How a Structural Engineering Firm saves days of time by automating Assessment Reports
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“Layer has been invaluable for collecting quantitative and qualitative data”
Dan Meyer
The Challenge: Time Consuming Building Inspection and Forensics Workflows
A growing percentage of Apex’s projects involve forensics. This entails a licensed professional going out into the field and documenting existing building conditions. Their scope involves investigating the extent of the damages and recommending the client solutions to improve them.
They also conduct in-field rough-in inspections for residential projects. This requires going on site to verify that the build conforms to the plans and identifying areas that require correction.
Their biggest pain point? Documenting the condition on site and associating it with a location on a floor plan. “Typically, I would print a set of drawings when I go into the field,” states project manager Dan Meyer.
However, printing paper plans doesn’t scale and leads to errors. With an increasing number of forensic and inspection projects in the pipeline, Apex needed a more efficient way to deliver reports consistently.
The Solution: Pinpointing Data to Floor Plan Locations
The Apex team uses Layer’s Document View to upload PDF plans and add comments directly on the platform. Being able to connect descriptive data with its location on the plan has greatly benefited the Apex team.
“It becomes so much faster to be able to drop a pin onto a floor plan and associate it with that location,” states Meyer. With Layer, Apex is able to track a myriad of data types, such as whether the issue is severe or minor. Layer’s Table View allows the Apex team to sort by various fields, allowing the team to gauge the quantity or severity of the issues.
Additionally, the Apex team set up Layer Report Templates for the company. While in the field, the forensics team would write notes each time they logged a condition on the floor plan. Rather than scratching notes on site and rewriting them in a digital document later, the Apex team automatically generated a report using the Layer drag-and-drop Report Builder.
They included this report as an appendix in their deliverables. “It saves a ton of time for reporting. We weren’t writing up each individual thing in a separate document. This makes a huge difference when we have to document hundreds of items.”
Layer’s impact scales as their project sizes scale up. “When I’ve been able to apply my Layer workflow to commercial buildings – that’s where it’s been the most impactful. Because of the sheer size of the projects. Layer is the most useful for us when we survey the entire building.”