Component Assembly Systems March 2009 - 17

A SPECIAL ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO NEW YORK CONSTRUCTION “Component Assembly Systems has been at the forefront of adopting technologies that help us build better, increase accountability and eliminate waste and errors.” John Rapaport, Esq. Director of Operations & General Counsel A NEW GENERATION OF INNOVATION Google, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Wikis—what is all this, you ask? It is how we communicate and learn in today’s world. How does this apply to construction businesses? It does, but there is no one simple answer. In difﬁcult economic times, our ﬁrst reaction is to resist investing in technology. When budgets tighten, it’s hard to justify spending on the unknown. It’s true that sometimes investments in technology are misplaced, aren’t fully utilized or aren’t utilized in ways that justify the investments. This may not be fault of the technology, however. Instead, these missteps come from a lack of research, knowing you own businesses, and not fully comprehending the applications before making those investments. At the core, technology requires an initial investment, but if applied right, it saves time and money and increases efﬁciency and productivity. In times like these, that efﬁciency and productivity can make the difference between companies that succeed or fail. As an example, CAS has opened two offshore companies in the past decade, one in South America and one in Asia, to handle estimating and scheduling back ofﬁce services. Perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, a downturn is a great time to make strategic investments in technology. Not only can these investments make a difference in survival, but they can better position the company for resuming and accelerating growth when the market does improve. Component Assembly Systems has been at the forefront of adopting technologies that help us build better, increase accountability and eliminate waste and errors. One of those technologies is Building Information Modeling (BIM). Many contractors think of BIM for its threedimensional drafting capabilities. Less known is BIM’s ability to be on the same page with scheduling, percent complete analysis, labor productivity improvements and prompt payment issues. At Component Assembly Systems, we have embraced the challenge of BIM. We designed and wrote our own project management software known as CASim. Built on top of our C/F Data job cost accounting system, this process of designing and implementing a 100-screen, web-based program by adapting labor codes and productivity analysis with the ﬁeld and the ofﬁce has raised our corporate intelligence and enabled us to know our progress at any given moment on a project. The program ﬂags problems and highlights trends, especially in ﬁeld production, that often were missed in the past. It is a window on our success which the “I” in BIM mandates: that all ﬁrms understand their own data, from estimating and project management out to the ﬁeld back to accounting and estimating, with the executives able to interpret it all along the way. This information is vital to adjust during projects and to analyze future work correctly, based on good data. In 2006, CAS was honored with the coveted Gold Vision Award from Constructech Magazine for CASim. That honor conﬁrmed the new foundation CAS has built to reﬁne and advance our corporate procedures. Receiving the full beneﬁt from technology, however, requires more universal adoption. We need to rebuild the fabric of New York with professionals who raise the bar in creating a new environment that brings us forward from our current economic climate to a place where technologies like BIM help us master our own universe. CAS has been at the forefront in promoting BIM software and systems for over a decade. We are anxious for the rest of the industry to invite us to into the “Big Rooms” of collaboration, and maybe one day even to the promise known as Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). Working with CAS, you will interact with a company steeped in technological innovation for our industry for both these times and beyond! THE FUTURE 17

Component Assembly Systems March 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Component Assembly Systems March 2009