Austin HOPE Center is a 25,000‑ft², $12.7M pediatric specialty physical and behavioral health services center in Chicago, IL. For a project of this size, keeping the contractor, architect, owner, and teams on-site aligned requires more than just having access to the right information.
For Ujamaa Construction and Gregory Ramón Design Studio, this meant finding a way to make information from the field easily accessible to everyone involved in the project. Using Dalux on the Austin Hope Project resulted in a time savings of 30-40% over traditional methods.
Before introducing Dalux, one of the biggest challenges for the project team was communication and getting information to the right people. With different stakeholders involved both on and off-site, creating a shared understanding of current site conditions was not always straightforward.
With Dalux, the team created a more visual way of communicating and collaborating. As Montrell Hurt, Project Engineer at Ujamaa Construction, mentions, “We were able to collaborate with the architect and also with the owner, so that they had a visual representation of what was happening in the field.”
This visual overview of the 360 photo walks and the ability to compare with previous dates and the 3D BIM model became an important part of their OAC (Owner, Architect, Contractor) meetings, with the team starting each meeting by reviewing the latest site photos in Dalux.
This allowed the team to quickly show what is happening in the field, discuss potential changes, and get feedback without requiring everyone to visit the site. For Montrell, it was almost “like they’re here” without actually being on site.
From an architectural perspective, having access to the BIM model directly on-site also changed how the team reviewed and coordinated the project.
Using the Dalux BIM Viewer, Gregory Williams, Architect at Gregory Ramón Design Studio, would pull up the model while walking through the job site and discuss it directly with the general contractor.
The team then reviewed architectural and spatial conditions in context and checked elements such as equipment placement against the model while standing in the actual room.
For Gregory, having an easy-to-navigate BIM model available directly in the field became one of the biggest advantages of using Dalux.
One capability that was particularly important to the entire team is Dalux SiteWalk. By capturing the jobsite in 360° on a weekly basis, the team could revisit previous site conditions, review progress remotely, and verify work even after it was no longer visible.
For Lester Johnson, Superintendent at Ujamaa Construction, this meant that when issues arose, he could go back into the system and see that 360° view of everything and verify that things were done as they should be.
From visual collaboration and BIM on-site to creating a record of construction progress, Dalux became an important part of how the team worked together on the Austin HOPE Center.
With an intuitive platform and support from the local Dalux team throughout the project, Ujamaa Construction and Gregory Ramón Design Studio were able to keep the field, architect, and owner connected throughout the entire construction project.
Watch the full story to see how Dalux brings teams together.
