How do you convince teams still relying on paper markups to go digital in Bluebeam?

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Accepted answers

Carina

So easy:
Using the Markup Status to act as a to-do list for people to pick up readlines.

It's clear. It's easy.

Ryan Arbuckle

@Carina and @vfrench highlighted some great points. These articles may help as well.

How to Convince Tech Skeptics to Use Bluebeam: 3 Tips from Golder - Built | The Bluebeam Blog

The Paperless Jobsite Sounds Great. But Is It the Right Goal? | Built

Top 3 Construction Software Workflows Recommended by Patterson Building Group - Built | The Bluebeam Blog

All comments

Carina

So easy:
Using the Markup Status to act as a to-do list for people to pick up readlines.

It's clear. It's easy.

Vince French

Ask them how much they spend on printing - ink, paper, equipment, storage folders, etc. then tell them that they can basically eliminate all of those costs.

Ryan Arbuckle

@Carina and @vfrench highlighted some great points. These articles may help as well.

How to Convince Tech Skeptics to Use Bluebeam: 3 Tips from Golder - Built | The Bluebeam Blog

The Paperless Jobsite Sounds Great. But Is It the Right Goal? | Built

Top 3 Construction Software Workflows Recommended by Patterson Building Group - Built | The Bluebeam Blog

Doug McLean

In my experience, you have to first give them the TOOLS to go paperless.
We're all used to printing off a set of plans and then having a bunch of highlighter pens and post-it notes handy to do all those things we've done for years, that's hard to break.

You have to get your office people trained on their tools, and that includes software. Like it or not software is a tool, and most of us don't use 85% of the features in our software. For some reason, we will train our blue collar teams on new tools, but we don't do the same when it comes to white collar teams. Why is that? Why does business not invest in training on software? Be honest, how many people really ever leave the File tab in your O365 programs?
Excel is the most popular Office program in the world and only about 1% use it anywhere CLOSE to its capability. Only 3% of Excel users even know about Power Query (arguably its most powerful function), why is that?
Even when it comes to Revu, the vast majority of users are using <20% of the software's capability.
We need to invest in TRAINING, and we need to invest in people.

The other side of this is there needs to be an investment in the hardware. Tablets, Wi-Fi, Plan Tables, etc. These are all part of the paperless world, yet many construction sites/ shops lack in all three of these elements.
In the office we have our computers, most of which I assume have multiple monitors, not so in the field. Construction sites have Conference rooms now, with multiple monitor setups for Teams calls, but the technology never makes it out of the trailers.

Going paperless requires a commitment from everyone, just like any new business process. Buy-in from the top down is essential. Support from management is essential. Get a few people who are interested to be your champions and allow them to freedom to recruit and show off their new skills, people will naturally gravitate when they see the time it saves.

People generally WANT their jobs to be easier, and while there will be some initial challenges, going paperless really does make most of our lives easier.

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