ATS Construction uses a digital construction platform to plan ahead for Clays Mill project
ATS Construction is a privately-owned, Kentucky-based company. Starting out as a small company with an asphalt plant, it has since grown into a company that specializes in complex roadway construction and improvements. With a mission to construct the highest-quality infrastructure and community improvement projects, ATS Construction is committed to environmentally-sound practices and safe working environments using practices that minimize disruption and increase efficiency.
Main benefits
75% increase in collaboration
40% time saving in deviation detection
18% cost saving, reduced costs
Background
ATS Construction is a privately-owned, Kentucky-based company. Starting out as a small company with an asphalt plant, it has since grown into a company that specializes in complex roadway construction and improvements. With a mission to construct the highest-quality infrastructure and community improvement projects, ATS Construction is committed to environmentally-sound practices and safe working environments using practices that minimize disruption and increase efficiency.
Relieving congestion and increasing safety in Clays Mill Road
Located in Lexington, Kentucky, Clays Mill Road is a 3.7-mile urban road that runs through a mixed-use area consisting of residential, school, church and commercial land. Traffic on this road is consistently increasing as the result of more and more development in the area.
In October 2020, the final phase of the Clays Mill Road improvement project began, extending between Harrodsburg Road and Twain Ridge (approximately 2 miles). The original project to widen the roadway has been going on for many years, and this final phase of the project, which is federally-funded, owned by the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government and being executed by ATS Construction, is divided into 4 sections with a projected cost of $10.7 million.
Dylan Murphy
Project Manager at ATS Construction
Section A, Waco to Pasadena
Section B, Pasadena to Stratford
Section C, Stratford to Lane Allen/Rosemont Garden
Section D, Lane Allen/Rosemont Garden to Harrodsburg
The goal of this project is to relieve congestion and improve vehicle, pedestrian, bike and family safety in the neighborhood while maintaining the road’s residential character. This is being done by turning the road from a two-lane into a three-lane roadway; adding a new center turn lane, curbs, gutters and sidewalks; increasing access to local driveways; eliminating roadside ditches; improving drainage; and adding bike lines in both directions.
Complex project gives rise to multiple challenges
The inherent complexity of the Clays Mill Road project gives rise to multiple challenges, including:
- Highly-populated residential area – many houses and other elements to work around while causing minimal disruption to the residents and the environment
- Utilities – the road goes through a very old neighborhood. While all utility companies moved their lines prior to the start of the construction projects, their old lines remained. This means that almost every day, the construction company comes across something new while digging trenches and needs to determine what it is and whether it is alive or not.
- Deviations between design and actual conditions – the project was designed a long time ago and many things have changed since then in terms of existing conditions before the work was started. This means that many on-the-spot changes need to be made throughout the project.
- Resident involvement – due to the lengthy nature of the project, multiple ownership changes occur and this often leads to the need to reconcile changing requirements throughout the project.
Staying one step ahead with advanced digital construction analytics
To overcome the inherent complexity and challenges of the Clays Mill Road and other infrastructure projects, ATS Construction uses DatuBIM – Datumate’s cloud-native SaaS 4D infrastructure data analytics platform. On October 21st, 2020, the first prework drone flight was conducted by Woody Proffitt, a surveyor and drone pilot at ATS Construction. This serves as the preconstruction baseline for the project.
In order to ensure survey-grade accuracy, Proffitt uses professional, commercial drones such as the DJI Matrice 300 Pro RTK drone for all of its flights. In addition, he follows best practices for optimizing Ground Control Point (GCP)A ground control point (GCP) is a known geographic location on the Earth’s surface that is used as a reference point in … More placement – including the use of more than 30 GCPs for this project – and tagging and designing the drone flight path.
The drones are flown frequently and all images are then uploaded to the platform and analyzed using Datumate’s unique AI Construction Engine (ACE) to provide ongoing monitoring of work progress.
According to Dylan Murphy, a Project Manager at ATS who uses the platform on a daily basis, DatuBIM helps the company stay one step ahead by understanding where they are going next and what obstructions they may run into. And, in addition to using it as an internal digital constructionDigital construction, also known as construction technology or construction 4.0, refers to the use of digital tools and … More management platform, the company also gave the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government view access to the DatuBIM platform. This greatly improves communication, transparency and collaboration amongst all stakeholders, and helps prevent costly delays and rework.
“I think that the biggest benefit of using this platform is that it’s actually a relationship builder,” Murphy explains. “When all of the stakeholders have access to the full picture, we can alert the owner before things are done. The owner is definitely seeing major benefits from this as they are saving on change orders and delay costs.”
Additional benefits
Digital diary and visual progress tracking
This enables the company to get a real-world analysis and closely track and monitor progress and deviations over time by moving back and forth between different dates. The availability of this project history, which includes continuous end-to-end digital project documentation and annotations for tracking issues, is highly valuable for managing change requests and settling claims.
Comparison of design versus Digital As-Built
This enables easier reconciliation between original plans and actual site conditions by quickly spotting deviations and communicating them to the owner. Prior to using DatuBIM, this was done by having to physically put stakes in the ground onsite, which would alert on some of the issues, but there are a lot of things you cannot see with only stakes in the ground. One example is several driveways that Murphy was able to spot where the original design was in one place and the actual driveway was somewhere else. According to Murphy, without the platform, they would have built the driveways out in the field and wouldn’t have known about the issue until the curb was poured and had to be removed and done again (requiring a change order and costly rework). Here too, having the platform helps improve transparency and collaboration amongst all stakeholders and creates a win-win situation for all involved.
Time saved in the field
Instead of having to drive out to the field when issues arise, project managers can quickly, easily and remotely access all of the required data from the comfort of an office or from home.
Project planning and tracking
All potential issues and obstacles are visible prior to occurring so that they can be planned for and resolved before the actual work is done. In addition, annotations can be used to document issues that can then be shared with other stakeholders in the project. For example, if a plan for a specific utility pole conflicts with the actual site constraints, this can be documented, exported in a report and sent to the project owner, and fixed before the work is done.
Added value
- Transparency and collaboration amongst all project stakeholders
- Easy detection of deviations between original design plans and actual site conditions
- Real-world analysis, close tracking, and monitoring of project progress over time
Next steps
ATS Construction is now down to the last half mile of work on the Clays Mill Road project and the current goal is to complete it by December 2022. In addition to using DatuBIM consistently across the lifecycle of this project, the company also uses it to monitor and track stockpiles and for multiple neighborhood and site development infrastructure projects.
Stay tuned to learn about additional ATS Construction projects that benefit from data construction analytics and digital management.