Project Frog – a leading technology, and building systems provider in San Fransisco – announced this week an alliance with Autodesk to develop a transformational cloud-based platform to standardize and simplify data flow between the architecture studio, the factory, and the job site.
Autodesk Forge Fund
The agreement, which will strengthen the industrialized construction movement, is made possible through an investment from the Autodesk Forge Fund. The funding from Autodesk will accelerate the efforts of both companies to create a connected ecosystem linking architectural design to industrial fabrication.
Key Takeaways
A scarcity of skilled labor in an otherwise robust US construction industry is aiding along desires to speed up construction delivery via parallel path methods of fabrication and pre-fabrication across US construction projects. Project Frog aims to address this by moving “design-to-fabrication” to the job site versus the traditional AEC information product delivery chain.
“The reality of the building industry today is it’s facing unprecedented demand and scarcity of skilled labor,” said Drew Buechley, CEO of Project Frog. “In this climate, prefabrication is essential to delivering new buildings quickly and economically, while still offering a high degree of customization, competitive pricing, and a quick turnaround. The only way to accomplish this is to use technology to simplify the process of moving a project from design to manufacturing and then to the job site. What we are building with Autodesk is expected to be a truly revolutionary solution, enabling architecture, engineering and construction professionals to reap efficiency gains in the production of custom prefabricated buildings.”
Autodesk and Project Frog Collaboration
The end-to-end system will ensure every project stakeholder has access to the most recent data, eliminating the need for manual updates, and reducing the typical churn associated with coordinating across professional disciplines. This design-to-fabrication ecosystem will leverage Autodesk’s industry-leading cloud platform and Building Information Modeling (BIM) leadership to integrate disparate workflows – enabling architects and structural engineers to mechanical, electrical, plumbing (MEP) professionals, fabricators, and contractors – to quickly and collaboratively develop and document projects.
Autodesk Forge and Changing Construction Environment
Autodesk Forge is a connected developer cloud platform which enables customers to create customized, scalable solutions for engineering, construction, and manufacturing challenges. As a continuation of their development efforts and a member of the Forge community, Project Frog leverages cloud technologies to push tighter integration between their own internally developed web tools and core Autodesk applications (particularly around Revit and Fusion). More information about Project Frog’s integration with Forge can be found here.
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A convergence of factors is driving change in the way buildings are designed and delivered. For decades, productivity in the construction industry has remained flat relative to manufacturing, where steady incremental gains are highlighted by the rapid pace of industrial and technological innovation and adoption. Meanwhile, chronic and widespread shortages in the availability of skilled labor, exacerbated by an aging workforce and declining availability of new workers, are increasing project costs and delays.
01 – A “Frog” is a Flexible Response to Ongoing Growth, a way for architects, builders, and owners to create great buildings through a standardized set of building components, commonly known as a “kit of parts.” All rights reserved.
Building Information Modeling (BIM), across the global AEC industry over the last 15 years, has helped streamline the way architects and engineers collaborate on projects. However, there still remain portions of the market using a more siloed collaboration approach. While some new technologies have helped to automate the manual process of “data transfer,” currently no solutions exist to automate design or integrate design and engineering data, further slowing the design process. The new Autodesk-Project Frog integration will remove many time-intensive processes, eliminate errors, and keep projects on time and on budget.
About Project Frog
Project Frog is a San Francisco product and technology company that designs, develops, and delivers software and prefabricated building platforms. The company leverages cloud software, regionally distributed manufacturing networks, and the just-in-time (JIT) delivery of custom component building kits to provide customers with flexible, durable, and beautiful buildings, along with fast and predictable design and construction schedules. Project Frog buildings are designed by architects, built by contractors, and loved by owners.
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