Join, a preconstruction project information and collaboration platform primarily focused on design, build and construction management projects at risk, has launched Insights, a dashboard for general contractor executives.
Join said the dashboard, launched Oct. 23, will give executives and other users a global view of preconstruction project health. It is built on the Join project platform.
The pre-construction phase of a project has become the focus of several construction technology startups looking to shed light on scheduling, supply chain and other construction issues earlier. Join’s platform uses a contractor’s own data to give executives a view of a project’s health, with an eye on those who aren’t used to tracking the day-to-day progress of projects.
The data-rich view of preconstruction allows users to assess which projects are or are not on a path to stay on budget and understand the impact of past and future decisions. Dials and charts on the dashboard help visualize which projects are at risk of excess contingencies or allocated allowances.
“The construction team is engaged earlier and earlier, and what we’re seeing is that owners are demanding more and more transparency, and more and more decisions that used to be handled by a single stakeholder are now coming out to the owner . . , architect, contractor, team level,” says Join co-founder and CEO Andrew Zukoski. “It’s very important to the business in many ways and it can be painful. These stakeholders, potentially with different interests, [are now] meeting”.
With Insights, general contractors can evaluate decisions made (or not made) on a weekly or even daily basis. They can assess whether their design contingency is burning through too quickly and can react to negative cost trends between milestone estimates to help their project teams support earlier.
Clark Construction is using Join under a company-wide license, and Mohammad “Mo” Mozaffarpour, the preconstruction executive overseeing all development for the Southern California project, brought it to Clark’s C-suite because of his experiences using it for three years.
“We’re using it for CM-at-risk, design-build, a lot of value engineering requires different stakeholders to be involved,” says Mozaffarour.
One such project is the University of Southern California’s Football Performance Center. One of two USC athletics projects Clark is currently working on, the performance center design has three levels dedicated to team operations, as well as a rooftop hospitality deck and player lounge. USC Athletics is also adding a second long-term training camp as part of the project.
Mozaffarour said there are six or seven stakeholder groups within the project and Clark’s other USC athletics project, a soccer and women’s lacrosse facility. Every decision made must be reviewed between different groups of internal USC interlocutors from the university, the athletic programs themselves, and the design teams.
“We have 350 items of analysis on the USC football draft,” he says. “The owner’s representative is looking at the cost sheets, [and] each week there is a quick call to go over the articles. All the information is on the same page with Join and all the history of that information is there.”
As owners opt for more at-risk CM design and delivery methods, platforms like Join are increasingly important for early decision-making, especially when contractors don’t share information with stakeholders who read blueprints or models 3D every day.
