Archives: Projects

Consigli is using Touchplan as part of its construction of a new office building that will support Tyler Technologies’ commitment to forging ongoing critical STEM relations with the University of Maine as well as relocate their Bangor office operations building. Targeting high-performance building design for energy efficiency, the facility will house office and working spaces for various departments, large collaboration spaces, video-conferencing rooms, and a large lobby with an atrium.

Touchplan is being used by the Western Program Alliance and other entities to remove 11 level crossings in Victoria, Australia. The process involves replacing railway level crossings with bridges and underpasses and supplying new stations, track duplications, and car parking garages across Melbourne.

“Occupations have to be planned to the “nth” degree, even before the project is awarded”, said Phil Hendy, Innovations and Continuous Improvement Manager for the Western Program Alliance. “We have thousands of people whose journeys are disrupted through road detours or needing to take replacement buses in-lieu of the train. Touchplan has allowed us to be better prepared, to allow our teams to have a clear understanding between them as to what’s going to happen, which consistently keeps disruptions and delays during the construction to a minimum.”

Layton Construction used Touchplan for a $46 Million, 100,000 SF expansion to a hospital and wanted to move its pull planning and lean processes into a digital space. About halfway through the construction, the Covid-19 pandemic began to emerge. The construction project team could no longer meet in person and had to start working via conference calls and video meetings. Usually, remote sessions would not be effective for efficiently planning a project of this size and scope, but since the team was using Touchplan, the work continued almost seamlessly.

“With Touchplan, we were able to continue our meetings remotely instead of being face to face,” said Layton Project Manager Joseph Neyman. “The team had Touchplan on their computers, and we could see the live plan movements. We could go through each trade at a time. Making it a great way to coordinate with all the trades simply. I don’t know what we would have done otherwise.”

New Line Structures is using Touchplan’s construction planning software for a 1.2 million square foot project will transform a historic warehouse into a modern, biophilic workplace in New York City. A project of this size and scope that combines historic restoration (facade renovation), construction in occupied spaces, demolition, and new construction would need to be managed meticulously. The project it requires detailed and custom planning for each phase. For these reasons, the team at New Line decided to use Touchplan.

“A project this large requires a lot of subcontractors on the site at any one time,” said Frank Parker, Lead Superintendent for New Line Structures. “Collaboration is key, and all workers’ schedules need to be aligned. Touchplan is keeping the subcontractors on target as they create schedules for their work.”

Falmouth, Maine-based Penobscot General Contractors used Touchplan to construct a 30,000-square-foot, four-story, 39-unit senior living facility in Scarborough. The team was using a more traditional approach to construction planning, using a six-week lookahead plan when the construction team realized that it needed to improve the flow between its trades specifically related to MEP roughing when most trades were on site, and work was happening at an accelerated pace.

“Using Touchplan allowed us to break down the MEP work per floor or area, making it easier to lay out the responsibilities to each of the trades,” said Cameron Mitiguy, Superintendent for Penobscot General Contractors. “Being able to lay out not only each trade’s responsibility but also the inspection dates made things very clear, especially to some smaller trades that were new to the technology. Everyone knew where we were at with this intricate part of the construction by looking at the information in Touchplan and when milestones needed to be completed.”

Battson-Cook used Touchplan for a significant, multiphase project for a hospital that included new construction and the expansion of an active Surgery Department.

“When you are dealing with a construction project that included this many details, Touchplan became very helpful in speeding up the process of developing weekly pull plans,” said Alison Shaw, Engineer at Batson-Cook Construction. “Touchplan makes pull planning a quicker process; everybody could make their activities, set their durations, and then we could all work together to put those tickets in order, which saves hours.”

IPS is using Touchplan on the construction of a technically complex biopharma facility in Sanford, North Carolina, for a contract manufacturing organization (CMO), Abzena. This construction will require a significant amount of infrastructure and utilities to support the products being produced by tenants.

“When we onboard new trades to this project, we are very clear that the goal is to optimize their communication of work to us in the field,” said Wolfgang. “We invest time on the front end and work with the Touchplan customer success to make sure trades understand the tool, which will allow them to plan their work thoughtfully, saving a ton of time as the project moves forward.”

When Suffolk Construction was engaged to build a high-end, three-building luxury resort hotel in a remote Florida location, they knew it would require extensive planning supported by detailed construction planning software.

The Sunseeker Resort will have 500 hotel rooms, 300 extended-stay suites across two buildings, and a multitude of high-end amenities. The construction site constantly remains active with 800 plus workers on any given day, and the project will be completed within the next 12 months.

“Using Touchplan makes it easy for us to show all the subcontractors what they need to be doing on this substantial jobsite,” said Kyle Lampitt, Senior Project Manager for Suffolk Construction. “It’s a phenomenal tool that allows you to visually show the path forward and the resources required to obtain the path to completion based on the input provided by the contractor.”

Touchplan client Alberici Constructors was hired by Mercy to construct an innovative multispecialty center and 1,000-space parking garage on the campus of Mercy Hospital in St. Louis. The 272,000-square-foot, high-tech, five-level outpatient center is designed with the patient experience in mind. Specialties at the new building will include bariatrics, neurosurgery, orthopedics and sports medicine, reconstructive surgery, and urology. There will be weight and wellness programming, imaging services, and an ambulatory surgery center, along with additional space for future growth.

“We are simultaneously implementing our Lean program with our project teams while looking for improvements. We immediately realized that using digital technology like Touchplan was an enhancement for our Lean program,” said Brian Crawford, Corporate Lean Director and Project Director for Alberici. “What Touchplan also did for us is recognize what COVID was doing to people’s abilities to be present and do pull planning. It was very difficult to host an in-person pull planning session safely, in compliance with our safety guidelines, CDC regulations, and client requirements. We could not make this work without a digital solution, and Touchplan provided the capacity that we needed.”

McCarthy Building Companies is utilizing the Touchplan collaborative planning platform to design and construct a new 900,000 SF hospital building for the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. When complete, the “California Tower,” as it is currently named, will be 13 floors of new hospital space to include a variety of functions including acuity adaptable patient rooms, imaging, lab support, a burn unit, and operating rooms.

“We have been using Touchplan heavily for more than a year now on the California Tower project, said Naomi Whitesel, Director of Integrated Design at McCarthy Building Companies. “We went through a Program Validation phase, a full year of Schematic Design, and will soon break the project into increments leading to a full year in Design Development while some packages accelerate into Construction Documents, all in Touchplan. We pull plan on all of our design-build jobs, but this project is one of the most challenging due to its size and complexity. Touchplan is a very effective way to track all the moving parts and pieces to stay organized around key decisions and design challenges.”