Solutions for the AEC environment

Great documents are an essential tool of your trade

Construction workflows that leverage color design, documentation, and printing provide effective ways to reduce costs for traditional design-bid-build projects. Multiple stakeholders can keep project costs down as they collaborate during the estimation, bidding, and construction phases of building. With color printing, there are fewer requests for information (RFIs) and fewer contingency and change orders. Cost benefits can readily exceed a 4:1 ratio; each dollar invested in color printing can yield $4 in project savings.

Using color CAD documents, AE firms can:

• Benefit from lower costs for RFI management during construction and lower costs for verifying information about design and construction during estimation and bidding.
• Leverage their Building Information Modeling (BIM) investment and workflows to print rich data in color and achieve faster project ROIs

Color Plans can help reduce errors, omissions and liability

A general industry estimate is that between 10 and 30 percent of building project costs can be attributed to waste. This includes overruns due to inaccurate schedule coordination resulting in wasted labor and management time, wasted materials, and unnecessary litigation. Based on U.S Department of Commerce building estimates for 2009, a 10 percent waste factor is equal to approximately $94 billion.

Construction workflows that leverage color design, construction documentation, and printing provide an important means for reducing costs for traditional design-bid-build projects. With color printing, there are fewer requests for information (RFIs) and fewer contingency and change orders. Cost benefits can exceed a 4:1 ratio; each dollar invested in color printing can yield $4 in project savings. These savings accrue from improved detail in higher-quality color construction documentation during the estimation, bidding, and construction phases of building. Color printing is especially beneficial when collaboration extends across multiple downstream stakeholders, such as specialty subcontractors, fabricators, and suppliers.

Win More Project Bids

According to interviews with construction executives, cost estimation contingencies vary based on the project complexity and the clarity of the documentation provided in a bid request. For moderately complex capital building projects, contingencies of 10 to 20 percent are considered by contractors and owners to be common without the use of BIM or color 2D construction documents.

With color printing, there is improved detail in higher-quality color construction documentation during the estimation, bidding, and construction phases of building. This means there are fewer requests for information (RFIs) and fewer contingency and change orders from unclear documentation. The result is easier collaboration among downstream stakeholders. Cost benefits can exceed a 4:1 ratio; each dollar invested in color printing can yield $4 in project savings.

Complete Projects On Time With Fewer Document-Generated Errors

Construction is a complex process that often involves multiple stakeholders coordinating a complex series of tasks under rigid deadlines. The majority of projects are unique, and strict limitations regarding how each stakeholder participates in the process make the risks involved difficult to foresee.

Advanced technologies, including BIM and color CAD printing, make effective project collaboration among stakeholders easier. Better collaboration provides opportunities for significant cost reduction in the form of greater productivity and profit.

Applying color construction documents to design-bid-build projects presents a significant opportunity for improving project collaboration and reducing project-related waste from unclear documentation.

Research shows every incremental dollar spent on color prints can generate $4 in project savings due to more concise collaboration between stakeholders. Project owners benefit further from:

• Clearing a path for timely completion and faster productive use of the facility or structure.
• Clear documents reduce need for negotiations or disputes regarding change orders.
• Reduced operation and maintenance cost due to more accurate and detailed color as-built drawings.