By Nathan Phelps, Greenbay Press Gazette

With hundreds of information requests and changes needing approval from several layers of officials, Miron Construction Co. turned to technology to expedite the construction of a new Salvation Army community center in Green Bay.

The town of Menasha-based construction company is using a half-dozen iPads and customized software to streamline the process for approving design changes to The Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center. Construction on the $24 million center started in April 2010, and the facility is slated to open in August.

Three of the tablet computers were issued to officials with The Salvation Army at the local, state and regional levels, which needed to approve any changes to the project and provide input.

Others iPads went to Miron employees and the architects working on the massive project, Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture of Denver and Berners-Schober Associates Inc. of Green Bay.

"With a project of this magnitude you can imagine there are a lot of changes and things that need to be clarified," said Paul Auer, project manager with Miron. "We had a very tight time frame to begin with; we had 14 months to build the project, so we needed to come up with a way we could communicate quickly and get people to correspond and keep everyone on the same page."

Using a custom web-based program coupled with the tablets allowed people at various levels of project management to review and approve or reject changes as needed — even on the road.

"You can imagine when you have 150 guys out here working at one time and things are going hot and heavy and we get delayed by a day waiting for an answer," Auer said.

This is the first time Miron has used iPads in this capacity, he said.

The trick was finding a way to move as fluidly as possible to keep the project on time and to head off additional costs, said John Manser, director of operations for the 95,000-square-foot Kroc center at 1315 Lime Kiln Road in Green Bay.

"There have been times where we have been able to approve something, instead of taking a couple weeks to walk through our regimented process, even perhaps that day," he said. "It's been very helpful to us to observe what's going on real-time out in the field."

A web-based program from Procore that provided instant notification when change approvals were needed was at the heart of the iPad idea, Manser said.

"(Miron) listened to what our process is for approval … and said 'There has got to be a quicker way to do this,'" Manser said. "When we got it, it became very apparent to us right away this was a powerful tool we were really able to use to our advantage. We're thrilled Miron had the wherewithal to grasp the challenge and figure out a way to mitigate that challenge by using technology."

Over the last 15 months, the project has had roughly 100 change orders and another 400 requests for information — the architect, consultants or contractors asking the owners how things should work or what something should look like — that have been handled through the iPad solution.

The system also allowed access to architectural drawings, saving Auer and others from having to return to the construction trailer frequently to retrieve paper plans.

While time and cost savings specifics aren't yet available, Auer and Manser say they're "substantial."

Based on this project, the iPad is a communication tool Miron may look at using again, Auer said.

"The major need here was you had three different owner representatives in different parts of the state and country that we needed to communicate back and forth with," he said. "If we have those dynamics again where we have a couple different owners who approve things, that's a place where it really does work."