Bluebeam : Project Rover

Construction Management System

What is Punch?

A punch list is a list of items that need to be completed before a construction project can be considered ‘complete’. Typically when a project is close to completion, a punch walk is scheduled where the General Contractor, Design Team and the Owner or an Owner’s Representative will walk the project and identify problem areas or items that still need to be completed.

This list of items will be shared with the appropriate subcontractors to complete the work and will then be double checked by the general contractor once completed. This documentation is then added to the rest of the project closeout materials.

Initial Explorations

Research Lab 

Bluebeam’s annual user conference, XCON, took place in Washington, DC in 2019. That year the Product Design and Research team established the creation of a Research Lab that found every product team holding user interviews and prototype testing with conference attendees.

With my initial concerns about the current path forward for the punch app and our change in strategy and scope coming from leadership, our areas of focus for our research sessions were:

1. Punch - Define what information needs to be captured and how we could best replicate current practices.

2. Construction Management System - Capture expectations for a CMS and pain-points (opportunities) with current solutions

I won’t get too deep into the full construction management system work here in this case study, but I do want to speak to the research work that we did in the research lab. In order to capture user expectations around what they thought would be in a CMS, we created a card sorting activity where we asked them to pick their three most essential construction management workflows. We were then going to ask for their next two most essential workflows BUT the interviewees instantly started flipping the exercise on its head.

Instead of selecting 3 items, they started to group these items in whatever way they saw most appropriate. Document Management, for instance, was deemed to be inseparable from things like RFIs and Submittals quite often. While the interviewees were talking through their groupings they were also talking about what tools they currently used to handle the various workflows and the pain-points they experienced navigating between them.

We learned a lot during these conversations and is helped solidify not only the initial scope of our product going forward, but it solidified our understanding of what we really needed to do in order to be successful. It made it crystal clear that our solution needed to not only handle the workflows, but it needed to be able to share data with other tools and systems.

What We Learned

We learned a lot over the course of three full days of user interviews. As far as punch was concerned, our top takeaways were a mixture of confirming the hypothesis’ we had as well as uncovering completely new information. Some of those takeaways were:

• Punch walks use floor plans to capture the location of items. It is possible to do without, but far from ideal.

• Location location location. The location of an item is the most important field when attempting to reference back to it.

• Priority is not needed. If a punch item is open, it is a priority.

• Photos are not always needed for capturing a punch item. On some projects, the teams are not even allowed to take photos!

With this information, and all of the great discussions we had around CMS’ and digital tools on the job site, we revisited our punch app.

Between versions 1 and 2, we restructured the architecture of a punch item.

1. Initially the thinking was that ‘Priority’ was an important piece of information that needed to be displayed prominently. Our research showed that it was not relevant and that we were wasting a large amount of screen real estate - so we got rid of it.

2. For our list view, we knew that we needed to highlight ‘Location’ - but we also knew that users relied on ‘Status’ and ‘Due Date’ to track progress. We restructured the list items to make sure all of the most relevant information was quickly and easily scan-able.

3. Utilizing a UI kit that I had established on earlier Bluebeam products, we introduced components and styling that was more usable on a touchscreen and generally easier to read.

4. Version 1 of the app relied heavily on the concept of a punch item capture starting with the taking of a photo. Through our research, we understood that sometimes it just wasn’t needed and at other times - taking photos of the job site was prohibited for security reasons. In testing, users found it confusing to go straight into the camera when creating a punch. We restructured the punch creation flow and added the ability to add a photo to the punch creation form.

Introducing Drawings

Going into the research lab at XCON, our assumptions were that drawings would be an important part of digitizing the punch walk process. While these assumptions were validated, we did learn that for the punch process, users were really only needing a small subset of their total drawing set. Instead of needing the full Issued For Construction set, only a handful of floor plans are needed when going on a punch walk.

This aspect of drawing management is the perfect example of what separated our web app experience and our iOS app experience. The use-case of the iOS app is centered around the field, with users being able to reference information no matter where they are on the job site. The use-case for our web app was for when a GC has returned to their office to perform more administrative tasks. Uploading and managing drawings are more administrative tasks so we built them into the web app. For the iOS app, users could view the published drawings.

The same was true for our Punch experience between iOS and web. In the field, the focus was on placing punch items on the drawing while you create the punch list. Back in the office, the web app allows users to filter their data and export reports to follow up with the respective subcontractors.

The Big Test

Following the changes made to the punch workflow, the usability enhancements and the addition of drawings we released the app to the app store under a personal account. The thinking was that we could get the app into peoples hands quicker and easier without having to go through TestFlight. To go with the release, we scheduled time with a General Contractor for them to try Project Rover on an upcoming punch walk.

Nikki, the woman with the teal phone in the photo above, was told by her GC the morning of the punch walk that she would be trying out a new punch app. We got her an account and set up the project, but she was given no advanced training or knowledge of the product. Nikki’s co-worker was going along for the punch walk and was using a competitor, Procore, so we were able to see in real time how the two might compare.

For about 2 hours, our team followed Nikki and the rest of the punch walk team around the building while she captured over 100 punch items with an average creation time of 9 seconds per item. Videos from the punch walk show Nikki seamlessly adding punch items to her list as her co-worker uses several expletives while navigating the menus and sub-menus of the Procore app.

This was really exciting for us. Having Nikki pick up our app the morning of the punch walk and be able to go out and do her job well without ever having to stop and ask a question about how to do something, was exactly what we had been working toward. We wanted to build an experience that was easy for anyone to use. We wanted to build a tool that got out of the way and allowed people to do their jobs. With the results of this walk, we knew we were headed in the right direction.

Refinement

Knowing that we were on the right track meant that we could start refining the product and breathing life into the apps. We also made some additions to the functionality to continue to improve the experience.

• Possibly my favorite adjustment was the new icon for punch. After observing many punch walks, seeing how items were marked in the space - with a piece of blue tape - we made the icon for the punch areas of the app a roll of painters tape!

• We added color to the status of punch items to that it was easy to identify open items or items that are ready for review. These colors also carry over to the drawings, where the different color punch dots now help tell the story in an instant of where work in happening and where items still need to be addressed.

• Clicking on a punch marker on the drawing opens up the punch item record right there to review. What we were hearing from early testers is that there also needed to be a way to navigate to the drawing from a punch item, so we introduce what we called a ‘punch snapshot’ showing where that punch item lives on the drawing.

Beta Release and Results

We have continued to build out the rest of our construction management system - building out the RFI and Submittal workflows. With the rest of the system built we entered into a Beta release phase and have been getting more and more active participants using the system and trying out the product.

The Punch workflow has been the easiest for part of the product for people to pick up and try out due to the nature of the various workflows. We’re seeing people use the part of the product for their punch walks for sure, but we have also seen adoption in areas like general issue tracking and even QA/QC.

One of the users we with spoke with at XCON joined our beta program and began introducing the product to his teams. For one of his projects, he called the Superintendent on the job and gave him a 15 minute introduction over Zoom. With only that short introduction into the app, the Superintendent was able to take our product out into the field and complete a punch walk with over 700 punch items!

While this outcome taught us a lot from an experience and technical stability standpoint, the rest of the picture is what made our team feel truly great about the product that we have built. This superintendent was described to us as a “surly” 65 year old man, someone that was not technologically savvy. However, after completing this punch walk, the superintendent was quoted as saying “I hate technology, I hate computers, but I love Rover.” Later in a meeting with company leadership, this same superintendent stood up with his iPad and said “now you all know me and computers, but look what I did!”

While we are continuing to build out this product, refining workflows and exploring new possibilities - experiences like the one above show that we are accomplishing our goals of building a product that is highly usable for an array of skill levels. We have designed and built a product that gets out of the way and helps our users get their jobs done.

Launch

Project Rover was released via a soft launch in April of 2021. While the release may not have been filled with fanfare, the reception from those who did get to experience it was positive. Obviously, I am no longer a member of the Bluebeam team but I am so excited to see how the product continues to evolve!

Various Tutorial Videos