller service projects as well as repair services to their varied client base in Norway.

Rapid Growth Lead to Inefficient Ways of Working

The company started in 1992 with just three employees and in the nearly thirty years it has been operating, the company has grown significantly in size. They now have approximately 120 employees and offer support and services to small and large projects simultaneously. With their rapid expansion, the teams still mainly relied on verbal communication as their main method for collaboration on their projects. Without a common platform to store important project documents, collaboration with partners and clients was unreliable and employees struggled to find the information they needed at any given time.

POB’s BIM Coordinator and IT Manager, Roger Feste, and Quality Manager, Hege M. Paulsen, were asked to explore ways to increase project quality through enhanced collaboration practices. “Email was our main way to share project data which brought a level of unnecessary risk to POB,” says Hege.

For Roger, this wasn’t a simple fix that any technological solution alone could solve. “The digital solutions POB was using didn’t meet the quality standards required by regulations in Norway on our projects,” affirms Roger.

For the building, concrete and construction teams at POB, finding the latest and most up-to-date documents related to their projects was time consuming, complex, and frustrating. “It soon became obvious that a more standardised approach could improve our efficiencies and give us greater results,” reflects Hege.

POB decided they would adopt one solution for all of their projects moving forward. Many different solutions were researched but after a great presentation and excellent follow-up from Symetri AS, BIM 360 within Autodesk Construction Cloud™ was chosen as the most suitable solution to meet the needs of POB.

Standardising on One Solution to Reduce Time Lost Searching for Documents

To get started, POB implemented BIM 360 with one department, the subcontracting concrete team. Roger reflects, “We used BIM 360 for the first time on smaller projects that weren’t as long in length so that we could develop some learning points to help us with our wider rollout of the solution.”

This approach helped POB realise that they would need to prioritise their folder structure naming conventions and permission settings throughout their rollout.

Within the subcontracting department, many of the teams on site were using BIM 360 for the first time. The feedback received was around ease of use and how intuitive the solution was to learn quickly from a project site.

“Before we implemented the technology, I was told that I’d really struggle to get our teams on site engaged with using it, but I found the complete opposite. Once we implemented using BIM 360 on one project, I had site team members of other projects asking me when they would get to use it as they had heard how beneficial it was to project execution.”

–Hege M. Paulsen, Quality Manager

Building Solid Foundations

For POB, BIM 360’s document management capabilities are the foundation on which other digital workflows are built. Having a solid and collaborative way to share documents means the project teams can remove the responsibility of information management on a project from an individual to a joint responsibility between all project stakeholders.

“It’s now very easy for us to share documents with our subcontractors and supply chain partners in BIM 360,” says Roger. “Prior to using BIM 360, we really had no overview on the health of our projects as we lacked the information and data we needed about our projects.”

Spending hours trailing through various documents trying to ascertain whether it is the latest and most up-to-date version is a thing of the past for employees at POB. Their on-site teams link documents and drawings into their checklists with BIM 360 to support build activity.

“Automating the issues management functionality using BIM 360 has revolutionised the way in which we approach project activity by speeding up the management and allocation of issues. We mark the exact location of the issue on our drawings in BIM 360 which also helps our team navigate our construction sites easily.”

–Hege M. Paulsen, Quality Manager

Better Insights Lead to Better Outcomes

Better insights captured from project data not only improves the construction process, but supports the health of a business and improves the way POB interacts with its partners and clients. “We now also have a standardised way of reporting and get better use of our data,” reflects Hege. Transparency on projects and better data has meant that POB’s previous manual ways of reporting that were lengthy and not wholly accurate have been replaced by dashboards in BIM 360.

Looking to the future, POB plans on ensuring all their teams across the company are getting the most from BIM 360 using the available functionality. They continue to actively work with digitalisation and aim to integrate Power BI with BIM 360.

“Working with more digital workflows is not only more sustainable and timesaving, but they will also help us to create a more productive and efficient industry.With better project insights and a more collaborative industry we get more content and engaged employees, a more open supply chain and ultimately happier clients.”