Fitzemeyer & Tocci Revolutionizes Accessibility and Company-Wide Communications
Fitzemeyer & Tocci Associates (F&T) is a full-service mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineering and construction management firm specializing in the healthcare, science, technology, and education sectors. As is typical in the AEC industry, achieving consistent communication and materials required for coordinated planning, design, and execution of projects proved difficult and time-consuming for F&T. By implementing Autodesk Build, an Autodesk Construction Cloud™ solution, F&T extended communications across all project partners, improving consistency in information documentation and overall production quality.
Battling Bottlenecks with Licensing Flexibility
Since 1961, Fitzemeyer & Tocci’s 55-person family-owned outfit has delivered innovative MEP and fire protection (FP) solutions to some of the U.S.’ most renowned healthcare and academic institutions. Determined to continue providing its clients with the highest quality service, F&T continually invests in technology across its trades.
After analyzing the organization’s previous construction management software, F&T’s Associate BIM and Technology Manager, Dan Villeneuve, saw an opportunity to improve automation, communication, and efficiency.
After vetting numerous software solutions, the company’s evaluating committee ranked Autodesk Build highest for its user experience, extensive partner network, and connected environment.
“Autodesk knows the AEC industry better than any other software development company. We saw a lot of untapped potential and believed naming Autodesk our primary partner would allow us to do our jobs better,” says Dan. “It’s reassuring to have a reliable platform, and Autodesk’s commitment to ever-evolving its applications means we can continue increasing efficiencies within each project.”
As of July 2023, 510 projects use Build, elevating the skillsets of F&T’s employees.
“We really saw an open opportunity for Autodesk Build to eliminate unnecessary steps during document reviews.”
- Dan Villeneuve, Associate BIM and Technology Manager
Unearthing Transparency and Accuracy with a Single Source of Truth
Capturing and sharing data is critical to F&T’s overall mission. With Build in tow, F&T established a common data environment and automated processes to maximize the use of data points across multiple projects.
“We wanted to get our data to work for us,” says Dan. “We want to use the collective knowledge in our files to automate our practices, leveraging design learnings we’ve already captured or are capturing now to maximize efficiency on future projects.”
By standardizing data collection with Build, F&T can more readily optimize project workflows, increasing visibility and communication inside and outside the organization. These improvements enable F&T to have a more robust QA/QC process to identify issues and clashes to improve model integrity and design while offering executives real-time insight into a project’s health.
“Autodesk Build has a construction-friendly workflow. It’s helped to connect our construction administrators, project managers, market leaders, and design teams, so everybody knows where the project stands throughout the pre-planning and design stages, even after our deliverables leave our environment.”
- Dan Villeneuve, Associate BIM and Technology Manager
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Creating Efficiency Gains and Increased Control Over Projects
After implementing Build, F&T has seen a 4.3% increase in overall client projects. They’ve also experienced a 7% reduction in RFI’s per project, saving time and boosting efficiency across the company.
Other key efficiency gains have been found by customizing Autodesk Power BI templates and utilizing the Project Home dashboard to communicate individual RFI and Submittal due dates across all projects.
“This dashboard prioritizes tasks across all projects and allows our users to view items requiring their attention easily,” says Dan. “We’ve also eliminated the manual process of file transfers by implementing Bridge into our workflow, which saves more than 4 hours per week.”
When considering Build, F&T hoped for increased control over projects from design through handover, and this expectation proved accurate for Dan.
“Autodesk allows all project stakeholders to understand the progress of their designs. The visibility to non-Revit users is a game changer that was quickly and intuitively adopted across all technical levels throughout the firm,” he says.
F&T has harnessed Build for many of its more complex projects to ensure that each person focuses on the work that fits their expertise and skillset – designing, modeling, or collecting data. Dan sees continued opportunities to evolve workflows for future projects and uses Autodesk to cultivate new and strengthened client partnerships.
“We’ve showcased our progress and utilization of the tools and features found in Autodesk Construction Cloud to our project partners and shared efficiency gains that can be implemented across the project teams, both internal and external, which helps project owners recognize the value of choosing us to work on their projects,” shares Dan. “The biggest benefit we’ve experienced is the collective accessibility across our entire organization, which I’m confident will only further propel F&T down a path of continued growth, allowing us to deliver our clients the service they deserve.”
“Autodesk Construction Cloud is providing a visibility and a transparency that the AEC industry always needed but was not able to achieve until now.”
- Dan Villeneuve, Associate BIM and Technology Manager