ABOUT SEARHC

The South East Alaska Regional Health Consortium {SEARHC) is a non-profit tribal health organization serving more than 30 communities throughout Southeast Alaska. With a mission to improve the health of Alaska Native and American Indian people, SEARHC delivers care across one of the most geographically remote and logistically challenging regions in the country.

Valerie Barclay served as Project Manager for SEARHC’s new 234,528-square-foot medical facility on the island of Sitka, Alaska – a project seven years in the making. With no road access to the mainland and the realities of island-based logistics shaping every procurement and installation decision, Valerie managed the full lifecycle of FF&E activation for one of the most complex rural healthcare construction projects in the region.

THE CHALLENGE

Activating a facility of this scale in an isolated island setting is unlike anything encountered in a typical hospital construction project. International shipping costs, limited contractor availability, and a rotating cast of vendors meant coordination gaps had real, immediate consequences.

Before FitUp, Valerie’s process relied on Excel and Smartsheet. For a previous 44,000-square-foot medical office building in Juneau, she manually created room criteria sheets from FF&E lists, printed them, and posted them on doors alongside floor plan cutouts snipped from construction drawings. Sorting, filtering, and walking room by room was the standard approach and already taxing.

This new facility presented an entirely different scale of problem. With over 13,000 products tracked across hundreds of rooms and multiple major installers working simultaneously, the margin for error was essentially nonexistent. A single missed installation or miscommunicated status update could cascade across biomed tagging, IT configuration, and patient readiness timelines.

Compounding the challenge: Valerie joined the project mid-stream and launched FitUp. She needed a tool that could deliver immediate value for her specific workflows.

FITUP’S SOLUTION

FitUp became the single operational layer through which Valerie managed installation verification, issue tracking, and cross-discipline handoffs across the entire facility all while operating as a one-person project management team.

VISUAL FRAGMENT: REAL-TIME FLOOR NAVIGATION

The Visual Fragnet feature was the centerpiece of Valerie’s workflow. By running targeted searches that filter by vendor, product status, or install type, she could see a color-coded floor plan showing exactly which rooms still contain items pending installation. Rather than wandering through hundreds of rooms relying on memory or printed lists, she opened FitUp, pulled the map, and sent field staff to precisely the right locations.
This was especially powerful during punch-out rounds. When a vendor completed two weeks of installation work across the building, Valerie ran a targeted search and walked only through the
rooms that mattered. The same workflow lets her delegate verification tasks to other staff with clear, room-specific directions, no lengthy orientation required.

“My favorite feature is being able to do a custom search, pick the vendor who’s responsible for the installation of a particular product. I can use the Visual Fragnet to light up those rooms to show me where the installations should have been before I punch out their work.”
-Valerie Barclay, Project Manager, SEARHC

BIOMED AND IT HANDOFF AUTOMATION

FitUp transformed the handoff between installation and activation for Valerie’s biomed and IT teams. Instead of managing separate email chains or Smartsheet comment threads, she logged issues directly in FitUp. Automated reports notified biomed technicians when equipment was ready for tagging and IT personnel when endpoints were in place and waiting for configuration. Communication that previously lived in inboxes now lived in FitUp.

ISSUES LOG AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The issues log provided Valerie with a direct, efficient line of communication with her warehouse team and installation vendors. When a vendor installer missed items or placed equipment in the wrong room, she could generate a precise pull list of exactly what was outstanding and where it needed to go without walking the floor again herself. The history log created an immutable record of every change, making it easy to distinguish between a process breakdown and a last-minute design decision.

THE RESULTS

The facility opened on schedule, with full FF&E installation verified and every major discipline contractor OFCI work, vendors, and HTG IT endpoint equipment tracked and reconciled in FitUp. Despite launching the platform mid-project, Valerie accomplished what would have been effectively unmanageable in Excel alone at this scale.

75% REDUCTION IN TIME SPENT ON INSTALLATION VERIFICATION

Valerie estimates that FitUp reduced the work required to verify, track, and communicate FF&E installation status by approximately 75% compared to what it would have taken using spreadsheets, printed room sheets, and manual email coordination. What would have consumed four units of effort in a paper-and-Excel environment was compressed to one, freeing her to focus on the many other demands of managing a 234,000-square-foot facility as a solo project manager.

“I suspect that this has cut the work that I need to do to make sure everything’s in the building, installed and ready to go by about 75%. You just think about not being stuck in an email thread forever about something you no longer need to care about.”
-Valerie Barclay, Project Manager, SEARHC

VENDOR ACCOUNTABILITY

Vendor accountability improved measurably. When one of the vendor field installers bypassed FitUp and used their own spreadsheets, they made errors in their last two installation rounds that Valerie directly attributes to a lack of real-time room layout data while placing items. In contrast, when an installer was shown how to click on a room and see exactly what products were assigned there, their reaction was immediate:
“Why didn’t we know about this from the beginning?”

Valerie’s recommendation is clear: require major installers to use FitUp. Not just the smaller vendors, but the high-volume teams, the ones installing 6,000 pieces of furniture or thousands of IT endpoints across hundreds of rooms.

TEAM RAMP-UP AND CONTINUITY

New team members and field staff quickly got up to speed. Valerie could assign verification tasks to others by sharing search parameters and pointing them to the Visual Fragnett map, no lengthy orientation required. Momentum stayed high even as personnel rotated in and out across the long activation period.

SUPPORT AND PARTNERSHIP

The FitUp team remained accessible and responsive throughout the project. Even with a compressed launch, Valerie always had access to support when she needed it and felt confident using the platform independently.
“I needed something to make this process run smoother for me. I’m a single project manager in a 240,000-square-foot facility. And it did that. I 100% found it very worth its value to me.”Valerie Barclay, Project Manager, SEARHC

WHAT’S NEXT FOR SEARHC

SEARHC has expanded to a FitUp Enterprise license. Project teams will start using FitUp when construction starts, creating the opportunity to implement FitUp at full scope from the very first purchase order, capturing efficiencies that a mid­project launch could not.

Valerie’s advice to her SEARHC colleagues starting fresh: take time upfront to define scope, which modules the team will use, who owns the data, and which vendors will be required to log installations directly. Require the major installers to document their work in FitUp. Invest in configuration of the system early, so the platform reflects only what the team needs to see. And don’t underestimate how far the tool can go when the whole organization commits to it.