It’s a big responsibility, ensuring that construction projects meet all the requirements and standards necessary in today’s heavily fragmented environment. When safety, cost, schedule, and performance are on the line, Quality teams need every advantage they can get.
Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed specifically for builders and developers are making teams more efficient and productive while improving quality. Innovative preconstruction teams are already benefiting greatly from making AI a standard part of their QA/QC and preconstruction process.
Nibbi Brothers General Contractors, one of the top contractors in the San Francisco Bay Area, has learned from decades of experience that the right approach is honest, collaborative, proactive, and supported by advanced technology. Nibbi knows that early team collaboration and proactive problem-solving can help maximize quality and avoid significant problems down the road. Their expert use of technology leads to fewer change orders and related budget/schedule impacts.
In a recent case study, Nibbi discussed its use of AI and how standardizing on the technology across its preconstruction team has given them a competitive edge. With honest insights from Nibbi QA Project Manager Anita Hsieh, a licensed architect, discusses the 3 essential advantages that Nibbi is achieving in their preconstruction process.
01. Efficiency
Nibbi’s QA/QC team spends considerable time on deep dives into their projects to ensure success. Adding Firmus AI-REVIEW to their set of tools provides a high level of consistency and takes a significant load off the team related to those more tedious tasks.
“Having a tool like Firmus, with the number of projects we have at any given time, helps accelerate the rate at which we can turn the projects around. Being able to quickly assess the volume and extent of issues, enables me to decide, for example, I’m not going to spend more than three days looking at this because the drawing set isn’t developed enough.”
When the QA/QC team hands things off to the operations side of the house, “I think they appreciate that it does take some load off them as well. They don’t have to find these minuscule problems six months into construction, which then results in wasted time, resources, or budget. At the end of the day, I can sleep better knowing I did as thorough a job as I could with the tools I had,” said Hsieh.
02. Actionable Insights
Firmus AI-REVIEW analyzes construction drawings to identify incomplete design, scope gaps, missing information, and discrepancies. It allows users to efficiently address identified issues, ensuring project accuracy, and enabling them to gain a competitive edge. “It’s a comfort in knowing right off the bat, for example, these sheets are missing. Another big issue is schedules: door schedules, window schedules, for example, are usually always a little bit anemic or missed. I don’t have to pore through the entire set just to find out that info is missing. I think that’s great because then I can focus on a more difficult, complex detail rather than poring over every window tag,” said Hsieh.
“I use Firmus on all our projects, mostly multifamily residential, on early CDs, but I’ve lately been experimenting with uploading 100% DDs, depending on the developmental level. And that’s been useful, too, because if most of the DNA is there, I can get a head start. We’re also exploring doing a 100% DD and then doing multiple benchmarks, like 25% CD and then 100% CD to see how Firmus can track the same project and potentially the same comments.”
“One of the trends that has been interesting to see is with the civil drawings. For example, there have been times when the utility connections aren’t coordinated. The existing connections don’t match because they’re not coordinated among the other trades. Those identified issues have been good to see because it’s something that can easily get missed and then when it gets picked up at the beginning of construction, that causes a huge coordination time issue. There have also been issues in MEP drawings -- for example, coordination between lighting plans and the architectural reflected ceiling plans that don’t match. It’s just the icing on the cake of things that are definitely important. I can package that information and send it to the architect to review. I don’t even have to summarize it for them. It’s obvious what the issue is and that’s been great.”
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