Building Conservation Associates (BCA) preserves heritage sites with digital tools

Building Conservation Associates (BCA) is a firm that specializes in the technical and historical aspects of restoring buildings and works of art with headquarters in New York and branches in Philadelphia and Boston. 

In a meeting with Microsol Resources, BCA mentioned they wanted a construction management workflow that leverages cloud technologies to enable their field and office teams to collaborate seamlessly with their general contractor.

“We want to keep the project on track and have the ability to link nearly any reference – drawings, photos, issues, documents – with connected workflows so the Contractor can understand the impact of changes in real-time in the field with complete accuracy,” said Stacy Albanese, Assoc. Director at BCA.

Even though the BCA team has extensive experience with the Construction Administration process, BCA recognized the need to increase efficiencies.

Project Goals

BCA’s restoration projects have several goals:

1. Their project has to be delivered within a tight deadline, so efficiency is essential.
2. To collaborate with other project teams entails removing information silos. They need to enable project details to be accessible on mobile devices in the field.
3. They need training for all parties on leveraging cloud technology to maximize efficiency throughout the project lifecycle.

Solutions

Microsol Resources team were brought in to guide BCA, and together with Stacy, they developed a solution in which Microsol Resources would:

• Assist BCA with using Autodesk Build subscriptions and user permissions
• Implement Autodesk Build to connect the field and the office team, and set up the project data sets
• Ensure the teams have access to the correct information with auto-sync to mobile devices
• Train the team on the Autodesk Build software and features

Once back-end settings were finalized, BCA worked seamlessly with their GC in a common data environment.

Business Outcomes

By having a set of guided product overview sessions with BCA’s internal technical team, they were able to:

• Have a proper workflow structured within an environment where all construction management and construction administration activities are performed solely on Autodesk Build.
• Use a powerful tool that is accurate and collaborative at the same time.
• Respond efficiently and meet deadlines.
• Serve as an extension of BCA’s existing AEC Collection and CAD workflows.

“Time is one of the most valuable assets in construction. When you have the team on the same interface, you can seamlessly ad efficiently and communicate across all platforms. Microsol Resources helped us save time by setting up Autodesk Build and having one platform to convey the information across the entire team.”

Conclusion

Having a close relationship with a forward-thinking general contractor firm, BCA quickly identified Autodesk Build as the best fitting solution to help synchronize all stages and phases of the project.

Their internal technical team executed a robust workflow, which, combined with preliminary training from the Microsol Resources team, set a successful standard for this project, and hopefully, many more to come in the future. “Microsol Resources really helped us, and we felt supported,” said Stacy.