How Pond and Company Rapidly Scales Industrial Projects with Construction Technology

Pond and Company (Pond) has built a reputation as the go-to firm for designing, engineering, and building industrial facilities. As the company was scaling into new regions, Pond needed a holistic construction management solution to access to subcontractors inside and outside of their network and connect people and data across the project lifecycle from design through handover.

Rapid Growth Creates the Need for Connected Tools

In the last year, Pond has increased the number of industrial projects they’re working on by 50%. And with a dozen subcontractors on each project, the first step was standardizing on technology to plan and execute on these highly-complex builds.

With BIM 360 already in place with the engineering team, Pond adopted BuildingConnected and PlanGrid within Autodesk Construction Cloud™ to create an integrated solution to connect the design portion of their business with the construction side.

“It’s a company goal to lead the industry in cutting-edge technology to meet the unique challenges and requirements of building industrial facilities. We are always looking for ways to improve our offering and provide cost-effective solutions to our clients.”

–Bryan Schroeder, Director of VDC

Standardizing on a Project Management Solution

The firm uses BuildingConnected to improve the bid process by creating more visibility into the status of a bid invitation and identifying reputable subcontractors in new markets. With BuildingConnected, Pond can set deliverable dates to manage their buyout strategy and schedule to ensure they’re on target for delivery.

Once a subcontractor is selected, information is imported from BuildingConnected into PlanGrid to get shop drawings started and submittals uploaded. With BuildingConnected and PlanGrid, Pond can seamlessly transfer complex data from the design and planning phase into workers’ hands on the site.

“Anyone in a growing firm knows that the right processes need to be in place to support growth. Tools like PlanGrid force you to start looking at standard processes to drive consistency across projects.”

–Emily Rech, Program Manager

Integrating Tools to Meet Accelerated Timelines

Pond needs to stay on top of a long list of assets when it comes to mechanical and electrical systems. With PlanGrid, they can easily connect and streamline the design, procurement, and build process. With greater visibility into lead time for equipment, Pond can better coordinate buyout and get subcontractors involved right away to meet their schedules.

By sharing shop drawings early on in a live environment, when it’s time to mobilize, the communication between the subcontractor and construction group is directly linked with their engineering group in PlanGrid, making it a seamless process.

“You cannot successfully do design-build work if you do not have an environment where your subs, your construction management group, and your engineering group can all integrate. The only way that you get projects accomplished as quickly as we have is if you have all of those things tied together and start those long-lead items.”