Folks have been talking about tablets being a natural fit for the construction market, and frankly I don't see it (at least for field work. Construction sites are nasty places - dust, concrete, bentonite, slurries, oil & grease, rain, snow, heat these are not good things for an expensive tablet to be around.
Furthermore, the trades guys are hard are their equipment. When it's time to go to lunch, stuff gets thrown in the trunk bed or on the passenger seat of the truck as they rush off. Even if a tablet survives the abuse, those guys rarely lock or raise the windows of their trucks on the job, so I wouldn't expect the tablet to be there when the contractor gets back from his break.
First, traditional prints are cumbersome, so they're difficult to pull out and reference in any kind of adverse field conditions. Large sheets of paper do not mix well with wind or rain.
This is true, but it's offset by their disposable nature. If I'm heading out to the field and I know there is going to be inclement weather, I bring a couple of copies and if one sheet gets destroyed by weather, oh well, I just break out my second copy.
And while large sheets can be cumbersome, they allow field workers to look at a small component of a plan in an overall larger context which can be very convenient (that's why the minimum size I typically deal with on a site is 11x17). On a 10-inch tablet, you can only do that by zooming and panning a lot and that's not nearly as useful.
I've been wrong before and maybe I'm wrong now but I can't help thing that this will be a frustrating experience for a lot of folks.
keeping the documents up to date.
This is a very good point (nothing like getting an "as-built" that is not even close to being accurate) but I don't think that offsets the downsides.
>> This is a very good point but I don't think that offsets the downsides.
The downsides of out of date documents are 1% of the total cost of construction. A project may have 1-3% margin for a GC, so this is an enormous number. You save in three big ways with PlanGrid - we are cheaper than printing, faster than dealing with paper for sharing and note taking, and eliminate building from outdated drawings.
Our current set of users love having it in the field. We have superintendents tell us they can't believe they are using an iPad everyday. They have all the drawings all the time and they are always up to date - something people in the field have never had before on large projects.
Several of our customers have purchased iPads just to use PlanGrid. It's true that some will break, of course, but the cost savings offset it.
It’s funny, people often ask about whether the guys in the field are willing to trade their super high-resolution paper drawings for a smallish iPad screen, but if you think about it, it’s basically the same situation as with paper maps vs. google maps. You don’t see too many people using those old fold-out maps any more. They are too cumbersome, you always have some out-of-date version, and you never seem to have the map you need.
Furthermore, the trades guys are hard are their equipment. When it's time to go to lunch, stuff gets thrown in the trunk bed or on the passenger seat of the truck as they rush off. Even if a tablet survives the abuse, those guys rarely lock or raise the windows of their trucks on the job, so I wouldn't expect the tablet to be there when the contractor gets back from his break.
First, traditional prints are cumbersome, so they're difficult to pull out and reference in any kind of adverse field conditions. Large sheets of paper do not mix well with wind or rain.
This is true, but it's offset by their disposable nature. If I'm heading out to the field and I know there is going to be inclement weather, I bring a couple of copies and if one sheet gets destroyed by weather, oh well, I just break out my second copy.
And while large sheets can be cumbersome, they allow field workers to look at a small component of a plan in an overall larger context which can be very convenient (that's why the minimum size I typically deal with on a site is 11x17). On a 10-inch tablet, you can only do that by zooming and panning a lot and that's not nearly as useful.
I've been wrong before and maybe I'm wrong now but I can't help thing that this will be a frustrating experience for a lot of folks.
keeping the documents up to date.
This is a very good point (nothing like getting an "as-built" that is not even close to being accurate) but I don't think that offsets the downsides.