Eighteen Stories, Six Gates, Two Cranes, One Voyage Control

Overview

Forest Podva, Superintendent with Clark Construction, manages the construction of California’s newest courthouse standing 18 stories over the downtown of Sacramento. This complex project holds many challenges to overcome. Some of these include optimizing traffic flow through six delivery gates and three of the surrounding closed streets, ensuring their two tower cranes overlooking the site are being efficiently used to transport materials. Upon implementing the Voyage Control system, the project team saw that the platform made logistics very easy and worked flawlessly when used by trade partners. Many trade partners “just got it, like booking a reservation at a restaurant” which drastically increased operations and adoption of the system.

Overview

Highlights of Voyage Control Across the Site

Centralized delivery calendar

All-in-one scheduling capabilities for material delivery and tracking

Quick and easy set-up process site-wide

Easy-to-learn and logical system processes that make training and utilization of Voyage Control amongst trade partners more efficient and successful

Decreased chance of delivery conflicts

Solutions

Visibility

Voyage Control is a logically laid out platform that prides itself on providing team members with the ability to carry their proverbial ‘whiteboard’ with them, regardless of their location. By utilizing a calendar-style scheduling system, Voyage Control provides its users with the ability to book and view all deliveries and removals with ease. A real-time updating calendar, like that on Voyage Control, increases site-wide visibility and understanding of what is entering and exiting the site. By utilizing features like this, gate personnel, crane/ hoist operators and trades all operate with a unified expectation of what the day holds and where to expect materials to arrive from.

Flexibility

Technological advancements on construction sites are a must in order to improve site-wide efficiency and productivity. By incorporating Voyage Control into sites like the construction of the new Sacramento courthouse; booking, tracking, and receiving deliveries across their 6 gates further increases the site’s flexibility and efficiency.

Quick, Easy and Efficient

Prior to adopting Voyage Control into the logistics management of the new Sacramento courthouse, the team at Clark predominantly relied on data being manually entered into cloud-based spreadsheets. Forest Podva explains that “before this, we mostly used Google Sheets, which worked pretty well, but manual entry. We would have to get information from the subcontractor and then we would have to put it in. It takes more effort and time”. He explains that before utilizing the Voyage Control platform in their projects, updating their spreadsheets involved large regular meetings with several team members to input all the information correctly in person. Now, “Voyage Control really made it autonomous and we’d barely ever have to worry about delivery” clashes or delays.

Reliability

Voyage Control is a cloud-based logistical system that empowers its clients to create their own rules and conditions for their site users to create legitimate bookings and ensure that the chance of clashes and complications at the gate are drastically reduced. This has been seen several times on-site as imports that weren’t scheduled on the system in advance were directed to do so and return when appropriate to the site