When Jim Watt came across Bluerithm, his firm was at the outset of a major commissioning project with a school district in Houston. The district contracted Green Star Engineering to systematically replace all HVAC control systems for more than 70 locations. The project involved not only the digital controls, but a myriad of components, from actuators and sensors to everything in between.
Of course, Watt saw beyond this one project to what lay ahead for Green Star Engineering. His switch to Bluerithm laid the groundwork for his firm’s coming period of growth and expansion. Today, Watt’s team manages at least a half dozen ongoing projects in Bluerithm at any given time. He’s also added three more team members to manage his firm’s expanding book of business.
POSITION A GROWING ENGINEERING FIRM FOR GROWTH
That a period of rapid growth was on the horizon did not escape Jim Watt, Principal Engineer at Green Star Engineering. “What keeps us ahead is being able to processize what we do,” he says. “It’s what allows us to be thorough and control the quality of the work.”
Watt had to look no further than the work right in front of him: the implementation and standardization of enhanced BMCS sequences and graphics in a large public school district with 92,444 students, 74 schools, and nearly 16 million square feet of conditioned space—all of it spread across 172 square miles.
Needless to say, Watt had to efficiently navigate any issues that arose, from identifying the problems themselves, to keeping track of each fix. As well as it had served him up to that point, Watt’s Excel-based processes were heavily reliant on manual input. He needed a more centralized, automated solution to handle a project of this scale.
“There were too many variables. I knew that if I was going to hire other people to handle certain parts of the process, then I needed to be sure that they were doing as diligent a job as I would. This required, for instance, test forms that had built-in checks that immediately alert the person that they’ve entered the data incorrectly, or answered a question wrong,” says Watt.
Was Watt able to do all of that in Excel? Sure. But no one person can possibly look at every single Excel spreadsheet, within every system in the Green Star Engineering project portfolio, and catch all of the issues.
“It extends beyond the internal team,” continues Watt. “We give these forms to a lot of different subcontractors. We’ve found that some subcontractors will enter bad data in a rush, what we call pencil whipping. They’re just putting data in without really measuring anything.”
It’s precisely these kinds of incremental issues and mistakes that tend to accumulate for larger scale projects. Without a centralized solution in place for managing issues across all projects, Watt faced unsustainably long project times, budget creep, and diminishing quality.
With Bluerithm, Watt has found the flexibility and functionality his firm needs, especially with respect to issues management. “I feel like today we’re really using it as an all-encompassing tool. It’s where we set up and prepare our projects. It’s where we get all of our forms in place for the equipment that we have on the project. And we regularly use the metrics that Bluerithm has for tracking.”
Watt and his team use Bluerithm to ensure that updates from contractors are the latest and most accurate. It’s a singular source for the most up-to-date project information, one that internal and external team members can access anywhere.
“The first thing we did was to get a handle on the issues, of which there might be hundreds for a given project,” says Watt. Today, his team can:
Watt’s team still creates their forms in Excel. Only now they upload those forms to Bluerithm, apply any necessary formulas, and use them across various projects.
“We set up pre-functional testing scripts for the subcontractors to fill out so we could track their exact progress. That was another huge weight lifted off our shoulders.”
KEY POINTS
The ability to grant access to the Bluerithm platform to contractors, clients, and other external stakeholders has improved adoption for Green Star Engineering.
“We issue guest accounts so external people can login and start making updates without much tutoring. This has made a huge difference, because those clients feel like they have a more vested interest in the relationship and the process.”
According to Watt, many clients will quickly learn to manage some aspects of the process themselves within Bluerithm, saving everybody time and effort.
KEY POINTS
FAR MORE PROJECT CAPACITY, SAME EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE
Overall, Bluerithm has helped the Green Star Engineering team scale their project portfolio. Thanks to a lot less manual intervention, as well as an intuitive interface that doesn’t require senior-level expertise to learn, Watt can now delegate more responsibility. As a result, he’s been able to add three team members to his staff.
“The system heads off mistakes and errors automatically. Having it all online gives me a lot of peace of mind, especially when we have half a dozen projects going on with four different people working on things, not to mention all of our subcontractors. The people I’ve hired can run functional testing on their own using our Bluerithm scripts,” says Watt.
Watt and his team can also reliably identify and assess any inaccurate project data before it becomes a bigger problem. “Inevitably, some contractors will put in inaccurate updates. We’ve set the system up to verify that the data is real and makes sense. We can quickly check on outstanding issues and other items that a contractor is responsible for, too. It helps us work smarter with our good subcontractors and helps keep those that are less diligent on track.”
As a firm known for a superior client experience, Green Star Engineering has been able to expand its portfolio without sacrificing its high standard of service. From real-time tracking of work and issues, follow-through, and troubleshooting, to tuning and operator training, Watt is confident his team has a thorough and scalable commissioning process in place.
Finally, with respect to the school district project in Houston—the project that precipitated the relationship between Green Star Engineering and Bluerithm—things have progressed quite well. To date, Green Star Engineering has commissioned BMCS replacements and upgrades to more than six million square feet of conditioned space and 44 facilities.
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Customizable site visit report templates with options to track as standalone activities, or to incorporate into the issues log.
Customizable design review templates with options to track as standalone activities, or to incorporate into the issues log.
TAB templates for custom forms with formulas that you can create and edit.
Functional and integrated systems tests / level 4 and 5 forms for commercial commissioning.
Virtually unlimited formats to support your unique needs.
Pre-functional / level 2 and 3 checklists for commercial commissioning, installation and startup tracking.
Bluerithm has LEED process checklists to ensure you’re on track with your LEED certification requirements, as well as checklist and test forms so you can meet Fundamental and Enhanced LEED certification requirements.
Bluerithm has extensive templates ready to use and customize for a variety of commercial commissioning needs.
Bluerithm has comprehensive punch list and issue log features to support thorough recording, tracking, and control workflows. New items and responses can be easily added on mobile devices in the field, even when offline.
Issues are customizable on a project by project basis with custom fields.
