Betonmast cuts building costs with automatic inspections of prefab elements
Cutting construction costs and delays, and increasing quality control efficiency by 500%
Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold is an innovative Norwegian turnkey contractor delivering all types of residential and commercial buildings. In this industry, it is crucial to complete projects on time and within budget for the profitability of the business as well as to maintain a good reputation among customers.
To stay ahead of the competition, Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold and the team around Head of innovation Christopher Carlsen are constantly looking for areas that can be improved by using novel methods and new-generation technology.
A critical area has long been the installation of prefabricated concrete elements early in a project. Often, subcontractors are ordered with the task of building structural elements such as slabs, walls and ceilings.These elements have tight contractual tolerances in terms of headroom, angles, and cracks.
Deviations from these tolerances have a range of consequences such as the need for levelling floors, different painting work, or even the entire redesign of certain setups. Overlooked errors made during this phase have costly impacts on the following phases and the entire project.
It is Betonmast that bears the risk of extra expenses associated with delays, daily fines, rescheduling, extra work and material, and legal action. To avoid this, innovation manager Christopher Carlsen and his team seek to ensure that the concrete works get delivered as planned, within the specified tolerances, and before the next construction phase begins.
The company’s quality inspection approach in the past was to use a combination of checklists, spot checks and manual surveys in areas where these methods are possible to carry out.
“This process is so time-consuming that only 10–15% of the areas are controlled in this way. If the first inspections do not reveal discrepancies, the scope of inspections is further reduced. This leaves significant blind spots for areas without the necessary control “, says Carlsen.
Failure to detect deviations early leads to several complications for Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold. The workflow gets suddenly interrupted and needs immediate attention to prevent further delays and costs from escalating rapidly. Each new issue distracts the teams from other important tasks and the frustration grows.
In theory, these extra costs caused by the interruptions and extra work ought to be borne by the subcontractors.
In reality, change orders are complicated processes where extra settlements, negotiations and disputes must be arranged. Often, contracts are already completed and paid by the time deviations are found and interruptions occur. This can leave Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold with paying major parts or even the entire bill.
These situations can be very troublesome even in relatively small projects.
In a 6,000m2 office and warehouse project, Betonmast discovered a large number of prefab elements installed out of tolerance and had to pay for the necessary repairs. The project faced a one-week delay which had to be recouped with expensive overtime and weekend work.
In another, 1,000m2 office building project, overlooked discrepancies led to added expenses of €7,000 in material that could have been avoided. As projects grow in size and complexity, the ramifications and costs of such overlooked deviations can escalate rapidly to even bigger consequences.
Christopher Carlsen set out to find better ways to carry out more frequent inspections for monitoring fieldwork quality proactively.
From testing several solutions, Christopher’s team selected Imerso’s platform in combination with a Leica BLK360 laser scanner.
Imerso’s scanning app simplifies the onsite data capture process by enabling Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold’s own employees to document the As-built status in high-precision 3D — right as subcontractors are finishing their work.
Imerso’s platform automatically compares the as-built status onsite (represented by the 3D scans) against the specifications of the building plans in BIM. Deviations that can lead to costly consequences are quickly discovered early in the process.
Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold can thus require that subcontractors correct such deviations immediately, before these create problems for the next phase, or charge for added expenses in the final settlement.
Christopher Carlsen has already deployed Imerso’s solution in 14 projects, and points to several characteristics that made it easy for his team to adopt the technology:
“Imerso’s solution is very intuitive to use. Their mobile app integrates with the laser scanner and makes scanning so easy that anyone can do it, even without previous experience.
We take the scans we need and upload them directly to the platform without needing to export them to third-party software beforehand.
The processing time is short, which allows us to react quickly when discrepancies occur — our goal is to look at the results even within the same day. The user interface is easy to understand and we can perform the analysis we need.”
Imerso’s solution made it possible for Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold to detect early any elements built outside tolerance, without spending extra time on quality control procedures. The company now verifies and documents 100% of the relevant areas within the same time that was previously used to cover about 15% by random sampling. This corresponds to a productivity increase of over 500%.
In addition, this proactive approach prevents unplanned downtime, daily fines (which can easily exceed one per mille of the contract value), or the need for replanning work later in the project. Additional costs caused by disputes and extra work to be performed by other subcontractors can now be avoided.
The process is leading to the creation of best practices for enabling even smoother workflows in future projects. Through better documentation and real-time compliance verification, subcontractors recognize that they are themselves exposed to lower risk and can thus give better prices, further reducing Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold’s costs and increasing the company’s competitive advantage.
“We use the time that we gain from better control and smoother processes to negotiate better contracts, follow up the project, and manage changes during the project proactively,” says Carlsen.
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