A jobsite dashboard is helping Clark Construction take the drudgery out of managing punch lists
By John Caulfield, Senior Editor
Last year, Clark Construction started deploying Turnover Vision, an interactive punch list management application developed by the firm’s Research & Development Group, which combines punch list and scheduling data to optimize a project’s work plan.
Turnover Vision analyzes big data from a project’s punch list and organizes them into interactive heat maps and graphs. Using simplified architectural floor plans as the common communications platform, the dashboard provides a breakdown of real-time punch list status and turnover productivity rates.
The algorithm driving Turnover Vision’s dashboard “also allows us to anticipate productivity in the punch list phase,” says David Barritt-Flatt, director of research and development for Clark Construction in Bethesda, Md. The goal of this tool, he explains, is to reduce project closeout timelines and to improve the client experience through increased trust and transparency.
Prior to the implementation of Turnover Vision, which Clark piloted in 2016, the firm’s project teams were spending more than 15 hours each week documenting punch list items, manually updating PDF versions of turnover maps, and meeting with clients to discuss turnover rates.
Barritt-Flatt elaborates that deploying this dashboard not only eliminates a lot of administrative labor, but also “gives our subcontractors better direction” to identify and solve problems quicker. Equally important, the dashboard frees Clark’s engineers to focus on their primary responsibilities because they are spending a lot less time doing paperwork.
“One of our vice presidents, a construction leader, said that Turnover Vision was like adding a half- to a full-time employee to the project,” says Barritt-Flatt. He adds that clients now want Clark to adapt the app to go beyond producing punch list reports, so the contractor is now investigating Turnover Vision’s possible application for jobsite safety.
“We view this as part of our evolution to digitize our construction management approach,” he says.
Turnover Vision uses simplified architectural floor plans as its common communications platform. Image: Clark Construction
In the November 2017 edition of its company magazine Superstructure, Clark Construction singled out R&D Group team member Ryan Nam as the driving force behind Turnover Vision. While working on a multifamily residential project, Nam came up with the idea of an interactive dashboard to leverage Clark’s practices by merging big data with visual analytics.
Turnover Vision debuted last year at the recently completed Central Place residential tower in Arlington, Va., and was expanded to Clark’s residential and mixed-use projects across the country.
Clark started with residential and hospitality projects because they typically have a lot of room design iteration. But with tweaks, the firm is now using Turnover Vision on nearly all of its projects, including museums—one of Clark Construction’s specialties.