Successful site monitoring with Clément Le Cann, Works Director at Atelier 102

Can you introduce yourself?

Hello, I’m Clément Le Cann, works director and partner at Atelier 102. I’m going to show you a new-build project in Cesson-Sévigné. Follow me and I’ll show you round the inside.

What was the project?

We’re on a site near Rennes: a new detached house for a private client. The house has 200 m² of living space and a 30 m² garage. It’s made up of several volumes: an upper-floor volume and a large ground-floor volume.

That said, it’s a house that remains relatively simple in its use of materials. It’s the massing that gives it that sense of scale.

It’s been relatively straightforward from the start. We began the works in September 2024. Access wasn’t always very easy, but that’s a detail. Overall, the contractors kept up well and we didn’t have any particular constraints.

How did you work before (without Archireport)?

Before Archireport, it was completely different. We worked on paper, took photos during the works, wrote notes by hand and, when we got back to the office, we had an A4 file to fill in with images that we attached to it.

Scanning documents, sending them back by email… So a lot of work at the office after site meetings. Today, thanks to Archireport, we can do almost everything on site.

We have a meeting of about an hour, an hour and a half; we take notes and photos and do our layout. On some sites where everything goes very well, we can almost send the site report as we leave the meeting.

It’s a huge time saving, because the work we used to have to do at the office afterwards has gone, or is much smaller.

How did you discover Archireport?

I discovered Archireport at my previous employer in 2016. We were working on paper and realised it wasn’t very efficient and that we could really save time.

It happened naturally, with a trial, and we got to grips with the tool very quickly. The app is intuitive and easy to use. Saving time always matters, especially in our line of work, which is always flat out.

Easy to get started?

When I changed company and joined Atelier 102, I introduced Archireport. There are 4 of us using it: 2 site managers, myself as works director and one person in the energy audit team. Everyone picked it up very well.

Within a week at most, it’s all running smoothly. Customer support is there to help if we have questions. There’s a chat built into the app, and as soon as we have a question we get a very quick answer. Very simple, effective set-up.

Your favourite features?

The feature I use most is the photo. It’s really important, and the photo quality is good. We can annotate our images, draw circles around a defect and mark points to be put right. It’s great, because everyone in construction is flat out, and having a really precise tool with good images is ideal.

Then there’s an option I love: notifications. They save you having to call someone back or send a separate email. Archireport has set up a really simple system. You click on an observation or a report, and it sends an email notification straight to the person concerned. It’s great because it saves you spending your life on the phone and wasting time writing a separate email.

There are also other very useful things, like folder organisation. We can store a huge number of files, some very large, big PDFs. Everything is well stored. As soon as we need information, we don’t have to go looking in a binder or a folder; everything is in the app. It’s a cloud, so if one day we forget our tablet but have our smartphone, we can still find the information we need when we need it.

Today, the client and the contractors are very satisfied with the Archireport site reports. The app is very clear, and of course the layout comes out properly.

It provides a lot of information. The contractor has his own section with his observations, which is great.

We can just send him his section so he isn’t overloaded by a site report that can sometimes run to 40 pages. I only get good feedback from contractors, because the information is clear and precise.

And what do clients think?

Our clients clearly love it.

Why? Because they find it reassuring. For a private client, it’s often their life’s project. Having a document that we send almost every week or every fortnight generally reassures them.

The layout is very neat. It’s clear and precise, always with the images that really help you visualise. Some of our clients are two, three or even five hours’ drive from their second home, so having really precise monitoring is reassuring.

As I said earlier, Archireport is a very effective tool. And of course, when it’s effective, it saves us time.

I wouldn’t change it for the world. I certainly couldn’t go back to paper. And commercially speaking, honestly, when our clients receive the first reports they’re always quite surprised at first. Then they’re extremely satisfied, because they get something very clear with site monitoring that lives up to expectations.