Advancing Prefabrication: The Bootcamp | Tuesday, March 14

This track of workshops is dedicated to trade contractors just starting out on their prefab journeys and getting their operations off the ground.

Session One

9-10am
From Big Idea to Department: How Do You Turn Your Vision Into a Reality?

  • Daniel Suehring Building Information Modeling & Prefabrication Manager, Sargent Electric Co.

Synopsis

  • Discussing the different triggers for investing in prefabrication capabilities
  • Evaluating how to translate a big idea or passion project into an impactful initiative for your organization
  • Harnessing field and senior management insight to create a compelling business case to strategically pursue prefabrication
  • You have your why, what’s next? Ensuring that you don’t lose early momentum and set up the workflows to get prefabricated components going out the door straight away

10-11am
Panel: Discussing the Best Strategies to Secure Buy-In to Prefabrication Internally

Synopsis

  • Understanding common resistance points from different levels of the organization
  • Benchmarking the most impactful benefits and small early wins that you can utilize to begin turning heads
  • Building education programs and field champions to help disseminate the potential of prefabrication for projects and help familiarize your field teams with your capabilities

Session Two

12-1pm
Determining Where to Start: How Can We Leverage What We Already Have to Avoid a Large Upfront Investment?

Synopsis

  • Assessing the foundations of a prefabrication program that has the ability to scale quickly
  • Finding the right in-house talent to bring into your shop and act as ‘prefab champions’ across the organization
  • Ensuring you have a process to gather learnings from every project to feed into product development, leaning of workflows and cost benchmarking for your components

1-2pm
Panel: Discussing the Dos & Don’ts: What Are Some of the Most Common Mistakes Inexperienced Companies Make That You Should Avoid?

  • Trent Leinenbach Technology, Virtual Design & Construction Manager, North Mechanical Contracting Inc.
  • Joe Brooks VDC & Prefab Director, Electric Plus Inc.
  • Samuel Mundt Prefab Manager, Allison Smith Co.
  • Sam Revel Senior Pre-fabrication Manager, Pitt Meadows Plumbing
  • Carson Oeldrich Prefab Manager, Inglett & Stubbs

Synopsis

  • Sharing candid stories of where we went wrong to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes!
  • Highlighting the biggest surprises and realizations we had in the first few years of building our operation
  • Don’t run before you can walk: How do you know that the pace of change is right for your organization and how can you accelerate rate of change?

Session Three

3-4pm
Getting Your BIM Operation Off the Ground to Begin Scaling Prefab Efficiencies

  • Emmy Heikkila Design Engineer/Preconstruction PM, Performance Contracting Group

Synopsis

  • Understanding the maturity at which you need an in-house BIM resource to scale and drive efficiency: What can the benefits and drawbacks be of pulling that trigger early?
  • Building the business case to get your senior leadership bought in to investing in in-house VDC capabilities
  • Managing the transition from 2D to 3D for your organization through effective change management
  • Addressing the additional skillsets needed in a BIM department and where you can find the right talented pool of candidates

4-5pm
Case Study: Lessons Learned From Our Journey With Prefab

Synopsis

  • Discussing the foundations from which we built our prefab operation: What did we learn in our first year about the foundations required for success?
  • Mapping how the structure of our shop has evolved in the first three years and the fundamental stages we had to go through to evolve into a prefabrication facility
  • Reviewing the biggest cultural and integration hurdles within our organization, the mistakes we made, and how we have begun to tackle these issues
  • Reflecting on key stages of transition and the lessons we learned to help others expedite the process
Speaker Faculty
Advancing Capabilities Workshop