PlanGrid Unveils New Product Innovations To Advance Construction Productivity

New products will empower construction teams with improved access to information, more efficient collaboration between stakeholders and enterprise-level insights

San Francisco, CA /PRNewswire/ - PlanGrid, the leader in construction productivity software, today announced the development of several new product innovations aimed at advancing productivity in the construction industry. When these products are released, field teams will be able to collaborate more effectively and communicate better than ever before with improved access to information, and corporate offices will have powerful and predictive insights to help prevent mistakes and improve profit margins. The new products, expected to be available this year, include:

• BIM in the Field: Make building information modeling (BIM) data accessible in PlanGrid through a plugin with Autodesk® Revit®.
• Tasks: A new approach to managing work on construction projects.
• Change Management: Integrated features to manage change orders from start to finish, and interoperability with other PlanGrid solutions.
• Next Gen RFIs: Redesigned from the ground up, new features empower GCs to easily manage the entire RFI process.
• Insights: Product and corporate level analytics for powerful decision making.

These innovations were shared today by PlanGrid CEO Tracy Young and CTO Ralph Gootee during the company's first annual Construction Summit, attended by almost 1,000 construction professionals and industry insiders.

"Construction teams working on projects of any size — from a small school to a multi-billion dollar megaproject — need to make decisions faster and build with more confidence," said Tracy Young, CEO of PlanGrid. "We're making a massive investment in new technologies that eliminate manual data entry and any inefficiencies that distract builders from doing actual work. Starting at the earliest project designs through turnover, our latest innovations will put the right information in the right hands, at every project phase."

New PlanGrid solutions announced today will help teams work better together and communicate more effectively. Every team, every workflow, and every conversation will be linked together within PlanGrid.

More details on the innovations announced:

BIM in the Field: Revit models can be published directly to PlanGrid, eliminating the manual steps required to transfer PDFs from Revit, and providing immediate access to the uploaded sheets within PlanGrid. Data from the Revit model is also auto-populated throughout PlanGrid projects, guaranteeing accurate sheet titles, sheet numbers and room assignments.

"The real power of BIM is making it easily accessible to the field, " said Rahul Shah, product manager at PlanGrid. "Today, BIM is trapped in the office but we can supercharge the field by providing workers with critical modeling information, from design and engineering — whether it's immediately identifying properties of the wall in front of you, viewing plans in 3D or seeing real as-built conditions for turnover. Integration with Revit leads directly to a reduction in document errors and rework, and more accurate closeout package. BIM is critical to construction, and we are making it radically more accessible to everyone in the industry."

Tasks: The next evolution of PlanGrid Issues, Tasks will help project teams connect planning in the office with execution in the field so projects can stay ahead of schedule. With Tasks, anybody can create a task log, assign tasks to specific field workers and track the status of each assigned task, improving productivity at every stage of the project lifecycle, not just during the punch list activities at the end of a project. Workers assigned a task will have immediate access to all relevant information needed to complete the task, such as installation guides and links to drawings. PlanGrid will automatically report the amount of work completed each day, allowing any user to see how a project is progressing.

Change Management: PlanGrid Change Management will enable team members to effortlessly initiate a change event from an RFI without any new data entry, and keep a single log of all potential changes. The entire request for quote (RFQ) process will be managed from within PlanGrid — from sending out RFQs to tracking the status of quotes submitted, and a complete change proposal can be automatically created using PlanGrid's cover sheet and backup feature. After the cost proposal is approved by the owner, work can be easily authorized to begin with a click of a button.

Next Gen RFIs: PlanGrid's RFI workflow is being redesigned to make it more intuitive and allow project engineers to save time by immediately identifying and elevating requests that have not yet been answered. Users such as architects and designers will also be able to respond and approve RFIs without needing to login to PlanGrid. Once RFIs are answered, in-app alerts will immediately and seamlessly notify the field of updates, eliminating manual activities such as posting typically involved with RFI workflows.

Insights: PlanGrid will provide predictive analytics for powerful decision making at both the project and corporate level, helping to prevent mistakes on a job and empowering construction executives to improve overall productivity and profit margins. The impact of past and future decisions will be measurable and analyzed in a way that leads to better decisions and outcomes across all of a company's projects.

"Teams that are highly connected have a competitive advantage," said Ralph Gootee, CTO of PlanGrid. "PlanGrid lets builders empower their entire team with the most up-to-date information, seamless collaboration tools and actionable insights. We're excited for the impact these innovations will have on our customers' business."

About PlanGrid
PlanGrid is the leader in construction productivity software. Used on more than one million projects in 84 countries, PlanGrid's value extends over numerous phases of construction, building a massive and accurate history of every jobsite through everyday use that creates a data-rich record set at turnover that is essential to long-term operations. PlanGrid is the first construction productivity software that allows contractors and owners in commercial, heavy civil, and other industries to collaborate easily from their mobile devices and desktop, managing blueprints, specs, photos, RFIs, field reports, and punch lists. The company has secured over $69 million in funding from investors including Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capita, and several other top firms. For more information, please visit: https://www.plangrid.com.

PlanGrid and associated marks and trademarks are registered trademarks of PlanGrid, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this press releases are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.