For 40 years Consolidated Reinforcement has provided structural engineering and construction for residential and commercial foundations. Clear Launch designed custom software to automate business processes that give them a competitive edge.
Consolidated Reinforcement Challenge
Consolidated Reinforcement (CRI) is a fast-moving family run business in Texas that services residential and commercial construction companies in four metropolitan areas (Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Temple/Belton). For the past 10 years the Texas real estate market has experienced unprecedented growth, which translates to increased construction activity in every market where CRI operates. Demand for structural designs put additional pressure on the CRI team to produce large volumes of work with an accelerated timeline.
When faced with growing backlogs and the pressure to add more staff to their engineering department, Consolidated Reinforcement looked for solutions to speed up the time-consuming steps in the drafting process. These manual calculations could take upwards of four to eight hours to complete, with hundreds of calculations per architectural plan.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of programmers in the past, and no one we worked with before had the ability to understand what we wanted or how to implement it. From the first moment they came on board, Clear Launch had a really good understanding conceptually of what we were trying to do. They were able to tell us what was and wasn’t possible, and they created a solution to get it done just like we wanted.“
Clear Launch Solution
Unsatisfied with the work from previous technology contractors, Consolidated Reinforcement connected with Clear Launch to begin the process of designing a series of automated calculations for drafting and engineering. Clear Launch came to the table prepared to learn as much as possible about the drafting process and discover how many steps were required for each calculation. The team responded not only to direction from Consolidated Reinforcement, but they also did extensive research to learn how to translate the knowledge and mathematical skills of a seasoned engineer into software that a computer could logically execute.
Using rendering and design techniques from the video game industry, the Clear Launch team was able to develop process automation software that worked with precise accuracy and boosted efficiency across the board. This “Easy Button” for each calculation reduced the time to produce a custom design by 25%, which afforded the company the capacity to respond to a larger volume of work requests. Clear Launch continues to work close with Consolidated Reinforcement to develop new automation software and maintain the solutions that keep the business performing one step ahead of their large volume competitors.