University of Prince Edward Island New Residence Building
When Brighton Construction won the contract to build a new residence at the University of Prince Edward Island (PEI), they embarked on their largest project to date. The 190,000-square-foot building is the biggest—and tallest— building in Canada’s smallest province, encompassing student residences, a 400-seat auditorium, and lounges with classroom space.
Tackling this huge project came with significant challenges not only because Brighton Construction won the bid four months before COVID hit, but also because this project needed to be ready for the 2023 Canada Winter Games in order to house athletes. “Funding for the project was tied into that,” explains Brighton Construction CEO James Dickie, “So we were concerned about keeping on schedule.”
“The administration items are the same whether you are managing a $2 million job or a $50 million job, but there’s a lot more of them in a project of this size. RForm proved invaluable for staying on top of the hundreds of RFIs etc, and because every change or request is instantly available to all stakeholders, everybody is brought up to speed in real-time.”
Brighton Construction, CEO James Dickie
The project hit its first major hurdle when thanks to the pandemic a moratorium was put on all new construction on PEI. “We were supposed to get into the ground a month after COVID hit, so the first six months of the project were pretty dramatic,” Dickie says, “We couldn’t get started until June, but we did complete the project by December 2022, so everything worked out well in the end.”
Brighton Construction has been using RForm to manage its construction projects for many years. They were first introduced to the contract administration software when they won a construction project for UPEI’s School of Engineering—the architect attached to that project was already using RForm. Dickie considers having RForm included in their RFP for the new residence at UPEI to be a definite selling point. “We knew that the university was already familiar and pleased with RForm. We were the only local company bidding against much bigger firms, and including our software system helped show that we were proposing in terms of managing this massive project,” explains Dickie, “And, although the architect for this project was unfamiliar with RForm, he was easily able to use it, and I believe has gone on to use RForm for more projects after this one.”
At its peak, there were 300 people working on the project site, and Dickie faced the same staffing challenges that most construction companies have faced in this industry for the past few years. “The administration items are the same whether you are managing a $2 million job or a $50 million job, but there’s a lot more of them in a project of this size. RForm proved invaluable for staying on top of the hundreds of RFIs etc, and because every change or request is instantly available to all stakeholders, everybody is brought up to speed in real-time,” says Dickie, “On a project of this magnitude, we didn’t have any time to lose over administration issues because somebody didn’t respond fast enough or we didn’t get a shop drawing back in time. RForm proved invaluable on this project.”
Moving forward, Dickie says that he’ll continue to use RForm for project administration. “We just started working with UPEI’s commissioning agent on another project that is being run with a company in Toronto who are monitoring the electrical and mechanical systems. They’re already quite impressed with RForm. They’ve logged in and started to get up to speed on the shop drawings,” Dickie says, “So RForm has already proven its value already on the next job.”
“We just started working with UPEI’s commissioning agent on another project that is being run with a company in Toronto who are monitoring the electrical and mechanical systems. They’re already quite impressed with RForm. They’ve logged in and started to get up to speed on the shop drawings”
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