For the past three years, Satterfield and Pontikes has been working as Program Manager on a 1.2 billion dollar project to upgrade Terminal 4 for Delta Airlines at JFK airport.
Prior to Phase 1, Satterfield and Pontikes stored all their drawings, RFIs, plans, schedules and relevant documents in different places. Phase 1 involved re-development of the security, check-in, and baggage systems, as well as adding nine international gates on the concourse. The current phase, 1B, involves the demolition of Terminal 3, which is being managed by Procore. Phase 2 will see a 76,000-square foot expansion onto the concourse for nine regional and two international gates.
"The ability to have any piece of information at your fingertips gives you better and quicker decision making power."
Tim Kelly, S&P Technical Services Manager, looked at numerous document management systems, including EADOC and "probably 10 other systems." What bothered him was that some of these systems had a "per user" licensing arrangement, which allowed only a limited number of users in the system. "If I'm a subcontractor and I get added to the system, then I'm going to have my username shared with my entire group, so you can't really track who is doing what in the system."
Having a license and permission levels for everyone offers better management over the team members' activities. "When we add Bidders and see from their team who's active, who's asking questions, who's logging in and looking at the documents, it gives us an understanding of how active people are in the system." Satterfield & Pontikes needed a software service that was cloud-based in order to track their team's progress on a day to day basis in real time.
Bringing Information Together
Tim Kelly needed to have everyone working in a fully integrated system: all the subcontractors, superintendents, project managers, and their accounting teams. "Rather than having a lot of this information living outside of the system and just through email, we wanted anything coming inbound, in the system."
Satterfield & Pontikes is providing design assistance services for Phase 3 of the JFK project, and managing it from its head office in Houston. With a design team in New York, documents need to pass quickly back and forth, similar to an FTP site. Company executives must also access the system to monitor events. Previous to Procore, they used a variety of different sites including an architect's FTP site or a proprietary system to manage submittals or RFIs. Now, they can access integrations from their iPad, iPhone, Android, tablet, or desktop computer.
Saving Time and Money
Tim Kelly is emphatic about the cost-effectiveness of Procore. "Time is money, and if I'm trying to dig up documents, the quicker I have access to them, the better decisions I make, which are typically cheaper decisions. If you're not looking at the right documents when you make a decision, and you have to come back later and change your mind, it typically costs you money. The ability to have any piece of information at your fingertips gives you better and quicker decision making power."
