Tag Archive for: BuildingActivation

The Importance of Using Activation Software Early in the Construction Project

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As construction projects grow in size and complexity, there is a need for a more efficient and effective process of coordinating the various stakeholders involved. One area that has become increasingly important is the activation process, or preparing a building for use after construction is complete. While many organizations wait until the activation and building fit-up (FF&E) phase to start thinking about this process, using activation software early on in the construction project can save time and money and improve the project’s overall success.

At FreightTrain, we advise customers to begin using FitUp at least 6 months before you start building turnover. This ensures that staff can train on how to use the software and document room readiness. It also allows issues to be fixed and recorded immediately after the General Contractor has completed a walkthrough of the building and better prepares the logistics team. 

Here are three reasons why activation software is essential early in the construction project:

1. Better Collaboration and Coordination

Using activation software from the construction project’s beginning can help improve collaboration and coordination among the various stakeholders involved. By providing a centralized platform for tracking tasks and timelines, activation software can help ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals. This can help avoid delays and miscommunication that can lead to costly mistakes later in the project.

“FitUp was able to add value to our project by saving us hours of updating several different documents by combining those documents into one uniform application. Our team utilized the application via our company iPad, making it simple for us to record deliveries in real time. FitUp made it easier to collaborate with other team members as each member had access to a fully updated list at all times. All in all, we were able to record our equipment deliveries on a three story patient tower in a few hours rather than a few days.”

~ Taylor Miller, Assistant Project Engineer at Turner Construction

2. Improved Efficiency

Activation software can also help improve construction process efficiency, which ensures on-time and under-budget project delivery. By providing real-time data on the status of tasks and timelines, stakeholders can make informed decisions and adjustments to the construction plan, resulting in a more streamlined and efficient process. This can help to reduce costs and improve the overall success of the project. 

For example, one of our customers recently had a situation where they were able to use FitUp to identify where crash carts were going to be placed within their department months before the activation phase was scheduled using our Visual Fragnet tools. The customer identified they were going to need additional crash carts, and also place children’s crash carts near the adult crash carts in order to meet the requirements for a specific department. If they had not started using FitUp early in the project, they might not have recognized the need for the additional carts and they couldn’t have run the reports that allowed them to identify the issue, order additional carts, and have everything stocked and in place for opening day. 

3. Cost Savings

Finally, using activation software early in the construction project can help to save costs in the long run. By identifying and addressing potential issues before the activation and building fit-up (FF&E) phase, stakeholders can avoid costly delays and mistakes that can add up over time. This can result in significant cost savings and improved return on investment for the project.

“I have been using FitUp at different institutions across the US since its early development. While I find much of the functionality essential to my transition strategy work and assisting differing stakeholders on a project, one of the key points that is essential to effectiveness is early utilization. Early uptake of the product provides several benefits with one of the most effective being user adoption. On my projects, I often have new players joining the team, and it is such a benefit to have all parties integrated into this quality product right off the bat. Using the tool for logistics, maps, equipment tracking/documenting, and room readiness before it becomes crunch time is extremely helpful in preparing for the final sprint and long-term management of the facility as well as assets within it. I am a big proponent of this software and recommend purchasing early in a project’s lifespan to truly reap all the benefits.”

~Elizabeth Callahan, Owner, Callahan Partners, Inc.

Conclusion

In summary, using activation software early in the construction project is essential for better collaboration and coordination, improved efficiency, and cost savings. By adopting a more proactive approach to the activation process, stakeholders can ensure that the building is ready for use as soon as construction is complete, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.

FreightTrain’s FitUp is a powerful and intuitive activation software platform that is designed to help organizations streamline the activation process and improve the success of their construction projects. Contact us today to learn more about our solutions and how we can help you achieve your goals. 

 3 Ways Spreadsheets are Costing Your Construction Projects Time and Money

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Before coming to FreightTrain for help, our customers were using excel spreadsheets to manage equipment logistics during the activation of their hospital construction projects. Your business is probably no different – relying on multiple spreadsheets and spreadsheet templates to manage this critical component of your healthcare construction projects. 

Spreadsheets have their place in business, but that place is not in activating a building.

Here are 3 ways spreadsheets are creating waste for your construction project – 

1) Wasted Time 

How much time is each person involved in the activation of your construction projects spending inside spreadsheets? 

You might be surprised by how high that number is for some of the people on your team. We often hear people are spending upwards of 50% of their time at work just trying to find the right spreadsheet, update it, send out the updated version to everyone involved, pull data from one to another, etc. 

For example, several of our customers have told us they spent several hours each week compiling data from multiple spreadsheets to have a report they could give to the hospital leadership team. If you have two full-time project managers spending 8 hours a week each on generating reports from spreadsheets – that’s costing your business more than $1,000 every week, to create a report. 

Close to 75% of contractors reported longer than expected project delays in 2022.

AGC 2022 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook Report

When your team’s time isn’t being used effectively, this is also a direct cause of project delays – adding further costs to your business. 

FreightTrain’s FitUp automates reporting and delivers the latest reports in real-time. This means leadership always gets the most up-to-date status on the project, and project teams aren’t wasting up to a full workday double-handling project data to create reports. This ensures our customers’ projects launch on time. 

2) Inaccurate Data

For large projects like a hospital facility, there are typically many spreadsheets and multiple teams of people who are transferring data across spreadsheets throughout the project. This leads to spreadsheets that are riddled with outdated and inaccurate information. 

One recent report showed that over 86% of spreadsheets contain errors – and that a single error can cause up to 10% of that construction project’s value to be destroyed. 

With our industry’s tight financial constraints, can any business afford to risk 10% of their next project’s value over a single spreadsheet error?

FitUp’s Visual Reports Provide Real-Time Status Updates

FitUp provides tools to verify data as it is entered into the database while dramatically reducing the errors caused when people are manually copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another. With more accurate data, our customers have fewer issues during their projects and can respond faster to issues as they arise. 

3) Inhibits Collaboration

The activation of a hospital project involves numerous groups from multiple companies that all need to access and share information throughout the project. The inherent limitations of collaborating with spreadsheets often lead to frustration and difficulties across project teams when trying to track and report on key project KPIs over a construction project. 

Creating and tracking a single issue that impacts multiple teams, such as having a piece of equipment ordered, delivered to the warehouse, sent onsite for installation, and then inspected, can rely on 10 or more spreadsheets that reside in different locations and are managed by different people. The typical hospital construction project will log and track over 5,000 issues – this isn’t feasible to manage in spreadsheets.

FitUp makes it easy for everyone involved to collaborate and maintain a single source of truth. Issues can be assigned to contractors within FitUp and tracked from the moment they were reported through resolution. Our platform streamlines project communications that used to be managed across multiple emails with multiple spreadsheet versions to track. 

Consider eliminating spreadsheets from your project activation workflows as a new year’s resolution. Schedule a demo of FitUp today!

Customer Success Story: How Criterion Used FitUp to Successfully Activate the Lennar Foundation Cancer Center

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Photo by City of Hope®

Project Background


The City of Hope Orange County Lennar Foundation Cancer Center began treating patients on August 22, 2022, immediately securing its place as Orange County’s most advanced comprehensive cancer center. One of only 53 NCI-designated centers in the United States, this visionary diagnostic and treatment facility creates a national model for delivering breakthrough research and pioneering treatments. 

The four-story, 192,000 SF building epitomizes City of Hope’s $1B+ expansion into Orange County, housing an expansive suite of ambulatory diagnostic and treatment services including Nuclear Medicine, Radiation Oncology, Imaging, Women’s Imaging, Ambulatory Surgery, Interventional Radiology, Laboratory Services, Clinical Research, Pharmacy Services, Infusion, Clinical Care, Sterile Processing and support spaces.

Several years in the making, the Cancer Center was conceptualized in 2017 and realized over a two-year construction period that began in September 2020. The path from conception to first patient involved coordinating numerous complex components to ensure the facility was more than just a beautiful, well-constructed building; it also needed to be a fully functional advanced research and treatment center to serve the diverse needs of Orange County’s more than 3.2 million residents. 

Criterion Logo
Criterion is a Pioneer in the Medical Equipment Planning Industry

To meet that objective, Orange County-based medical equipment planning firm Criterion was selected to provide medical equipment planning, equipment modeling, procurement assistance, logistics and activation services. With a 45-year history delivering specialized healthcare projects throughout California, Criterion offered the precise expertise required to successfully deliver the flagship facility.

The Challenge


Converting a building into an integrated academic and treatment center involves a number of complex, multi-faceted equipment planning and logistics processes. When procuring and activating thousands of equipment items, sorting and quantifying that data in spreadsheets can be cumbersome. Clients, staff, vendors, and even new team members, who may be seeing the data for the first time, can often be overwhelmed by the high volume of information. 

Criterion quickly recognized that standard spreadsheets and manual forms would not be capable of handling the level of complex data required by this cutting-edge project and sought a solution that provided the executive-level reporting that quickly quantified project data and statuses in an easily digestible manner and integrated with their medical equipment planning software, Attainia. They also needed a solution that could be utilized by all project team members, including various vendors, to track and manage assigned tasks and issues. 

The Solution


City of Hope, familiar with FitUp from use on prior projects, selected this solution to assist the project team in managing the activation of the Cancer Center. The City of Hope team introduced Criterion to FitUp, and after a short onboarding period, Criterion’s team was ready to embrace the program. 

“Like any new tool, FitUp takes some time to learn, but once our team was trained and proficient, it became an invaluable resource that we depended on throughout the duration of the project.”

Charlie Cornaire, Director of Procurement & Activation at Criterion

FitUp is a revolutionary cloud-based solution used by healthcare organizations nationwide to track, manage and coordinate thousands of pieces of medical equipment, IT components, and furniture (FF&E) information in one consolidated database, in real-time.

FitUp was the only solution that checked all the requirements for Criterion and City of Hope. The program’s full connection and integration with Attainia alleviated a large magnitude of manual data entry updates that Criterion was previously inputting into Smartsheet and Excel. 

The Results


“Our entire team was extremely satisfied with the functionality and efficiency that FitUp provided. We really appreciated the FitUp support team who were quick to answer any questions, provide training, and make adjustments to meet the unique needs of our project.”

Charlie Cornaire, Director of Procurement & Activation at Criterion

Using Fitup, Criterion was able to: 

  • eliminate the need to run pivot reports that would quickly become outdated;
  • create efficiencies from a vast amount of information that changed on a daily basis;
  • provide critical, real-time status updates to leadership on procurement and logistics processes; 
  • assign tasks and action items, and track issues across multiple vendors working on the construction project.

Additionally, during the activation phase, FitUp allowed Criterion to quickly conduct a punch list of the rooms to ensure all material was in place. With pertinent information at the clients’ fingertips, it also reduced the amount of RFIs that the Criterion team would have otherwise had to answer.

Criterion was thoroughly impressed by the simplicity and efficiencies associated with FitUp and looks forward to utilizing the program on future hospital projects.

Don’t Allow Supply Chain Issues to Delay Your Project

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The last two years have been incredibly stressful for the healthcare industry and the many incredible people working in the field. In addition to the stress of treating an influx of patients caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, these organizations faced immense challenges in the supply chain. The issues with the supply chain are having a significant impact on organizations that are building and activating new facilities. Healthcare facilities are now facing delays upwards of five months for equipment to be delivered (Aeppel). These delays negatively impact the schedule for new projects and make it more challenging to provide patient care for all those in need.

Compounding the problem is that project teams in the field often have limited visibility to the status of the medical equipment, furniture, and IT devices that must be delivered and installed to open a new facility on time. Information about the status of these products often resides in spreadsheets exported from planning tools, ERP systems, and so forth. FitUp is a technology solution that allows healthcare organizations to track the ordering, shipment, and delivery of equipment, furniture, & IT. With FitUp, healthcare facilities can track, in real-time, on interactive dashboards what equipment has been purchased, shipped to the warehouse or the site, installed, tested, etc.

FitUp ensures that your project is successful and delivered on time. For more information, check out our website, https://www.usefitup.com/fitup/. 

Best,

Aeppel, Timothy. “COVID Creates Shortages of an Array of U.S. Medical Supplies.” Reuters, 20 Sept. 2021, 11:23 a.m., https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rQTHnbHcOp92VSlnturN7g27WROsWwqBPbqiiOg7KYM/edit. 

Benefits of having Attainia and FitUp on your Project

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Attainia and FitUp are both used by many healthcare organizations to track medical equipment from planning to installation.  FitUp and Attainia are now integrated so that all product information that is managed in Attaina is automatically uploaded into FitUp and updated as changes are made in Attainia.

Medical Equipment Planners utilize Attainia to create the preliminary equipment budget, specify vendor-specific equipment and manage changes for the medical equipment that will be purchased on a project. Users will make updates to Attainia as products move through the project lifecycle stages of Planned, Validated, Sent to Purchasing, and Purchased. Once items are received at the warehouse other users begin to use FitUp to track what products are in the Warehouse, when they are Requested to Site, Received on Site, Stagged, Placed in Room, and Complete.

The benefits of using both applications are listed below:

  1. The entire project team has visibility to the status of all products throughout the activation process
  2. Any change to product data in Attainia is automatically reflected in FitUp
  3. Drive Collaboration between medical equipment planners the logistics team 

For more information, please visit our website at www.www.usefitup.com

How FitUP Was Created

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Floor Plan

FreightTrain ‘s FitUp was created from the many frustrations and lessons learned from over a decade of experience in loading a building. One of the unique and powerful features of FitUp is the Visual Fragnet (VF). The Visual Fragnet provides colorized layouts of a project’s building(s) based on user searches. Users can search for particular equipment, and the map will colorize the rooms where the equipment will be installed.

With multiple display formats to choose from, project teams can leverage these maps to visually monitor the status of all assets and rooms in the building. Deployment teams can export, print, and distribute these layouts to assist in their deployment processes.