About JE Dunn Construction

Founded in 1924 in Kansas City, Missouri, JE Dunn is one of the largest GCs in the United States. The company provides construction management and design-build services and delivers design, preconstruction, prefabrication and manufacturing, technology integration, and self-perform services across markets nationwide — healthcare, aviation, industrial and manufacturing, education, mission critical, and more. With more than 5,000 employees and 26 offices across 17 states, JE Dunn executes complex projects nationwide and prefab is a core part of its delivery model.

The Challenge

Form Off-Site Solutions by JE Dunn supports some of the company's most complex projects, from mission-critical facilities to large cultural and industrial work. Their teams needed a better way to collaborate and schedule across Design, Production, and Project Management. Every build is different. Each assembly involves coordination between detailers, CNC, shop crews, and project managers.

The core problems were familiar. Scheduling lived in multiple places — Gantt charts for PMs, spreadsheets and whiteboards for the shop, and separate tools for design. Constant project changes made it hard to keep departments aligned. Time tracking lagged reality, which made true project costs hard to see. Many issues were captured in side conversations instead of structured data.

The Solution

Leadership wanted a system where design, production, and project management could see the same plan. JE Dunn chose Building Swell, giving teams a shared view that fits how they work. Design teams have fully transitioned to Building Swell for communication and sharing drawings.

"We've even successfully eliminated 30-minute production meetings by using the comment threads," says Roderique. On the production side, work is planned by route and station, and the shop uses the schedule view daily. Insights reports and staff overview dashboards let leaders see who is logged into which work, which projects are ahead or behind plan, and where labor is burning faster than expected. Forms drive continuous improvement — design-to-operations handoff, rework tracking, safety checks, equipment inspections, and a "Fail Forward" issue capture system all run through standardized forms instead of scattered conversations.

What's Next

JE Dunn is bringing more of the design team into route-based planning, rolling out deeper scheduling across departments, and adding native integrations like CMIC. Longer term, they see Building Swell as part of a smart shop vision — supporting more automation, multi-location networks, and deeper analytics. The goal is a fully connected organization that can balance load across the entire national footprint.