Transcript: The right GamePlan for you…

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell Turner and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number seven. Hello and welcome to this episode of Constructor. I'm Brittany Campbell Turner and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. I want to help property owners foster trusting relationships with your project teams, help you understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule in your construction projects and exceed your end user's desires. Hello everyone.

Thank you for joining me today. I'm excited to bring to you this interview with an amazing guy that is passionate about impacting the industry in an incredible way. He has paired the user friendly aspects of our social media platforms of today with project management software for construction. It provides great usability and an incredible software. This interview is with Vishal Parwal and I start out my interview with Vishal asking him how he got started.

Listen to what he has to say. Game plan was started in 2013. I have a lot of need and inspiration from my own work in construction industry. At the time I was working for Hoffman Construction in Portland, Oregon. It was a multi-million dollar project with hundreds of project team members, project managers, engineers and everybody.

There was a lot of good project management going on and we were using some of the cutting edge technology at that time for managing our projects. What were you doing? My role was building information model coordination. I was basically the coordinator. We were using 10 different tools to transfer files, to communicate.

Obviously email is the very first thing that we do. Email was our primary means of communication. We obviously were using Skyr. I think it's been acquired by Oracle. They were like the big storage company, file storage company.

We were using Prolog. Prolog was not... I'm familiar with Prolog. Do you use Prolog on your project? I have used it, yes.

No longer am. What's been your experience with Prolog? It's a little antiquated compared to what's available today, especially in our cloud-based systems. Everything is uploaded on a server and it's very blocky. I wouldn't say it's user-friendly.

2011-12, I think those were the years when Prolog really started looking like old. I think that was the time when a lot of people actually caught in this business. I later realized that a lot of people were jumping in this. That was because everybody was obviously frustrated with what they were using in their workplaces. When they go home, they use these really awesome apps.

The iPhone was out and people were like, hey, why our work software sucks? On one hand, you had Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and then on the other hand, you had Outlook, Prolog, and Excel. The contrast was pretty clear that we need to move forward. This was the next logical step. This was nothing like revolutionary, but it definitely was the need of the hour.

I think that was one of the reasons. Frustration was one of the reasons we caught in this thing. But we still see that there is still so much information on these projects that's not being organized very well. A lot of times, it's not only the software itself, it's people. I'm so glad you said that.

It's very much the people that tends to be the issue. It's the mindset around how to approach work and how to approach collaboration. I think that's one thing that I noticed in the article. I said, this guy is somebody I want to talk to. I do want to understand the features of Gameplan and whatnot, but it appeared that you started blogging about construction back in 2009.

Is that true? What got you involved with doing that in the first place? I was a student at Texas A&M University at that time. I was studying construction management. I was a graduate student at the construction science department in Collis station.

I was doing a lot of reading. I was doing a lot of projects with different students, our professors, advisors. I was active in local lean construction institute chapters in Houston. There was a lot that I was consuming. I really got into this idea of sharing these small nuggets of ideas and insights that I was getting at that time.

You will see there is an evolution in my blog as well from 2009 and later, where I start with basic and very focused on lean construction. Then I moved to technology. My thesis, actually you can read my thesis, it's available online. In my thesis itself, I actually mapped the idea that I'm working on right now. I had this insight at that time that somehow all these technologies need to come together.

A lot of brainstorming was done. I was working with one of the construction teams from terminal construction at that time at Texas A&M campus itself. That's where I was working with contractors, subcontractors. We were using basic technology, emails and Excel, but we were implementing last planner system of lean construction. This was 2009.

You were actually studying at Texas A&M and you were also working at Turner Construction? I was an intern. As an intern, I was helping them implement lean construction. I was their coordinator for lean construction. There was a sharp contrast from there to next becoming BIM coordinator where everything was about technology.

My job was mostly in computers. On the other hand, on Turner Construction, it was something else. It was working with people and realizing basically why we need technology to really be more productive in doing what we were doing. You will see all the blogs. I think I didn't write much since the last two or three years.

I am not sure when I blogged last. If you read my last blog, you will see that I talk about a lot about where we need to go as an industry. Remind me what your blog URL is. What's the domain name? It's bimgreenlean.blogspot.com.

It would be good to share that with any listeners as well. I am pulling that up now. You are right. Tell me a little bit more about that blog and the changes that you are saying. If you read that blog, you will see that all these technologies, I think in 2012 or 2013, I had that blog up there.

I don't remember the exact year even. It was in response to the questions posted by one of the professors, Randy from University of Illinois. He posed the question how the data-driven construction is going to look like. In response to several of his questions, I responded with the enablers of technology, like government mandates of PIM implementation. So remind me which state are you in?

I am in Chicago. I am in Illinois. University of Illinois, Urbana, that's the full name. It's in Urbana-Champaign? Yeah, that's it.

That's University of Illinois in Champaign, Urbana. That's what it's called. Yeah, that's it. So later on, he went on writing a book. You can read his book.

The professor wrote a book. He actually did a really good job at that. It was about how all these technologies coming together in one, whether it be virtual reality at that time, sensors, PIM, lean construction, government mandates. Your drones were not big at that time, but I'm not sure if I remember drones. All these technologies are really coming together now.

And we still have to go a long way. One of the very fundamental piece of the blog that I wrote was data, knowledge, information, wisdom framework. If you are familiar with that, I'm not sure. Have you heard of this? No, I'm really interested in it though.

That sounds really cool. Please tell me more. So you can read the blog for more details, but the basic fundamental principle, if you will, is or the concept in this framework is having the data is not enough. But it's like how you get to wisdom basically. So you have data and then that data becomes knowledge.

You can use it as information, but the ultimate goal is to have wisdom. So we do all this documentation and we do scheduling, we do estimates. And all these estimates that we do, the most right thing about estimates is they are always wrong. So we are always playing the catch-up game, the gazing game. But there is certainly a lot of wisdom there and that comes from experience.

So more experienced people basically can do better guess. And that's something that we should be able to now achieve using technology and the data that we have available. Yeah, I mean it makes sense. The manufacturing industry is implementing their understanding of what the data is showing within big data and maximizing their efficiencies right now. Yes, construction is a little bit different of an industry just because each project is different and you don't have the same workflow.

So you can't monitor the throughput as basically it's not a parallel comparison here with manufacturing. But I think that we have enough history, we have enough background information where we can utilize the data that we have at hand and you're right. Create, if you will, a framework that we can pull that wisdom that you're speaking of out of it. I can totally envision what you're referring to. And that's what we are going behind as well.

We are playing a very small part in getting there. There are a lot of good things happening technology-wise in the industry right now. Well, as for the parallels to manufacturing go, we actually are moving towards becoming like the manufacturing industry. Like we are moving towards prefabrication, we are moving towards 3D printing. So we will start manufacturing our facilities, buildings and infrastructure very soon.

The technology that we have available today, I'm pretty sure it's going to disrupt the industry in a really significant way. Like prefabrication, modular construction and your 3D printing all together with the robots that we have coming in the next few years, maybe five years at most. I just wanted to note, you said the word disrupt. That word is very popular right now in the tech industry. I'm curious, are you, just having built Gameplan, you're a SaaS entrepreneur at this point, are you part of any entrepreneurship or business incubators?

No, we are not. Okay. Yeah, like the reason I use the word disrupt is because, you know, the software is eating the world right now. Like a very popular VC gave this quote recently and it's very much true. And construction industry is not disrupted yet.

And software is going to eat construction industry in the ways I'm sure that no one, as far as the traditional construction people go, like the contractors basically go, they are not thinking about that. But their jobs can be gone overnight by just, because of the disruption that technology is going to bring, maybe we will start building buildings in one tenth of the time that we are building it in and we are not building on sites anymore and everything is manufactured. Withdrawn 3D printers. Well, yeah, 3D printers.

The first office building, 3D office printed building was recently opened in Dubai. And so, you know, it's coming like, you know, we didn't think like last year I was like really excited about 3D printing and I was attending some AC hackathons and I saw the printers there and I was like, okay, this is the next big thing. And, you know, we are sitting in 2016 and they printed a building. So it's amazing. I must say it is really freaking amazing and I must say that I post on Twitter pretty often and I have 3D printing Thursday.

Because, you know, it really is doing exactly what you're saying, it's disrupting the industry. And I don't think the industry is ready for it. It's happening globally. It's really hot in Europe and people are testing the technology over and over again and it's being refined. I don't think that we know what construction is truly going to look like in the next five years because of how this technology is impacting us.

So I do want to switch gears a little bit here and specifically ask you to tell us about Gameplan. What is it all about? So Gameplan is a cloud-based construction management solution that is built to bring all parties together on the same platform, automate a lot of the processes, and move the industry towards a lean goal with the help of technology. So feature-wise, we do offer all the basic features like request for information, submitters, change order management, contracts, payments, file sharing. We do integrate with all the popular cloud file sharing solutions like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, SharePile, OneDrive.

We have a robust scheduling and project planning tool that is based on the lean principles and the tools used in construction like the last planner system. Bringing all the information together from offices, from consultants, architects to the job site and doing the work phase planning. So basically, publishing the weekly plans, look ahead plans, and then tracking the percentage plan complete. But in the process, planning part of it, really using the technology to analyze the readiness of the assignments that go in on the construction projects. So we really focused our attention on getting that thing right and we built the entire product around it.

So I can give you a simple example of how it works. So every assignment that needs to happen on the job site, let's say a concrete port of one or 10 cubic yards needs to happen. You need the area ready with all the steel, the reinforcement that needs to go in, all the scaffolding, you need the right people at the right time, you need the inspection done. You need any IFIs answered before you go in, you need all the submittals checked, and you need the material that needs to be delivered on the job site at the right time.

And you need right equipment to do your job and so on. So there are all these moving parts and all these functions on the job site are done by different people. And the project managers and superintendents, they are the ones who lead the charge in making sure that everything works together. What we built allows everybody on the job site and people not on the job site, maybe in their offices, come together and plan the project together to make sure that any assignment, let's say again going back to pouring 10 cubic yards of concrete, happens on the planned day.

So we have really good analytics around it. We have red flags, green flags for the things that need attention or that can affect the plan's success. That sounds really amazing, number one. Number two, it sounds really and truly like it's an integrated approach to having people collaborate on all levels. I'm curious, who are the people who can be a user, I guess?

Is the owner included in the user base and what role might they be playing in the collaboration? I would say any construction manager and especially general contractors are the ones who can really utilize this thing because they are responsible for doing all this that I just talked about. But owner and architects and engineers and subcontractors are the ones who participate in the process. So it's everybody playing their part and general contractor orchestrating the whole thing. So when I say general contractors, like in the most popular project delivery models, today are CM at risk, again general contractors, so general contractors are playing the construction manager's role on most of the projects.

So that's why I say them, but sometimes for instance, companies use, owners use consultants who are owners representatives and they are also construction managers. And they can also become the orchestrators because they can bring everybody together and they can have everyone play their roles. So the way we design Gameplan is having this platform where everybody can play their own role and they can also keep their own data. So that's like a really unique thing that we do is you can have your suppliers join your team on Gameplan and they can have their own confidential database and dashboard that they can use to communicate with you and to give you updates.

They can manage their own internal processes and collaboration part of it with the project team using this dashboard and using this supplier portal. And you know there are a lot of, we have a very comprehensive role based system so you can have different permissions for different players on the job site and on the project. And you can assign people roles so they have access to the information, the only information that they need. So need to know basis information thing is there. So you know like we really focused on the collaboration piece like we are not only like just like just the one company run the entire software.

That's not how Gameplan is designed. It is designed so you know people from different companies use it together. Because you know how Prolog works. It is like a logging system. So you log let's say RFIs, submittals and it's like you have a document control team that receives RFIs, submittals and then they email those things to you know as far as like when I was using the document control team was emailing the RFIs and when the RFIs got answered they will go in and then they will log in the RFIs in the system.

Right into a log that you can then generate a report. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you know I think that's like the byproduct of what we do. You know on Gameplan people come and they collaborate and everything that Prolog did I think for RFIs and submittals as far as I saw it doing at that time was it was a data entry and reporting tool. But Gameplan is not a data entry and reporting tool.

It is like data and reports are byproducts of what people do on Gameplan. They collaborate. They ask questions to each other. They answer questions. They share ideas.

They solve problems together by sharing this you know different ideas, solutions and in terms of you know it's like you will see a lot of faces in Gameplan. So you know all over you will see people like if you upload your profile picture you will see your picture you know documentation everywhere you know. So it's like a highly collaborative platform. That sounds really amazing and I must say that it's hard to wrap my head around without having seen a demo. But I will definitely take you up on walking through it with an existing user and yeah basically documenting that and sharing that as well.

But I do think just based upon how you're describing it all the reporting being a byproduct that's definitely reducing the time wasting and you're truly just collaborating to find the solutions to the challenges that you're encountering. Whatever the RFI is or just design that you're working through at this point. So yeah that sounds really amazing. I do want to ask how, yeah yeah you should feel really proud to just to have this product out there. Yeah I'm pretty sure yeah definitely.

We are really pushing right now to you know get more people to you know wrap their heads around it because this is definitely something that we hear from everybody whom we talk to about this and whom we show. Because you know we think you know even though the interface of the software is pretty intuitive, people say that it's intuitive. The process part of it and the construction management knowledge part of it is something that needs getting your head around. Let's go back to that wisdom right?

Yeah yeah I mean because you know again software cannot do everything on its own. I'm sure like I'm not right now but at some point in time it will. Because I envision like you know the software knowing everything and building the building on its own. You don't need RFI submit or nothing. You know everything is already perfect based on the requirements that you told it and the computer is actually wise enough to know the site conditions and everything.

So you know that's coming maybe you know it's maybe a stretch not in near future but I see that coming. Wow yeah you're absolutely right. I was going to ask how BIM is integrated into game plan. Well the way our customers use game plan for BIM coordination is basically for tracking the issues, coordination issues in game plan. They have a workflow where they run let's say Navisworks 3D model.

This is a coordination meeting on using Autodesk 3D Navisworks and then during the meeting they take screenshots of all the problems that they see. So you know they create the viewpoints and they also do the screenshots and then we have a feature in game plan where you can copy and paste the screenshot right in the browser. So you copy and paste the screenshot there. You write that you just write like you know what the issue is. You assign it to the right team member and the issue is tracked there.

And they are mapping this issue to Navisworks viewpoint at this point. So we do not have a direct integration with Navisworks but you know this is the workflow that our customers use for tracking and we make that really easy for them. That sounds like a really useful feature to be able to track all the coordination. Yeah, definitely. Very cool.

Do you have anything else about game plan that you would like to share? We have web apps, mobile apps and pretty much you know as I said we build the entire system around collaboration. All the processes, construction project management processes of IFA, submittal change order, everything is built around this project planning tool. There is a lot more in terms of how many features we have but maybe game plan is not only about features but it is about how we approach the problems that we are trying to solve.

We are trying to solve everything using the hard code collaboration approach. Yeah, well it sounds like it is going to definitely be evolving based upon what your user feedback is and just the need. But so far it definitely sounds really great. I guess did you have anything that you wanted to just kind of leave me with, leave the audience with about what you think might be the one thing that we should be doing to prepare for the future and or collaborate better? I would say that everybody should not keep thinking about whether they should get on board with BIM or new technologies but they should start implementing those things on their project in whatever form, small or big.

They should start investing in this because this is going to disrupt the industry sooner than people will realize and there will be new players who will be having a competitive edge using technology, not only construction expertise. So get on board. I appreciate that. And I guess one thing I do want to just ask, how would you want people to get in touch with you to learn more about Gameplan? Well they can go to our website, it's gameplancloud.com and they can write emails to me at vishal, it's vishal at gameplancloud.com.

Awesome. Thanks so much Vishal. I hope you guys enjoyed this interview with Vishal. He and I spoke about having another interview with one of Gameplan's customers in the near future. So you can look forward to Gameplan's user experience in episode number 9.

Also a YouTube video should be coming out just alongside as well. So for this interview you can find the show notes with resource links and this podcast at constructor.com slash 07. Bye for now.