OnsiteIQ Helps The NHP Foundation Build and Operate America’s Affordable Housing

The NHP Foundation is on a mission to preserve America’s affordable housing, and in recent years, increase supply. The Temenos Place project in downtown Houston is one of the most significant contributions to date, and will create permanent supportive housing for local residents exiting homelessness. Once complete, this project will provide a robust permanent supportive services program designed to prevent 95 households from being displaced, and thousands more over the building’s expected lifespan.

Ensuring efficient operations during construction and aligning a diverse set of stakeholders is a significant challenge when developing affordable housing. The Temenos Place project involves funding from city, county, and federal sources, all of which adhere to strict controls for payment application verification and verifiable progress reports. Weekly construction status meetings are held as well as monthly site walks to validate progress. Furthermore, because The NHPF will own and operate the building for its lifespan, the project team wanted to provide a referenceable visual record of construction for future maintenance and repairs. A solution was needed to help The NHPF team execute the project with a high degree of operational efficiency, align the diverse stakeholder group, and ensure a complete visual record after building completion

After an extensive assessment of possible solutions, Project Executive Jason Soifer contracted with OnsiteIQ to streamline the construction management process, and keep diverse stakeholders aligned. Within weeks, OnsiteIQ was integrated into the construction team’s workflow, providing weekly visual records of Temenos Place construction progress. The team leverages this record in their daily routine, including the ability to virtually walk the jobsite no matter where they are in the country. Team members can quickly gain needed context, at any time. When the construction team hosts weekly Owner, Architect, Contractor (OAC) meetings, they are able to show before and after progress, removing any ambiguity as to the status of the project. The ability to pull up the project during a meeting and put everyone in the room or elevation being discussed has been indispensable. In one instance, there was debate over the progress of exterior rough grading, even though subcontractor payments backed up the claim. By simply pulling up OnsiteIQ’s imagery of the rough grading, it was clear that the dirt was level and two feet higher than the previous site walk, which won the day.

• Verifiable Progress Tracking
• Payment Application Verification
• Collaborating with Project Stakeholders
• Identifying and Mitigating Project Risk

Verifiable Progress Tracking

OnsiteIQ enables the Temenos project team to pull together progress exhibits 50% faster than previous methods, critical time now available to improve project performance. Additionally, the entire team can be inside the building for a virtual site walk, at any time, ensuring collaboration and fostering a working environment based on trust. 

 

Pay Application Verification

Visual proof of progress is at the project team’s fingertips, without any effort on their part to manage or organize imagery. This backs up all pay applications with unequivocal evidence leading to a 100% success rate on the Temenos project pay application requests. 

 

Collaborating with Project Stakeholders

Travel costs and time are cut significantly using OnsiteIQ. Now, rather than walking the jobsite and taking notes or capturing pictures, the team quickly scans the jobsite, including the ability to recall exact project locations, especially effective during OAC meetings and site walks. These efficiency gains enable The NHPF project team to manage multiple concurrent projects which otherwise would not have been possible. 

 

Identifying and Mitigating Risk

Rework is also avoided when construction errors are detected with OnsiteIQ, which ultimately saves money and avoids schedule delays. The NHPF can readily identify and mitigate risks which may not have been detected without OnsiteIQ. 

Construction of the project is expected to be complete in 2023. OnsiteIQ is providing The NHPF project team with verifiable progress tracking at their fingertips, a 100% success rate on pay application requests, improved stakeholder collaboration, and the ability to identify and mitigate project risks. Jason Soifer and the project team have incorporated OnsiteIQ into their standard operating procedure for Temenos, expanded to other NHPF projects, and plan to leverage OnSiteIQ on additional projects as they come online.

Once complete, access to OnsiteIQ will be handed over to the maintenance and operations teams, for quick reference inside a wall, under a slab, or whatever else may be needed. Preserving America’s affordable housing is the stated mission, and The NHPF Foundation in partnership with OnsiteIQ is one step closer to achieving that.