National Museum of African American History and Culture

• Streamlined punch list process
• Faster field-to-office markups
• Fewer contractor delays

WSP's project team on the National Museum of African American History and Culture chose Newforma to keep the project's demanding punch list and field documentation process moving as fast as the construction schedule required.

Rather than waiting until engineers were back at their desks to finalize and distribute punch lists, which had previously created communication delays with contractors and put pressure on an already tight schedule for a landmark Smithsonian building, WSP's field engineers used Newforma's mobile tools to mark up plans, log issues, and share notes and photos with colleagues directly from the jobsite.

That kept the punch-list workflow moving in step with an extraordinarily complex project, one with ten stories, five of them 80 feet below grade, and helped WSP coordinate with the broader architecture and construction team without the delays a purely office-bound process would have created.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture presented significant technical and scheduling challenges: a 350,000-square-foot building with five stories extending 80 feet below grade, making it the deepest museum on the National Mall, built to achieve LEED Gold certification and energy performance more than 30 percent beyond ASHRAE 90.1-2004 standards.

Meeting that level of performance while keeping a high-profile, tightly scheduled Smithsonian project on track required close coordination between WSP's engineers and the rest of the design and construction team. The team's traditional punch list process, which required engineers to return to the office before lists could be finalized and shared, worked against that goal, creating delays in communicating outstanding items to contractors.

Before adopting Newforma, WSP's field engineers relied on a largely office-bound punch list process. Site observations and issues were tracked in the field, but punch lists could not be finalized and distributed until engineers physically returned to the office to compile and send them.

On a project of this scale and complexity, with construction extending five stories below grade, that lag created communication delays with contractors and slowed the resolution of outstanding items, adding pressure to an already demanding schedule for a high-profile Smithsonian building.

By moving the punch list process onto Newforma's mobile tools, WSP's field engineers were able to mark up plans, capture photos, and log outstanding items directly on site, then share them with colleagues and contractors without waiting to return to the office.

That removed a recurring source of delay on a complex, tightly scheduled project, the deepest museum ever built on the National Mall, and let WSP keep pace with the coordination demands of a landmark Smithsonian building pursuing LEED Gold certification and energy performance more than 30 percent beyond code. Faster, more accurate punch list turnaround meant fewer open items lingering between the field and the office, and less schedule pressure created by simple communication lag.