

How the iPad will change the construction industry - rsuttongee
http://www.plangrid.com/blog/ipad-will-transform-construction

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benzofuran
Guys, I'm not trying to pooh-pooh on the parade, but it looks like none of the
founders have ever touched the construction industry.

A) There is no organ for document submittal or review from the limited options
here B) You assume that this will supplant printing costs. At $700/per
(assuming iPad and case) + $30/month for cellular data, you're looking at
~$1,100/year/iPad. They're fragile and small compared to printoffs.
Construction sites are rough places. Dust, dirt, sand, rain, idiots, you are
dealing with everything here. If an iPad lasts 6 months on a construction
site, you're doing it wrong. C) Printing costs of $3500/$1munit means that to
break even, you need only 3 iPads per $1million job. That's 3 sets of plans,
aka 3 supervisors. Highly improbable.

Again, as a field construction engineer, I'd love to have a rugged tablet that
would be useful, but in terms of idiot-proofness and reliability, nothing's
going to supplant a full size plot or clutch of 11x17s anytime soon.

The big construction companies are the same ones that require 4 signatures to
activate a corporate cell phone. Please consider the path before sinking too
much more time and effort.

You're in the SF Bay, so get Granite or Teichert on board, and see if you can
move from there. A pilot case study showing how often they're broken, etc
would be a good plan.

I'd personally pivot into rentals. Rent the iPad + plangrid package at a rate
of $100(?)/month/iPad. Construction companies are much more open to rentals
even if they don't save money than capital expenditures.

If you'd like more background or insight into a field engineer trying to bring
his small corner of the industry into modern times, feel free to shoot me an
email: tommytgt <at> gmail.com

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tyoung
Its funny, that construction personnel have this awful stereotype of ignorance
and clumsiness, who will break their ipads at first chance.

We construct your buildings, bridges, water treatment plants in sometimes
harsh conditions, but still go home safe to our families everyday. We can also
hold onto iPads just like everyone else.

~~~
benzofuran
It's not a stereotype - I guess it depends on who you're working with. Most of
the supervisors I know don't tend to break things out of clumsiness but more
out of stress, and many of them aren't so good with computers, even the guys
that use them fairly often.

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rdl
It would be really interesting if you could do technical facilities
documentation as well (hospitals, datacenters, satellite earth stations,
etc.). There, it's not just the as built configuration, but subsequent
modifications -- and it's not just the people building it who need access, but
various auditors, operations staff and engineers, equipment vendors, etc.

~~~
tyoung
One of our first adopters was Lawrence Berkeley Lab's facilities management
team. PlanGrid is for anyone who looks any type of drawings at all, which
includes configuration diagrams and technical maintenance data.

~~~
rdl
Another interesting thing might be easy markup for HAZMAT or disaster planning
-- having the actual plans as a background layer and then overlays with
specific emergency information. Given the ~infinite DHS money for local
police/fire/emergency forces for counterterrorism, you could probably get some
good adoption.

