On the Ritz-Carlton Residences project in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., Assistant Superintendent Max Sanchez was in charge of a critical path component of the project: the glass wall system for the 53-story building, which would ultimately drive the project’s delivery date. It took 10 weeks for the glass to be delivered from Brazil, significantly compressing the schedule.
“We were faced with an extremely aggressive schedule,” Max said. “OpenSpace helped me manage the installation with the trade partners and keep the project on track.”
During the installation, Max started by using OpenSpace to walk the site with a 360-camera mounted to his hard hat. That work captured images and automatically mapped them to the project plans. Through the process, Max demonstrated the true state of the project, which enhanced communication and accountability with trade partners.
“I’d use OpenSpace to quickly pull up the image I needed with the specific trade partners performing the work,” he said. “It gave the entire project team better visibility into the actual progress and what work was still outstanding.”
Max then began using OpenSpace daily and found the Field Notes feature to be particularly useful. Field Notes lets the on-site project team take pictures and jot down notes during site walks to document details.
“Accountability is critical on a project of this magnitude, and OpenSpace helped me manage that process much more effectively with our trade partners,” Max said. “A 53-story building is a lot of area to cover, but this was a perfect way of tracking everything.”
The benefits of Max’s use of OpenSpace?
- Greater accountability. Max’s use of this technology made it possible to monitor progress of the glass installation in minute detail and ensure that the subcontractors stayed on schedule.
- Time savings. Max estimates that using OpenSpace helped complete the project a month faster than anticipated.
- Reduced documentation time. Max walked the site daily and took up to 76 Field Notes at a time, which he could quickly export into a PDF to share with his team. Images were captured and mapped to the project plans automatically, making documentation 10 times faster than manual capture.
After his stint at the Ritz-Carlton, Max became Suffolk’s Construction Solutions Director in Miami, where he encourages superintendents throughout the company to use OpenSpace and other technologies piloted in the CoLab.
