AB Civil Consulting LLC

It’s important as a model building firm to have a spot for the small jobs, even ones without designs. From the start, I wanted to keep our business headed in a direction where we could take on small jobs without having to charge a large minimum for that work. It’s definitely what’s best for the industry. Model everything.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates on what we have going on at AB Civil. Trying to get caught up and finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. A lot coming from AB Civil in the upcoming months!

We try to go above and beyond. Remotely uploading files is an important part of our service when it works for the client. It ensures that we have appropriately labeled designs and always know which ones the client is working with. We have the ability to remotely access data collectors, which is a huge service to our clients. Anything we can do to help our clients.

I wish we were, but as an industry we’re not quite ready for subgrade models. Some will make good use of them, but the vast majority of companies aren’t ready.

What does everyone use for a drone service, or who processes in-house?

Through these busy times for us, we’ve gotten behind on checking projects for discrepancies (PDFs vs. CAD files). This is something we don’t consider acceptable, so we’re taking the appropriate actions to get caught up. Nothing worse than waiting until a few days before a model is due to find out the plans don’t match the CADs 🤦🏻‍♂️

We’re thankful for the great clients we have. They’ve been very patient working with us through a time when we’re very busy and needing to expand the company. Our goal is to keep that time when we’re struggling to as short as possible. That’s why you have to add employees as soon as you feel confident the busy times are around for good.

What does everyone think about starting to search for high schoolers interested in construction technology? We may try to find an interested high schooler for some part-time work. I think that would be an awesome part-time gig.

I need to do better about visiting clients lol. Just visited my first client, that I didn’t know prior to starting AB Civil. Got to go to an amazing site; it was an awesome experience.

What does 5 minutes mean when you’re a field guy?

This is a funny story about how I got a new lead yesterday in an unexpected way!

Our takeoff services have been blowing up! Beyond grateful to have such quick success. Thank you to everyone who has invested in us!

One thing I’m a huge proponent of when using a robotic grading setup is have a check robot. Yeah it sucks having to buy two robots but it’s hard to go out there expecting to get the most out of your robotic grading setup if you can’t check it as you go. Also, you should check into a common point every day and hold that for your elevation, despite what your setup thinks the elevations are. Then you will always match day to day. It’s tricky to do that on a large job. That’s when it’s best to use a digital level.

So we’re beyond excited to announce that we will be offering takeoff services to any clients that need it. We used to do very few only for model building clients who needed the help. We pushed all other takeoffs to others. But since starting a relationship with a takeoff professional we’re teaming up to deliver takeoff services! Everything except roadway.

I’m generally an open book but here’s one thing I really struggle with, sharing our specific process. I generally don’t worry about sharing info on what we do but my mind draws a line at one point. We’ll see if we release training videos showing our full complete process.

When we build a modem we find a lot of discrepancies. Sometimes that’s enough to offset the cost of the model. Even before anyone has used it with their machine control.

I know everyone is sick of hearing about advanced pipe models but they’re working and contractors are out there using them, changing the game.

Wanna hear about a job where our team collectively made mistakes in almost every facet of this model lol? I put the cherry on top too!

It can come in handy being civil with your competition. Instead of blocking them and pretending they don’t exist, work with them, talk shop and be available to help out. You NEVER know when that relationship can come in handy. We’re talking a win win situation.

Contour lines can be tricky, the way they’re shown and the weight they carry in a design. Coming from the roadway world I had never used contour lines. We had to establish a process for using them and communicating when and how we have to go against them. It’s a tricky dynamic for sure.

Maybe someone has some input if I’m looking at this wrong. We believe we found an issue that doesn’t allow this wall to be built. Glad I convinced the contractor to model this otherwise they would get out into the field and have to stop everything to figure out a solution.

We pride ourselves in catching as many mistakes as we can. This one slipped by us, but we’ll put systems in place to prevent this going forward.

Feels good to work on a project for a great cause! Check out Shared Harvest Foodbank to learn more.

AB Civil Consulting is accepting new clients. If you need a model built, just reach out to us! Send a message, we're glad to help!