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Lease Crutcher Lewis
Background
General Contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, uses Bluebeam PDF Revu to help their job teams streamline project communications to save time and money. Prior to the switch, the teams relied on paper documents of architectural drawings and specifications during the building process. When team members needed clarification, they submitted RFIs (Requests for Information) by marking up these documents by hand and then shipping, faxing, or scanning and emailing them to the architects and engineers. Responses would also be returned in paper format, resulting in hundreds of paper documents being transmitted back and forth. This process was time consuming and expensive. It also left room for confusion and error, as photocopies of handwritten notes were often difficult to read.
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Solution
To improve project communications, Lease Crutcher Lewis presented an electronic workflow using Bluebeam PDF Revu to their client. The Lease Crutcher Lewis IT Group was already proposing that they switch to Bluebeam internally to reduce their own paper usage. It made sense that the same technology would be as valuable to the client. As IT explained, Bluebeam would allow them to:
- Speed up communication - questions would be addressed promptly without delaying the building process.
- Reduce costs - electronic communication eliminates the need for expensive, overnight delivery of documents between the job site and the client’s office.
- Improve accuracy – keeping everything electronic increases document reliability and legibility to reduce confusion and errors.
Result
Lease Crutcher Lewis and the client made the switch to Bluebeam PDF Revu. They found that the transition was easy, even for users who were accustomed to marking up drawings by hand. The reason – Bluebeam is intuitive, designed to replicate the way one would normally work with a pen and paper.
For example, the software includes industry-specific markups that can be accessed and customized from the toolbar. Therefore, it didn’t take a great deal of training for users to learn how to add highlights, clouds, leader lines and text annotations onto PDFs. Bluebeam also allows users to easily compile and email RFIs and responses by simply combining PDF pages such as drawings, specifications and more into one bound PDF file. Finally, the client was concerned about authenticity of electronic documents. By using Revu’s custom signature stamp design feature, Lewis was able to electronically certify drawings.
In the end, both Lease Crutcher Lewis and the client were impressed with the amount of time and money saved by using Bluebeam. The transition from paper to PDF went so well that Lease Crutcher Lewis is now helping other clients make the switch to an electronic workflow using Bluebeam PDF Revu.
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