Revolutionizing Digital Documentation with a Solution that Scales

Balfour Beatty US, a member of multiple AGC chapters, is an industry-leading provider of general contracting, at-risk construction management and design-build services. The company and its 4,200 U.S. employees are committed to continuous innovation, leveraging Lean building practices and the latest technologies to deliver maximum value for its clients.

Several years ago, the construction industry shifted from paper files to electronic files, moving away from reliance on paper documents to deliver large-scale construction projects. At that time, Balfour Beatty was kicking off an $800 million contract to renovate two terminals at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) and needed to collaborate digitally among numerous teams.

The scope and scale of this particular project drove the company to examine an electronic document management solution. In addition to a solution for the airport project, Balfour Beatty sought to address challenges related to lost data, unrecoverable backups, securing content for internal and external collaboration, and reducing administrative and IT costs for managing content should files become lost or inaccessible. With multiple project teams spread across the United States, the company needed seamless access to content nationwide.

“Egnyte Connect is not only a content collaboration solution for Balfour Beatty, but it enables us to think out of the box and solve business problems for our clients as we discover new use cases every day.” ~ Thomas Volmer, Director of IT, Balfour Beatty US

While Balfour Beatty previously leaned on traditional file servers and used email to share documents and files, they recognized the need to move away from the traditional file server and backup game, and wanted an innovative solution for content protection and business continuity. Ultimately, the company selected Egnyte Connect over other competitive solutions on the market. Putting a solution in place to take the company from a locally managed file system to a cloud-based solution augmented by on-premises servers, with no reliance on the VPN, was key.

After the success of the DFW International Airport project, and more than $5 million realized in cost reductions with Egnyte Connect, Balfour Beatty looked to expand the solution across its U.S. operations. Given the company’s continued growth, expanding the Egnyte Connect solution corporate-wide was a key step in the evolution of its digital documentation vision.

THE SOLUTION
The IT team began rolling out Egnyte Connect as part of the corporate-wide solution to enable digital documentation.

Standards were put in place for collaboration, among employees as well as with sub-contractors, and project folder access within Egnyte to allow consistency across all projects. Following successful pilot launches across multiple geographic locations, Egnyte Connect was rolled out as a standard technology platform across the entirety of Balfour Beatty US. The entire digital documentation process was overhauled to create an optimal solution for everyone involved.

The Egnyte Connect solution with hybrid deployment was ideal for an organization with numerous offices and jobsite locations. It allowed the entire company to have access to content in the cloud with highly available on-premises performance. In addition, the Egnyte platform integrated seamlessly with third-party applications essential to the AEC industry. Apps like Bluebeam, GoodReader and PlanGrid allow users to mark up, edit and annotate PDFs, blueprints and other files from mobile devices.

THE REWARDS
Balfour Beatty now has a new standard for digital documentation across the entire company, powered in large part by Egnyte Connect’s powerful and secure content collaboration solution. By getting out of the traditional backup game and moving away from reliance on the VPN, Balfour Beatty has realized measurable cost savings and positively impacted project delivery times with Egnyte Connect.

Digital document dashboards are often customized and employed at jobsites to organize up-to-date project information, allowing quick access from multiple devices to documents like RFIs, logistics plans, permits, LEED scorecards, jobsite camera feeds, BIM images, and the latest drawings. The entire digital document management process with Egnyte has helped eliminate the use of outdated drawings, providing a single source of information for greater efficiency.

Communication and collaboration are faster, and content is seamlessly maintained and easily protected. With Egnyte Connect, the IT team no longer has to rely on local staff to stay on top of file servers and backups, but now has achieved the same result with fewer people on a greater scale, with full confidence that data is protected in multiple ways. The company has rolled out Egnyte Connect to over 2,500 employees since launch.