Software for building supervision saves two hours of work per day

How one engineering company uses PlanRadar to monitor on-site developments for an €800 million motorway project.

The Croatian company Učka-konzalting from Pazin has worked in construction supervision and project management in the building construction and civil engineering sectors for over 50 years. The company’s portfolio includes hotel buildings and large projects such as Zagreb Airport. The company has been involved in the Istrian Y infrastructure project since 1998 — a motorway construction project with a total value of €800 million to date. In the current construction phase, a 28-kilometre-long section of motorway with a project value of €160 million, the company is using PlanRadar to make processes related to documenting and coordinating tasks more efficient.

The problem: analogue recording of defects for large projects is extremely time-consuming

Construction Engineer Kristian Brecevic described one major challenge in the construction sector: “Large projects are always accompanied by a substantial amount of defects that the engineer who is responsible for supervising construction needs to keep under control.” Since there were no digital tools available in the past, the recording and the subsequent processing of defects and other issues on site was very complicated.

Kristian Brecevic explained: “When we visit a building site, we take a lot of photos. Before using PlanRadar, we had to mark the corresponding places or write down exactly where the defect was by hand for everything to be documented properly. For example, the fact that the defect was located next to a lamppost. This was necessary to be able to find defects later on. Finding a construction defect at a later point on site only using photos is often a real challenge.” Because the company is involved in construction supervision for many construction projects and project phases, employees had to take a variety of site diaries, drawings of roads and inlet grates etc. with them to the building sites in the past. This was very laborious. Every day, Kristian Brecevic had to spend two more hours after the end of his standard working day dealing with project documents. Before the end of a project, his final reports would be several hundred pages long. The work required to organise all the information contained in these reports was also time consuming.

The solution: digital construction supervision with PlanRadar for more efficient processes

Kristian Brecevic’s team introduced PlanRadar in the current construction phase. “We use the software to obtain precise information about the position of a photo or the exact location of a construction defect,” the construction engineer explained. With PlanRadar, Učka-konzalting records defects on site with mobile devices. Photos and other information are linked to the corresponding documents, notes and audio recordings at the precise location.

When supervising construction, the company also uses the software to communicate with other project workers and to create reports. “Thanks to PlanRadar, we are able to show the construction site manager or other people responsible what the issue is directly on the building site. What’s more, it is very beneficial to be able to see all the defects in one location. These can be split into different groups such as different construction phases, different types of construction works (work on drainage, with machines, on water pipes, etc.) and then sent to the construction manager responsible in individual reports. All this makes PlanRadar the ideal solution for large projects,” Kristian Brecevic explained.

The result: less follow-up and more efficient construction supervision

When PlanRadar was introduced, Kristian Brecevic’s workload dropped back down to a normal level: “Lengthy follow-up at the end of the day has been drastically reduced with PlanRadar. Thanks to the software, I save a minimum of two hours a day.” Work on the building site also progresses much more smoothly with PlanRadar because the team spend less time thinking about where, how and why a task needs to be done. Kristian Brecevic’s conclusion? “The app makes our life easier. That’s why we always recommend PlanRadar to other colleagues and companies.”