1. What is Bluebeam, anyway?
Bluebeam is the company that makes Bluebeam® Revu®, a best- in-class PDF markup and collaboration tool that is used by architects, engineers and contractors throughout the lifecycle of a building project. You can compare documents, do estimations, submit RFIs and plans for approval, and a whole lot more—all in the same software.
2. Who uses it?
Lots of folks in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, from small businesses to the world’s largest builders. In fact, 94% of the top GCs and 86% of the top design firms in the United States use Bluebeam, because it saves them time, boosts efficiency and allows them to do more, better and faster. Plus, it’s a powerful collaboration tool, allowing people all over the world and across time zones to view and mark up a document together at the same time, as if they were sitting in one room.
Bluebeam customers have plenty of stories to tell about how using Revu has benefited their businesses: like saving one whole week per month on scheduling. Or cutting out nearly 1,000 hours of design review time. Or saving $250,000 in printing costs alone.
3. But we’re not a hundred-million-dollar company. Why do we need this fancy software?
No matter the size of your company, if you’re an AEC business, there are certain things you’re doing. Design reviews, takeoffs, drawing management. Revu was built specifically for AEC professionals, and it’s got capabilities you can take advantage of, whether you’re sitting at your desk, speaking with the foreman on a jobsite, or waiting in an airport.
Bluebeam helped one small business in Oregon shave six months off a job when they relied on Revu to help them sort out a very complex and out-of-date configuration of underground waterlines. And Bluebeam also helped one of the country’s largest engineering firms save more than 320 hours over the course of an eight-month project in Kansas City. The fact is, companies all over the world, large and small, are getting a ton of value out of Revu.
4. What we’re doing seems to be working. Why spend money to switch?
The world of AEC is changing fast. Technology is transforming the industry. It’s happening. And part of the challenge in this environment, when profit margins are shrinking for everybody and owners are expecting results yesterday, is finding the right digital tools that will make your work better, your profits larger, and your employees happier. Bluebeam helps people do that every day, on a vast number of projects, working with small businesses and multinationals alike.
5. We use email and a file-sharing platform. Isn’t that enough collaboration? Do we really need special software to help us with that?
Collaboration just means communication, whether you are working with one project partner or 20. So yes, technically, you are already collaborating. But let’s face it: less than perfect communication is so often the reason that errors are made, schedules get snagged, and things generally go awry. With email, it’s all too easy to lose track of the latest document, and nobody else offers the tracking tools and chain-of-command security that Revu does. Sloppy communication leads to confusion, lost time and, in some cases, rework. Rework is not our friend.
Revu allows everybody to work from the most recent version of a drawing, with the ability to track whether an issue has been resolved or not. And it allows you to collaborate in real time with stakeholders so that everybody can be looking at the very same document on their computer screens, together.
6. This all sounds good, but I’ve got an entire closet full of software that we purchased and have never used. How is Bluebeam different?
No doubt, it can be incredibly frustrating when you buy software and it doesn’t live up to the hype. But companies that buy Revu, use Revu—a lot. Throughout the project lifecycle, Revu is there to make your processes more efficient, allowing you to focus on what really matters, and freeing up hours and hours of your time by helping you create successful processes that are repeatable.
Plus, the nice thing about Revu is that it’s easy to learn. There are loads of training videos both in the software itself and online. Not to mention Bluebeam user groups across the country, as well as an annual conference that’s packed full of training sessions and use-case presentations you can learn from. And because Revu is so versatile, customers just keep coming up with new ways it can save them time and money.
It’s never an easy decision when it comes to spending money on a new product. Don’t just think of buying Revu as “investing” in software that will pay dividends in the future. Think of it the same way you think about buying a hammer. Is it something you’ll use in the future? Absolutely. But it’s also more than that: it’s an essential for right now. You can’t do your best work without it. Which means Revu pays for itself almost immediately—just ask this contractor, who said that, with the improvements in communication and paper savings, the software paid for itself in just one submittal process!
“This story (https://www.bluebeam.com/landing/convince/) was originally published by Bluebeam, Inc. on Built, the Bluebeam Blog.”
