“Get Your Plans From PlanWell:” Ascension of an Online Planroom to a New Role as Industry Standard

By The PEiR Group

Phone calls from sub-contractors looking for construction jobs committed to the centralized planroom known as “PlanWell®” dial into The PEiR Group offices at the rate of ten to 20 a day.

Nine times out of ten they all say the same thing: “My General Contractor told me to get my plans from PlanWell®. How do I get PlanWell®?’”

For many sub-contractors PlanWell® has become a place – a vast, secretive repository of drawings, documents, and sets. Few realize PlanWell® is the brand name for a powerful, Web-based application and product suite built to organize and archive the drawings needed to construct a project from foundation to capstone. Fewer know that PlanWell® has become the source of designs and drawings for projects the world over, and has quietly ascended to a role as industry standard for the organization, distribution, and tracking of construction plans and their network of users.

(To find out more about PlanWell® and what it can do for you, click HERE and run through the tutorials.)

PEiR Group representative John Bidwell says the number of daily calls from inquiring contractors spikes significantly when bids go out through PlanWell®, evidence of the extent to which the industry is tied to the PlanWell® product offering.

“What we’re seeing is that when ‘Bob’ from Al’s Roofing calls in to access a job his GC has told him to go to ‘PlanWell®’ and that’s when he calls us,” Bidwell says. “They’re not being told they can access the planroom through their local reprographer – which is the optimal process for both the sub and the printer.”

The PEiR Group has embarked on a comprehensive “Powered by PlanWell®” campaign aimed at teaching sub contractors that the product is not a brick and mortar print shop, but an easily obtained offering available at any of our locations.

“They’re being told by their general: ‘Get your plans from PlanWell®,’” Bidwell says. “And we’re saying that contacting your shop is the best way to do that.”

PEiR Group analysis of the PlanWell® product suite reveals what our customer service people already know: that employing PlanWell® systems makes the process of managing construction plans on the Web easier, faster and more efficient.

The growing number of tech-wary subs pushing through their hesitance to use an online planroom are finding that doing so gives them access to a powerful new tool. PlanWell® allows them to manage all project plans and specs; track users so they know who got what and when; compile a historical record of changes made to the document as it proceeds through all phases of construction, and provides for the safe archiving and file storage of a project once completed.

“Initially, they’re apprehensive of the technology,” PEiR Group President Shaun Meany says. “But once they find out what PlanWell® is and what it can do, they’re converted.”


PlanWell Training and Certification
The PEiR Group has recently streamlined its PlanWell Certification Program.

To get more details, please logon to the PEiR Group Intranet by clicking HERE. In the library section, you will find program details under the PlanWell Certification category.

If you have any questions, please contact PEiR Group Customer Service at 925 658-0200 for immediate assistance.