G3C: the same takeoff, whichever city the site is in

One morning, two sites

On any given morning, a G3C engineer may be measuring the formwork of a residential block in Casablanca while a colleague in another city works through the drawings of a school, issued by another design office, laid out another way.

Both takeoffs end up in the same company's figures. Yet each was built by hand, from documents that never look quite alike: one office names its levels differently, another splits its sheets by trade, a third puts half the information in the written specification rather than on the plan.

G3C was founded in 2006 in Casablanca and has more than 850 people. It builds housing, schools, industrial buildings, sports facilities, public buildings and hotels, in Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Agadir, Marrakech and other cities. With that many sites open at once, the question is less how to measure than how to measure the same way everywhere.

What the agents take on

Mirage's agents read each project's drawings and written contract documents, pull out the data a takeoff needs, and lay it out in one structure, whatever format it arrived in.

1. Plans and contract documents

   Whatever the design office sent, in whatever layout.
2. ↓
   AgentMirage

   Finds the quantities and the data that define them, on the plan or in the written documents, and notes where each one was read.
3. ↓
   Takeoff in G3C's structure

   Every site's takeoff comes out with the same headings, units and breakdown.
4. ↓
   Site engineer

   Checks the takeoff against the documents and signs it off, or sends a line back.
5. ↓
   Comparable tracking

   Signed-off takeoffs feed a follow-up that can be read side by side from one site to another.

The point is not to take the measurement away from the engineers. It is to stop each of them from rebuilding the same groundwork in a slightly different way, so that their time goes to checking and deciding.

The first pilot

The work starts on one project, with the team running it, before anything is extended to other sites.

That pilot has three things to prove. The agents' takeoffs have to match what G3C's engineers measure on the same documents. A change of format from one design office to the next must not break them. And the tracking they feed has to read the same as another site's. Once those hold, the same agents move on to the next sites.

Questions about this deployment

• Who is G3C?

  A construction company founded in 2006 and based in Casablanca, with more than 850 people. It builds residential, educational, industrial, sports, administrative and hotel projects in many Moroccan cities, Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Agadir and Marrakech among them.

• What do the agents do at G3C?

  They read the drawings and the written contract documents of each project, pull out the data a takeoff needs, and produce takeoffs built the same way on every site, so that tracking reads the same from one project to the next.

• What will the first pilot validate?

  That the agents' takeoffs match what G3C's own engineers measure on the same project, that a change of document format does not break them, and that the tracking they feed is comparable with another site's.