"More and more work is being done off site because it can be done in a controlled environment where guys are not doing overhead pipe racks on ladders in a hallway," Whitworth says. "They are doing them in a shop on a rack on a floor. It is actually more efficient and cheaper in the long run. We are being forced by the industry to look for a faster, cheaper way to do things without reducing quality. Pre-assembly and prefabrication is just one way to do it."

Innovation Drives the Future

Always looking for ways to better serve its clients, Whitworth says the firm remains vigilant to uncover any sort of innovation.

"Most people are starting to do [pre-assembly and pre-fabrication] now, but we need to look at pre-assembly 2.0. That is where we have to go," Whitworth says.

The seeds of pre-assembly 2.0 and the other initiatives that are part of Kitchell's perpetual quest for innovation are sown within the integrated services division, which is led by Scott Root.

"The biggest thing that is different from other firms in the industry is that as part of our integrated services, we have combined the quality group, the virtual construction group, the estimating group and the scheduling group, and really play off each of the strengths," Root says. "That has helped us to home in and push out the pieces into the field better and more efficiently."

He said this process has allowed the estimating staff do their work better and more accurately.

"When we do pricing, our estimators by nature are probably not going to be the most sophisticated at jumping into a three-dimensional model and getting information," Root says. "They are used to seeing things two dimensionally and they are excellent at it, but if we can shave off 30% of the time on the takeoff by having someone who is much faster and quicker at extracting that takeoff and using the 2D drawing as a check off and having that 3D information from the BIM model pushed into the workflow, we have accelerated their ability to use the art of estimating instead of being the number crunchers."

Root says in the future, a typical Kitchell project might utilize advanced 3D visualization tools inside the building shell to display where the interior components should be installed.