Utilizing the power of BIM with GBuilder’s collaboration platform

Challenges

Managing the planning and building of apartments and offices is a multifaceted, complex process that involves many parties such as the project teams, the construction teams, and the customers.

YIT needed a more efficient method of handling its project management across the value chain from its customers to its project team and construction site.

Initially, YIT had an internal system that handled customer requests relating to material changes and alterations from the standard apartment inclusions. This was a text-heavy document that had to be manually posted or emailed to customers and lacked any visual representations of the apartment’s interior. The only visuals were hard copy brochures, and physical examples of the different decor and other materials were available only at the sales office. They were missing a digital environment and online services that customers could access at home to learn about the different options, comprehend the apartment’s overall visual aspect, and make decisions in their own time.

For their project teams, managing material options, customer choices, change requests, and defect reports on spreadsheets and paper was a slow, manual process that led to scattered data and knowledge. Their practice of sharing communications and documents through various channels, phone, and email further complicated the process and led to mistakes, delays and financial losses.

On the construction site, a lot of paper-pushing was involved in keeping the bill of quantities, bill of materials, and work orders up to date and ensuring that they ordered only the required materials. With maintaining paper records, the human error comes into play, and you are wondering if the documents are the latest versions or not.

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Solution

YIT now reaps significant benefits across its business thanks to GBuilder’s collaboration platform, the BIM-based Common Data Environment (CDE). The CDE platform has streamlined YIT’s project and construction teams’ work by providing a single place to track choices, changes, communications, defects and processes.

“We were missing a digital environment and online services that could be easily accessed by our customers from their homes to learn about the different material options, to comprehend the overall visual aspect of the apartment and to make decisions in their own time”, said Laura Pohjoismäki, Customer Service Engineer.

YIT’s customers also enormously benefit from the CDE platform’s material configurator. They can use the material configurator and visualise their future home or office in 3D and view the available material options.

"Customers buying new-build apartments often face difficulties understanding the dimensions and visual aspects of their apartments during the planning and building phases as visualisations were project- rather than apartment-based. Thanks to YIT's online portal, which now offers apartment-based 3D modelling and its material configurator, our customers can now view their actual future home which can be tailored according to their choice of materials, and any alterations are taken into account."

Laura Pohjoismäki, Customer Service Engineer

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The feedback from YIT’s customers, the home buyers, has been very positive:

"We are receiving good feedback about the platform’s usability and convenience. They appreciate the fact that they can make material selections on mobile devices from their sofas at home. As the previous way of doing things involved us sending papers via snail mail.”

Tomi Virola, Development Manager

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Through GBuilder the construction site has real-time access to BIM-based data:

“GBuilder is a user-friendly solution. It is easy to use, and you quickly learn how the application works due to its intuitive user experience. GBuilder allows us to keep track of customer material choices, orders and their statuses in real-time. We can see if a customer has confirmed their material choices, and also whether the customer service engineer has acknowledged this confirmation.”

Jukka Sadinmäki, Construction Site Engineer

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YIT’s project team has primarily benefited from having one central, BIM-based system in which all customer choices, changes requests, defect reports, pricing, and decisions are tracked in real-time. This saves the project team significant time and money and decreases the risk of error.

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“The 3D modelling is a nice extra. The biggest benefits for us are the apartment-based visualisations and the fact that we can utilise the data related to the materials and all the metrics throughout our customer journey once it has been set up. This allows us to shift between our processes easier: from the planning phase to procurement to the construction stage and even the warranty stage.”

Tomi Virola, Development Manager

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For YIT’s construction teams, GBuilder’s CDE enables them to save significant amounts of time, eliminate the possibility of mistakes, reduce construction waste, and increase the chances of completing work on time and within budget.

“During the construction of project Tripla with over 400 apartments in Pasila (Helsinki), for example, GBuilder helped us to ensure that we ordered the correct quantity of tiles for each bathroom. By using GBuilder, we could easily see which type and quantity of tiles were needed for each apartment. The material list function was also convenient. For example, when we ordered the different kinds of taps for the apartments, we could provide the workers with a list of where they should be installed. This helped streamline the process and saved us time and resources,” Sadinmäki explained.

“Overall, our communication with GBuilder has been very fluent, and our experience with our dedicated customer success manager has been exceptional as they always respond to our questions and contact requests promptly. So, we’re very pleased,” said Virola.