DPR Enhances Its Quantification Workflows with Autodesk Takeoff, Saving Time and Resources

DPR Construction (DPR) exists to build great things. To help deliver great results for its customers, DPR is partnering with Autodesk to provide its teams with connected tools to drive quality and innovation across its projects. With the pilot of Autodesk Takeoff within Autodesk Construction Cloud™, DPR is exploring the consolidation of its takeoff and quantification process to increase collaboration and coordination among project teams.

The Opportunity: Leverage Autodesk Revit Models to Expedite our Takeoff Workflows

DPR is committed to exceptional client service, evidenced by its 90% repeat business. To deliver high-quality builds for its clients, DPR’s teams take an outcome-focused approach and apply the best technology for the best result.

Longtime users of Assemble — a robust model conditioning tool — DPR wanted to further enhance its takeoff and quantification workflows. With the availability of Autodesk Takeoff, DPR chose to pilot the solution as a complement to Assemble to increase efficiencies and enhance collaboration across its preconstruction teams.

To scale Autodesk Takeoff across its organization, DPR piloted the solution on a $100 Million life sciences project to investigate the difference between traditional and cloud-based quantification processes. The pilot’s goal is to determine how Autodesk Takeoff can play a part in DPR’s overall estimating process and integrate into DPR’s enterprise systems and workflows.

“Simultaneously working in 2D and 3D in one application can help estimators quantify project scopes more efficiently. We are discovering that this capability in Autodesk Takeoff may be a supplemental benefit to our quantification process,” says Jourdan Trice, Corporate Services - Preconstruction Technology Integration at DPR. “And by partnering with Autodesk, we have the opportunity to influence product development and we’ve seen our feedback incorporated into the solution to better support our estimating workflows.”

Facilitating Greater Collaboration Between The Preconstruction Group and Self-perform Teams

As one of the largest general contractors, DPR has a robust preconstruction team with resources across the globe.

As a cloud-based quantification solution, Autodesk Takeoff enables collaboration and seamless data sharing across DPR’s estimating and self-perform teams to increase efficiency in the takeoff process.

“The ability to interact with multiple estimators across a project — regardless of location — allows our teams to collaborate in real-time and to monitor how a takeoff package is progressing within the larger project scope,” says Prashant Sharma, Senior Estimator at DPR. “This capability was a key takeaway from the pilot as the preconstruction schedule was only forecast for 3—4 weeks. And with our PDF drawings and Revit models integrated into one application, we could stay more organized internally to meet the tight schedule.”

Autodesk Takeoff also supports models from Autodesk Revit, enabling DPR’s Virtual Design and Construction team to leverage models directly from Autodesk Docs. The parity between solutions drives efficiencies and allows DPR’s estimating team to save time and more efficiently manage design documents.

“The ability to interact with multiple estimators across a project — regardless of location — allows our teams to collaborate in real-time and to monitor how a takeoff package is progressing within the larger project scope.”

Prashant Sharma
Senior Estimator

Creating Repeatable Formulas to Expedite Takeoffs and Save Time

Autodesk Takeoff can consolidate document updates via Autodesk Docs and allows DPR teams to readily collaborate on takeoff updates.

“Completing a 2D and 3D takeoff in the same environment makes it easier for estimators to get acclimated with using 3D quantification,” says Sharma. “We can condition and consume our models in Assemble to clarify the project scope and digest rooms/areas. And then use Autodesk Takeoff to easily complete a 3D takeoff aligned to how our estimators approach a 2D takeoff to get our quantities.”

On DPR’s pilot, the project had more than 500 drawings. With the file naming standards in Autodesk Takeoff, DPR’s estimating team could easily organize project files, saving 3 to 4 hours that may have been spent doing project setup. Another feature that resulted in time savings was the ability to add formulas to takeoff types that can be easily duplicated to generate complex quantities for items such as steel.

“Autodesk Takeoff is intuitive and can make our estimators’ jobs easier. As we move to optimize our takeoff packages, having the ability to easily access and share takeoff data that has been categorized in a standard way company-wide will save an enormous amount of time and will add value for our clients,” says Trice.

Autodesk Takeoff also provides transparency between the design team and owner around quantity surveys.
 

“In the industry, we often hear live estimating, target value design, 3D based takeoff, real-time estimating, all pointing towards using data more efficiently to provide more accurate estimates in real-time; that’s our goal. With Autodesk Takeoff and Assemble on our projects, we can get closer to achieving this goal.”

Prashant Sharma
Senior Estimator