Customer Story: Plant Construction Increases Productivity and Improves Communication on Treasure Island

Treasure Island is a man-made island adjacent to Yerba Buena Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It was built in the 1930s for an expo in 1939 that celebrated the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (the Bay Bridge route crosses Yerba Buena Island). During WWII the island was converted to military use and it remained that way until the late 1990s.

Over the last few years design and construction has begun on converting it to residential use. The master plan includes a new, high-density, mixed-use community with a variety of housing types, a retail core, open space and recreation opportunities, on-site infrastructure, and public and community facilities and services. Treasure Island is already teeming with life as businesses are moving in to welcome the daily visitors who come to walk, bike, and kayak around the island. 

About Plant Construction

Plant Construction Company is a leading construction company based in North California. They provide pre-construction, construction management, and general contracting services. Plant’s expertise includes office projects, hospitality, multi-family residential, retail shell and tenant interiors, public and private schools, commercial facilities construction, seismic bracing of major buildings, and restoration of important historical structures. 

Plant Construction has been working with the Treasure Island Development Group for over three years to ready the site for new horizontal and vertical construction, including the challenge of setting up interim utilities in order to take down the existing utilities. 

The Challenge ‍

Complexity. Multiple stakeholders.

Treasure Island is a very unique project. “From the engineering point it’s mesmerizing how complicated it is,” shared TraceAir Co-Founder, Maria Khokhlova. Plant Construction partnered with the developers of the Treasure Island development project to assist in the overall schedule and logistics. They also provided pre-construction services for the Stage 2 infrastructure and street improvements scope. Plant Construction was also awarded a portion of the Yerba Buena Island development project. 

Building on an island has its complexities. Unlike a typical land development project with cut and fill, on an island dirt can dissolve into the surrounding water. To add to the complexity, during Treasure Island’s military use, soil was contaminated. This soil will need to be disposed of during the project. 

With a project this large and complex, there are a lot of people involved. In addition to managing Plant’s own employees and other contractors, there are also several stakeholders to manage — internal to the company, their development partners, and government entities. Keeping everyone informed and on the same page is a major challenge.

The Solution

A better way to improve productivity and communication while decreasing costs in the field

Plant Construction is no stranger to TraceAir. They are already using TraceAir on several of their projects. Plant knows that TraceAir loves a good challenge and Treasure Island is certainly that. From the start, Plant Construction implemented TraceAir’s turnkey services for this project. 

They took advantage of drone flights, overnight data processing, and user-friendly software to obtain project data almost in real-time. 

The visibility and measurement tools provided intelligence in minutes or seconds that would otherwise require a site visit, consultant, or engineer and take days or weeks to complete or make errors via manual calculations.

With TraceAir, Plant Construction was able to: 

• Implement more efficient site management practices
• Undertake better dirt balance with reduced expenses on surveyors to measure stockpiles
• Facilitate better progress tracking and managing of contractors and communicating with external stakeholders.

We’re saving time and money on resources out in the field by being able to answer critical questions in real-time with TraceAir. With so many different players and stakeholders, we’ve been able to keep everybody on the same page by using TraceAir”
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— Kelly Stockton, Senior Project Manager Plant Construction, L.P.

The Results

A better way to improve productivity and communication while decreasing costs in the field

Assist with stockpile calculations, excavation, and project cost tracking 

Plant Construction utilizes the TraceAir stockpile calculator to track stockpile levels and estimate how much dirt they need to haul off. TraceAir also allows them to keep the owner of the project appraised of the cost implications in real-time as they are discovered in the field.  According to Kelly Stockton, Senior Project Manager at Plant Construction, without TraceAir, they would have to be physically present to manually count the trucks, with guesstimates about full versus half loads and calculating the cubic measurement of dirt moved. Using TraceAir was a much more accurate option.

Reduce wasted man hours with TraceAir’s overlay feature

Using TraceAir's overlay feature, Plant Construction prevented wasted man hours that would have resulted from manually staking locations to later find out the proposed location was not suitable. “We use overlays a lot. Being able to have the utility work shown over the existing surfaces helps us figure out certain impacts", shared Kelly. "For example, somebody asked, ‘Can we get this manhole in?’. We could respond almost immediately just by looking at the overlays to indicate that it would be placed in the active roadway and not in our non-active roadway. So, it saves time and not having to unnecessarily stake stuff out.” 

Answer historical project questions

The Plant Construction team is often asked to advise on specific dates for certain construction activities, for example, when they laid a particular pipe or completed a specific area of the job. Using TraceAir, they can save time searching for the relevant information to provide answers fast. All of the weekly scans captured by TraceAir can be easily revisited and compared. “Without TraceAir we would spend hours searching through daily field reports and looking at photos and maybe not even finding the photo of the thing you need.”

Effectively manage project billing

In conjunction with their utility tracker Plant Construction uses TraceAir to manage billing and payment. TraceAir feeds the necessary information to utility trackers. The calculations from TraceAir are used to verify billing amounts for excavation and grading activities or use aerial shots to verify roadway completion activities.

Improved budget accuracy 

Plant Construction was able to improve their budget accuracy using TraceAir. The site of their Stormwater Protection Program was on hilly terrain. It would have been difficult to calculate using just a flat plan. “We used TraceAir to calculate linear footage or square footage of BMPs that we want to put in.” 

Better project meetings 

Plant Construction has used drone video and photos on previous projects. But they had never used any software to organize it or get any data out of it. UsingTraceAir was the first time they combined drone video/photos with software to organize, analyze, and manage data on their construction sites. 

“We pull up our TraceAir data for almost every meeting because the picture is much more accurate than looking at the plan. It just saves time because people know exactly what you’re talking about, and they have a realistic picture of what it is that’s out there. TraceAir aids the conversation and usually makes things go a little faster because everybody’s looking at the same thing.

The ability to have real-time photos of what your site conditions are, no matter how small the site, is still really beneficial for logistics, tracking patterns, and being able to communicate layouts to everybody when things are changing.”

Almost real-time stakeholder updates and management 

With so many stakeholders involved in the project, the data from TraceAir helps Plant Construction keep not only its partner developer up-to-date but also over third-party entities. 

“I’ve had the Coast Guard ask me for copies of our TraceAir information because they like to communicate to their base members about the construction activities. So, it helps to communicate with other island partners about what’s going on and what might be changing soon.”

I would not wish to return to our old way of managing projects. With TraceAir, I can log in and check what progress has been made, identify which areas I need to focus on, and manage my own schedule updates.”
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— Kelly Stockton, Senior Project Manager, Plant Construction Company

Get Started

Ready to reduce costs, improve productivity in the field, and meet your construction deadlines? TraceAir offers a state-of-the-art site development acceleration system for contractors and consultants. Achieve site balance, stay on schedule, and track progress remotely from any location using our cloud-based platform. Schedule a demo to learn more on how you can benefit from TraceAir.