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How Atomatic Mechanical Saved $75,000 with Autodesk Build

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Atomatic Mechanical (Atomatic), a full-service mechanical contractor based in the Chicagoland area, prides itself on providing quality workmanship, innovative designs, and reliable service to commercial, institutional, and industrial projects. With antiquated processes for managing project data, Atomatic was in the market for a cloud-based solution to standardize processes to increase collaboration and accountability across its teams.


The Old Ways of Managing Data Were Not Sustainable

When Executive Vice President Jack Fitzgerald joined Atomatic, there was no structured system or standards for document management, leading to data mismanagement.

“You can’t have repeat business unless there is a team behind you delivering. And for your team to deliver, everyone needs to be working together. There needs to be collaboration,” says Fitzgerald.

To get to a place where their processes were repeatable, Atomatic needed to standardize technology to drive consistency in reporting project information for greater collaboration and accountability across its projects. Atomatic evaluated several solutions based on meeting the following criteria:

  • Promotes collaboration
  • Easy to use
  • Creates accountability
  • Tracks patterns in data for continual improvement

These capabilities are what led them to select Autodesk Build within Autodesk Construction Cloud™ as their connected construction management solution.


 


Eliminating Gray Areas and Providing Project Certainty with Autodesk Build

By standardizing the process for creating RFIs, submittals, and issues with Autodesk Build, Atomatic’s teams can uniformly document project data. This enables Atomatic to seamlessly track the status of a deliverable to know where communication is or isn’t happening. This allows Atomatic to execute consistently on projects and with better results.

“The goal is to capture data to understand what makes projects successful and then repeat the process,” says Fitzgerald. “We want to get to a place where we know what’s working well and what we need to improve, and that only happens through structured data. The sooner management is made aware of problems, the faster they can rectify issues before it becomes a larger issue with customers.”

With Autodesk Build, Atomatic can aggregate data from different roles in one place. By capturing project information from the bidding stage, Atomatic can seamlessly move that information downstream once the project is awarded and kicked off. This process allows for easier collaboration when reviewing information or asking questions around the project’s scope, saving time and increasing quality.

Every new project replicates Atomatic’s master project template in Autodesk Build to ensure project success. This process simplifies project kickoff while providing Atomatic with rich data to measure efficiency and optimize its approach for future projects.
 

“Autodesk Build eliminates the gray areas taking the subjective out of what we’re doing and making our work more objective. This enables better decision-making, whether that’s internal or external, by allowing us to see patterns in the data to help us grow.”

Jack Fitzgerald
Executive Vice President


How Connected Construction Management Saves Time and Money

By automating some of the monotonous tasks with Autodesk Build, Atomatic’s teams spend less time figuring out how to use technology and more time on the areas that provide value to their clients and projects.

Fitzgerald shares an example of how Autodesk Build saved Atomatic $75,000. The firm was contracted to provide 38 roof exhaust fans on a large-scale project when the insulation on the curbs started to fall out. After contacting the supplier to report the issue, the supplier said Atomatic was at fault for letting the curbs get wet, and it would cost $75,000 to repair the damage. But by pulling up the timesheets in Autodesk Build, Atomatic documented it was raining on the day the assets were delivered, and the team captured photos of the items delivered on an open bed truck. Once that information was turned over to the vendor, they covered the cost. This eliminated any headaches and time that would have been wasted by sitting around and pointing fingers.

With true ownership of their data, Atomatic can identify where projects go well, where they start to go poorly, and how you can make sure that you promote proper practices on all future projects.
 

“We wanted a true technology partnership and to work with a company that would value our input into product development, and that is what we found with Autodesk. We see the power of the solution’s capabilities across our projects from design to handover. And not only is that unification of data increasing collaboration, but it’s improving what our teams deliver to our customers.”

Jack Fitzgerald
Executive Vice President