3 Steps to Implement Construction Software · 3 Steps to Implement Construction Software One of the things we love most about construction is its age. It’s one of the most ancient

3 Steps to Implement Construction Software

One of the things we love most about construction is its age. It’s one of the most ancient professions on the planet: people have been building things since before we could write. Oftentimes the only trace of an entire civilization is what they’ve built.

Mostly, the fact that construction is such an old trade is a benefit: we know many tradesmen and contractors who have multiple generations in the business and began their training when they were still just kids. That’s the accumulated knowledge of over 100 years of professionals distilled and passed down from generation to generation.

It’s understandable that a trade with such longevity would inspire a fierce amount of loyalty. If we’ve been building things for so long, and it seems to have been working so far, why change? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” are pretty wise words to live by. If it’s the way your Dad did it, and he built amazing things, why do anything differently?

This kind of mentality works well for certain things: the techniques of quality building have lasted thousands of years and are perfected over a lifetime of practice.

However, that’s not to say there isn’t some room for improvement. You can’t build a skyscraper with the same tools our ancestors used to build a stone hut. And while most construction professionals from large general contractors to smaller one or two man subcontractor operations will gladly welcome new tools to help them build things, there is one tool that has stubbornly survived on through the generations and it’s slowly sucking the life out of GCs and subs.

The pen-and-paper report. And the same goes for those busy Excel spreadsheets you’ve been using all these years.

Raken provides mobile-first technology to streamline field workflows for the construction industry.

Raken’s digital toolbox connects the field to the office with daily reports, time cards, task management, photo management, and more. Turner, Webcor, Sundt, John W. Danforth, Broadway Mechanical, Cupertino Electric, and thousands of the world’s top general contracting and subcontracting firms use Raken for their field reporting needs.

To find out more, visit rakenapp.com or call

866-438-0646.

rakenapp.com | 866-438-0646 | © 2019 Raken, Inc. All rights reserved

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Contents

3 What’s Wrong with Pen and Paper, Anyway?

10 Implementing Construction Management Software: The Bottom-Up Approach

15 Crafting the Perfect Pilot Program

20 DidItWork?ReapingtheBenefits.

This eBook is here to list out, step by step, what you need to do to successfully implement construction software to replace the pen-and-paper, Excel, or home-brewed reports. We’ll go over the following points in detail:

What’s Wrong with the Old Way, Anyway? We use actual stories from construction professionals in the field to help convince your field supers and foremen that the outdated reports they are used to just aren’t getting the job done. It’s important to start with what’s wrong before taking the three methods to make it better.

Implementing Construction Software: The Bottom-Up ApproachThe key difference between successful software implementation and a total, expensive failure comes from a simple shift in focus: start with the end-users then work your way up to the top. What’s best for the end user is what’s going to be best for the project, and what’s best for the project is best for the company.

Crafting the Perfect Pilot ProgramIf the most important step in implementing construction software is to start at the bottom and work your way to the top, crafting the perfect pilot program is necessary. We go over how to design the perfect test to make sure the software fits your needs.

We break down a foolproof construction software rollout plan that avoids the expensive 6-9 month rollout process so your guys in the field and the office can start reaping the benefits of construction software even faster, and it starts with crafting the perfect pilot program.

Did it work? Reaping the benefitsHow can you tell if your rollout was a success? You should start seeing the following results within a 1-2 month window.

We spent months interviewing Superintendents, Foremen, Project Managers, and CEOs of General Contracting firms who had recently implemented Raken construction management software and used their observations, stories, and experiences to create our 5 steps to successfully rolling out construction management software.

It starts with understanding the problem before you go rolling out a solution.

rakenapp.com | 866-438-0646 | © 2019 Raken, Inc. All rights reserved 2

In all of our years talking with construction professionals around the country we have yet to meet anyone who said that they got in the industry because they just love the paperwork so much.

But that doesn’t mean the paperwork is meaningless or can be eliminated. On the contrary, modern construction needs thorough documentation. That is true from the largest GC right down to the smaller operations. Luke McSween, a project manager for over 30 years, writes “I learned that the foundation of everything you do with regard to contracts is your record keeping. Throughout my career, I used my own forms to capture the information I needed to capture on a daily basis: activities done, equipment used, manpower, and weather. I designed the forms and captured the information myself. That information is beneficial if you have invoices to make, all that information is critical.”

While there are dozens of different reports that a superintendent or foreman might encounter throughout their day (RFIs, JHAs, change orders etc…) the four most common are:

1. Daily Reports

2. Time Cards

3. Material Tracking

4. Toolbox Talks

While there are other time consuming workflows (JHAs, checklists, etc.) these are the four that are most likely to be captured with pen-and-paper, Excel, or another antiquated system. And that means slow communication back to project managers, payroll administrators, and safety officers in the office.

Why is that? As we said earlier: it’s a tradition. In some cases, it’s how they were taught to do it back when they were apprenticed, or it’s how their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers did it. In either case, using outdated methods to fill out your reports is a learned skill.

What’s Wrong with the Old Way, Anyway?

Introduction


I’d get home and be writing stuff out, minimum an hour, usually two, sometimes three. I’d also transfer accounting and time card info and I’d be done sometimes at nine o’clock at night. First, I’m writing it in my journal, then I’m typing it into the program, then I’m typing my own words into the invoice program. That’s three different processes. David Ingram, Supervisor and Reports Administrator

Just take the case of Don Mason, Vice President of Construction at Tri-State General Contractors. He writes “I’m third-generation. I was taught by my father, who was taught by his father. When I was a kid out in the field with my Dad, when he would take us to work, he would walk around with his notepad and write all of his notes down every day. I thought that was pretty cool because he looked important with his notepad and everything.”

Or take David Ingram, a Supervisor and Reports Administrator from Maurice Agrillo General Contractors. He says “I worked with a daily diary basically. I had done that for 24 years. An 8x11 weekly journal of what I was doing and what my crew was doing with a description, all by hand. And then, at the end of the week, I would send that to stakeholders” he writes, noting “I’d get home and be writing stuff out, minimum an hour, usually two, sometimes three. I’d also transfer accounting and time card info and I’d be done sometimes at nine o’clock at night. First, I’m writing it in my journal, then I’m typing it into the program, then I’m typing my own words into the invoice program. That’s three different processes.”

Both Mason and Ingram are examples of where inefficient reports come from: it’s how they were taught to do it so naturally they just extended that habit into their workday.

Of course, reading over those stories you might say “well, the old ways worked pretty well for Mason’s Dad, and Ingram had a good system going for 24 years. What’s the problem?”

The problem is that when you use a pen and paper or Excel for your construction reporting you open yourself up to the following serious drawbacks:

1. You waste time and money.

2. There’s no value added to the report.

3. They aren’t consistent or compliant.


https://www.rakenapp.com/case-studies/tri-state-gc-case-study

https://www.rakenapp.com/case-studies/maurice-agrillo-case-study

It’s important to go through the drawbacks because the first step you need to take to implement construction software is this: choose software that focuses on the end-user. If you can get the user’s buy-in 90% of your rollout is done already.

Outdated Reports Waste Time and MoneyIn the story from David Ingram he noted that he was spending sometimes three hours a night on his reports. That’s three hours he could be doing something, anything, other than typing out his handwritten notes for that day into another program.

Whenever anyone starts looking into outdated reports closely the first thing they invariably notice is how much time it takes the superintendents, foremen, or office personnel to fill them out or re-enter them into a different program. What they don’t consider is the opportunity cost of that activity.

You are paying your people to write things down in a notebook which either gets lost in a binder or gets typed again into an Excel sheet. And that’s if it gets done at all. Usually, your project managers are also spending time chasing down superintendents or foremen bugging them for their dailies or time cards. Either way, you are paying for wasted time.

That’s what Barbara Tavares, a Senior Construction Manager with RHSI construction management, noticed when she took a hard look at the time her guys were spending in the field. She writes “I used to email back and forth with the contractors. We would have a physical spreadsheet, both the contractor and the inspector would sign it, we would scan and sign it again, and then that would be our backup. If he was just scribbling on a piece of paper he had to come in on a rain day to enter it all into the system. We are a small firm, we don’t have the manpower to chase little things.”


I would say Raken saves him 1-2 hours a day. And with what we’re paying him, that saves us $5,000 a month. Barbara Tavares, Senior Construction Manager

Tavares noticed that all that extra time had to be costing them, so she implemented a construction management software solution and ran the numbers again. She writes “He doesn’t’ have to come back to the office, download pictures, rename them, and put them in the right file. I would say Raken saves him between 1-2 hours a day. And with what we’re paying him, that saves us $150 a day. Now if there’s a rain day he can use it training, or visiting other clients. It has enabled him to free up his time for professional development. We just hired two new guys and it’s going to give him more opportunities to be their manager” she writes, correctly observing that “daily report writing is not an income generating activity, so it frees up his time to do more of those.”

Tavares and her firm noted that pen-and-paper reports were costing them $150 a day sucking the time from their employees. That’s time that could be better spent on income-generating activities that brought value to the company like visiting clients or training new hires.

No Value Added With Pen-and-Paper or Excel ReportsThink about an old report on its best day: it is a bare-bones explanation of the activities that happened on site, scribbled in a notebook that then gets shuffled into a binder never to be seen again or hastily typed into an Excel sheet.

Exactly what is the value of such little information? You can’t share it with owners because it doesn’t look professional and they probably won’t understand the jargon anyway. If there’s a dispute about the information between, let’s say, a GC and a Subcontractor you can’t use it because there’s no visual proof of what’s being written.


Pen-and-paper/Excel reports, by being so sparse, aren’t a very effective form of construction documentation. Barbara Tavares realized that when she describes the role that construction management software plays in her role in managing multiple projects. She writes “We were given a contract to do street inspections for about 50 different streets, asphalt renovation projects like fixing potholes and sealing streets. These aren’t multi million-dollar contracts, but there are a ton of them. If we were going to be inspecting 50 of them, my inspector might go to 2 or 3 in a day,” she notes, “I was looking for a solution: how do we help him keep track? Do we take pictures to track it? All these streets look the same!”

Tavares implemented construction management software that allowed her inspector to upload photos right then and there in the field. Now her firm is in charge of three other subcontractors doing the same inspections, and she uses the software to streamline all of their reporting.

Or take the case of Sam Bacon, Manager of Green Circle Demolition. As a subcontractor working demolition much of their daily work is dependent on whether or not the utilities were shut down prior to their arrival or a certain section of the jobsite is open to them. Because so much of their work depends on other people, accurate photo documentation is key to backing up their position in case of a dispute, which could, in turn, affect their payout. He says “In this business, he who has the best information wins. Always. If we are out-gunned by whoever we’re working for, if they have pictures and backup then we’re done, right or wrong. Raken gets us on par with everyone we’re working with, from an information standpoint,” he observes, “If there’s a dispute, all I have to do is forward them a report with the photo proving it. There’s not arguing anymore, no 10 phone calls back and forth, it’s all right there in the report. It provides you the ability to definitively be in the right and come with the backup you need to prove it.”

Raken gets us on par with everyone we’re working with, from an information standpoint. If there’s a dispute, all I have to do is forward them a report with the photo proving it. There’s not arguing anymore, no 10 phone calls back and forth, it’s all right there in the report. It provides you the ability to definitively be in the right and come with the backup you need to prove it. Sam Bacon, Manager


https://www.rakenapp.com/case-studies/green-circle-case-study

For Bacon and Green Circle Demolition the value that a photo adds to their daily report has proven valuable in quickly settling disputes. This saves Bacon time (no 10 phone calls going back and forth) and serves as a testament to the honesty and quality of the work they’re doing. That would be impossible with a hastily scribbled pager in a binder.

Pen-and-Paper Reports are InconsistentBecause writing things down with pen and paper takes such a long time, there’s a great temptation to put it off for another day or get it over with quickly, which leads to inaccuracies.

Just take the case of Blair McDonnell, the founder of Opus Mechanical, a subcontractor firm in Canada. He writes “We didn’t do dailies very well, to be honest. We were doing the old, conventional method: our foreman had a daily diary and they were responsible for filling out the day’s activities. We were subject to individual differences though. Some were excellent at keeping the daily diary, while some were poor and didn’t really keep it at all,” he notes, “On top of that, it was hard to enforce consistency because it’s on the jobsite, the foremen are supposed to be filling it out at the end of every day but no one really knows.”

McDonnell’s team is made up of foremen who are filling out the reports, but all of the individual differences in those reports made it difficult for him to collate and organize them to make sure he was getting all the information he needed every day.


But even that is a step up from what is happening on some sites, where the dailies are so cumbersome that they just aren’t being done at all. Don Mason says “If a guy is tired at the end of the day or something happens and he has to leave and run to take care of another project or even pick up something from the office and deliver it to another jobsite his daily log pushes a day or so and he has to come back in time and make that daily log up.”

Of course, you can imagine how frequently that log was made up, or how accurate it was if it did get done.

So that is what life is like without construction management software, and you’re ready to make a change. Whether you’ve already chosen the software you’re going to roll out or not, successful implementations need to start with one simple change in mindset.

It needs to start at the top, however, because that’s where the first misstep is usually made.

You need to roll out software from the bottom-up, not from the top-down.

Here’s how it’s done.

I would create spreadsheets and all sorts of complicated stuff to make sure I was getting all the right information.

David Witt, Project Engineer

Of course, that’s assuming he could read them in the first place. David Witt, a Project Engineer with Swinerton Builders, notes that “One of the jobs I had early on was collecting all the dailies that our foremen generate. Oftentimes, these dailies are written in the field and they can get messy dealing with things like water or even just penmanship in general,” he goes on to say “It can be pretty crazy to collect all that information in a timely manner. Also, just to track it all I would create spreadsheets and all sorts of complicated stuff to make sure I was getting all the right information.”


So, if construction management software comes with so many positive outcomes, why hasn’t everyone done their own implementation and is reaping all of these amazing benefits? The vast majority of the construction industry is still stuck, as we saw before, with pen-and-paper reports or in outdated Excel spreadsheets.

We spoke with dozens of general contractors, superintendents, and project managers to get at the heart of the problem, and discovered that it boiled down to switching your focus:

Focus on the end user’s experience rather than the report.

We’ve seen it over and over again: an executive wants reports and buys construction management software that can give them every report they could ever want. But, inevitably, after a few weeks or even days, the end-users in the field and office are right back to their pen-and-paper reports. This leaves the owners and executives upset because now not only are they not getting the information they wanted, but they have paid an arm and a leg for enterprise-level construction management software that no one’s using.

The Pain of Top-Down Construction Software AdoptionThe pain isn’t apparent at first, especially at the top. The executive has just been through, most likely, a month of sales pitches from construction management software companies all making grandiose claims about how their software will allow them to capture data from the field quickly and easily, integrate that with analytics and information from the office, and roll it all up into insights for the executives that they can actually use to improve their business. All of these benefits come at a cost, though, as enterprise construction management software solutions with modules for field and office are pricey.

Once the purchase has been made, though, the executive office is pretty happy. That good feeling starts to leave as soon as they start disseminating the software through their organization in a rollout plan that usually takes between 6 and 9 months. It takes so long because everyone needs some training and it’s hard to coordinate schedules. Once the people responsible for entering the information, in both the field and the office, get their hands on it things inevitably grind to a halt.

Implementing Construction Management Software: The Bottom-Up Approach


Where does the snag come from? It starts with the end-users in both the field and the office. The executive office notices that they either aren’t producing reports at all, the reports aren’t coming in regularly, or they are inaccurate. Of course, this cascades through the rest of the construction management software. Once the information from the users either stops or isn’t accurate, things start to break down everywhere.

Why is that? Well, both the field and office are trying to understand how to use this new software. If they find it’s complicated, they enter partial information or no information at all. If they do enter all of the information, it takes them hours to do so and as a result, over time, they stop doing it because they have to manage other fires on the project. In the meantime, the executives in the office, once so happy, are worse off than when they started. Now not only are they not getting the reports they wanted, but they have spent a bundle of money on a solution that no one seems to be using: technology adoption just wasn’t there.

At this point you might be saying “come on, this can’t happen every time. Enterprise software costs a lot for a reason: it has to work sometimes.” You know, maybe it does. But we haven’t drawn up this scenario from our imaginations: it comes from years of first-hand experience and talking to plenty of executives, project managers, and field superintendents around the country and the world.


John AlbertFounder, Unified Building Group

Just take John Albert, the founder of Unified Building Group, who said “Whenever you adopt a new technology you have reservations because you spend a lot of money and then the problem is: no one can use it. You can purchase software that has all the bells and whistles but then if no one uses it, it’s not allowing you to communicate effectively with your team, then it doesn’t work. I asked myself ‘are the guys in the field going to use it? Should I really get training for them and educate them on another piece of software when they didn’t use the last one?’” Albert notes, “so we gave up on all the silver bullets out there as far as software because that was always our challenge; we could never get our folks in the field, who we really need the right information from, to get it back to accounting or the customer and get a true reflection. It could be the Ferrari of software but it’s useless if no one can drive it.”

Albert said it best when he said that there struggle with top-down construction management software was that they “could never get our folks in the field” to get them a true reflection of what’s happening out there. But more than that, he gave us a reason why: it was too complicated.


https://www.rakenapp.com/case-studies/ubg-case-study

Why Users Reject Top-Down Construction Management SoftwareThe real problem with top-down construction management is that before buying the “silver bullet” software executives don’t stop and ask themselves the question that Albert did “are the guys in the field and the folks in the office going to use it?” Instead, they buy the “bells and whistles” software and expect the users to get on board.

The problem is that these software suites, in an attempt to do everything, can include unnecessary information to sort through or processes that complicate things. You know you’ve got a complicated construction management solution when there are a dozen form fields to fill out just to complete a report, or if you have to go through a bunch of hoops just to submit a daily, RFI, or change order. Put frankly, executives don’t stop and think what the users had to go through to get them a report: they just want the information.

So what happens is the end-users in the field and office take too long trying to figure out the complicated software and, once they realize that it will take them longer to do their reports in this software than in their old method, they either stop doing reports entirely (worst case scenario) or they go back to their pen and paper or Excel spreadsheet and the entire system starts breaking down. Not only are executives not getting accurate information from the field but if anyone ever needs one of those reports, say in case of litigation, they have to go searching for it in the binders, hoping that it got done that day.

The superintendents weren’t using the software because it was too complicated and time-consuming. The same thing happens every time.


Bottom-Up Construction Software: A Win-WinAdopting construction software efficiently starts, ironically, at the top of the company with a slight shift in thinking: as an executive, instead of thinking how many reports you can get out of one construction management system, think about the work that goes into generating each of those reports downstream. All of the negative effects of trying and failing to roll out an all-in-one-bells-and-whistles-silver-bullet construction management software can be mitigated by a simple, foolproof rollout plan that is probably more simple than you might think.

1. Think bottom-up when choosing and rolling out software.

2. Pilot the software with your least tech-savvy end-user for at least two weeks.

3. Have that champion introduce it to the rest of the end-users in the field and the office.

This simple rollout strategy answers the all-important question: will my guys in the field and the office actually use what I buy? Without that end-user adoption, though, everything falls apart.

The success or failure of rolling out construction management software depends on user adoption. That’s why you need to try as many different types of solutions as you need to until you find the one that the field actually enjoys using. And you try these solutions and roll them out to your larger team by focusing on the end-user and project first.

That begins with a pilot program.


So what goes into the crafting the perfect pilot program for your construction management software? You can break it down into the following steps.

1. Focus on the end-users/choose your pilot person carefully.

2. Fast training for an accurate test.

3. At least a two-week time frame.

Pilot programs might sound like a complicated affair, but they really don’t have to be. These three steps will go a long way to determining if your end-users will quickly adopt whatever construction management software you put in front of them.

Who Should Try It Out First?When we say “focus on the end-users” we mean just that. A good pilot program needs to get the software into their hands as quickly as possible and let them play around with it to see if they will actually adopt it or not. Remember, the overall success of your implementation hinges on bottom-up adoption, so start literally at the end-user level and work your way up to the top.

How do you choose which end-users to try out your software? Here are some suggestions.

1. Don’t ask for volunteers.

Those who would volunteer are eager to try and adopt new technology and you might get skewed results

that aren’t representative of how the rest of the users feel.

2. Consider the entire pen-and-paper workflow you’re trying to replace.

If it’s daily reports, that means you need to include a superintendent, foreman, project manager, and

possibly an owner depending on the project. Does the software allow each of these personas to really try

it out?

3. Look to your least tech-savvy end user persona and let them try it out.

If they can pick it up and start using it to digitize workflows, then you’ve got a winner.

Crafting the Perfect Pilot Program


Ultimately, the best case study for your construction management software pilot program is going to be the person that you would expect the most resistance from. If you can get a staunchly anti-technology worker to not only adopt it but start using it regularly then it’s a very safe bet that the rest of your rollout is going to be smooth.

And that’s not just an idea: we’ve backed up this method time after time with real end-users in the field.

John Albert at UBG opted for a similar pilot program. He says “We had a night shift, and it was a very custom project. The gentleman that ran that project, our site super, is a real field super. He’s the best trim carpenter you will ever find, fifth generation, but he couldn’t communicate via email or text very well,” Albert says, And he adapted it. From my perspective, if he can use it, anybody can use it.”

Or take the case of Barbara Tavares. She notes “The first person to use it was Wayne, in his late 60s,” she says, “He was a little nervous to use an app and an iPad. After a handful of times, he got the hang of it and he loves it. After that with our new inspectors, it took them 5 whole minutes to get it.”

Albert and Tavares found someone that they thought would be the most resistant to the new technology they were rolling out and discovered that with software focused on the end user, both could easily adapt it and become its biggest champions, thus inspiring the rest of the workforce.


DJ MasonGeneral Superintendant, Tri-State

How Much Training is Needed for an Accurate Pilot?One of the tricks with creating a perfect pilot program is deciding how much training is needed for an accurate test of the software’s capabilities in everyday work. Ideally, you want to begin your two-week trial period after everyone has been trained so you can see what the technology will do for your workflows once it’s really going.

The difficulty many have is that enterprise-level construction management software can take 6-9 months to roll out.

That’s why a bottom-up approach is so crucial to software adoption in the construction industry. Technology that has been designed for the field, if it was designed well, should be rolled out with little to no training required.

That means that even the most technologically challenged end-user should be able to, just by interacting with the tool or watching a training video or two, be able to use the technology to most of its full potential.

If it seems impossible to imagine a 60+-year-old field superintendent picking up software with little to no training and then continuing to use it, just consider what DJ Mason and Tri-State did with their pilot program. Mason states “We brought it to a jobsite and gave it to one of our it technologically challenged superintendents and within 5 minutes he was excited about his day again,” Mason remembers, “He felt like he was going to be able to have a tool to make him look more professional, increase his ability to communicate well at the end of the day, and not take as much time for him to do that. He was rejuvenated about his day, and that was pretty cool to see. Seriously within minutes, he had a report out.”

John Albert chose a non-communicator, DJ Mason chose a tech-challenged superintendent and in both of those instances, the end-user was able to pick up the tool quickly and start using it effectively right from the start. Not only did Albert and Mason get an accurate test of the software’s capability in the field, but they were also able to look ahead at how easy the rollout was going to be for the rest of their end-users.


Champion IntroductionsSo you’ve settled on software that focuses on the end-user and given one of your more technologically-resistant employees time to play around with it. That initial tester, after they’ve adapted it, should become your champion when introducing it to the rest of your team.

DJ Mason goes on to state “Once we opened up our eyes to the new technology it was a no brainer to easily make that change from that antiquated technology there,” noting how they have successfully rolled out construction management software to most of their organization.

Don Mason notes “A lot of our superintendents I believe were nervous. Technology can be a little intimidating at times. What we found is when we gave it to the least sophisticated technological superintendent we had, and in five minutes he could use it like a professional, we knew it doesn’t take very long to get accustomed to the software or how it works.”

There is something about having a peer introduce changes that immediately makes it more palatable to the end-user than yet another command coming from the office. David Witt says “As a millennial, I’m saturated with apps all the time. So when I hear about a new app that’s going to change everything I’m like ‘okay, whatever,’” he says, “One of the reservations I had, in the beginning, was ‘is this new system going to be complicated, and will it even be worth me learning it?’ But after having another project engineer tell me ‘no this is definitely the way to go…’ I tried it and I agree, it’s been really helpful so those reservations are gone for me.”

For Witt, it took a fellow project engineer telling him that it was the way to go before he tried it. And once he did he discovered that he didn’t have to take time learning how to use it and his foremen in the field got it just as quickly. That’s the power of a champion introduction after an end-user focused pilot: you can know that the recommendation will be followed by a positive experience.


Scaling the Solution: Large-Scale RolloutsOnce your champion has introduced it to his or her peers on the project you’re ready to roll out the software to a larger team. Of course, depending on the size of your organization you might not even need this step. Keeping new software on a project-by-project rollout plan might not be a bad idea, especially for much larger firms where the resources and time to roll out software can get into the millions and years.

If you’re an executive reading this you might be thinking “there are two big problems to doing what you say and focusing on the field first: scaling and integration. Field-focused solutions are personalized, and those don’t scale well and even if they did I don’t want to have to go to nine different platforms just to see the information: if it’s in that many places it won’t be clear and I won’t be able to make connections.”

Luckily, we’re not the only ones who are advocating a bottom-up approach to construction management. A slew of new technologies that focus on certain roles or workflows within the construction industry are making it easier to think about the field first while still getting the reports that the office needs.

Many field-focused construction management solutions have an open API so they can be scaled as part of your larger construction management platform, whether it be Procore, Trimble, or Autodesk BIM 360. Second, many construction firms are using business intelligence platforms like Construction BI to tie the software together and give executives that single source of truth, allowing them to get nuggets of insight and change that they could never get with an all-in-one enterprise solution. The only difference between using personalized apps tied together by a BI tool and getting an enterprise all-in-one solution is that one is bottom-up focused and the other is top-down. And, as we’ve seen, the top-down solution doesn’t work.

So how do you scale a field-focused solution?

1. Make sure it has an open API

2. If the end-users on one project like it, duplicate the process on another project.

That’s the real ticket to scalability: end-user focused point solutions can work on an enterprise scale if their architecture supports integration with larger platforms. The benefit of choosing end-user focused and pilot-program tested solutions is that you can move forward with confidence.

Once you try it out on one project, duplicate the process on another and from there you can have your entire organization up and running faster than ever, and all because you chose a solution that the field quickly embraces and can use with little to no training.


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So you’ve chosen software that focuses on the end-user and then given them two weeks to try it out and they loved it. They then introduced it to the rest of their peers and you are now far enough along that you can start to gauge success. What does it look like? Well, if you remember the three problems with pen-and-paper reports that we were talking about earlier all you have to do is look for the inverse.

You should expect to see most of these results immediately after the rollout, or at most after 1-2 months.

Are You Saving Time and Money?Barbara Tavares noted how her firm saves $150 a day since implementing construction management software just in the time it took her inspector to fill out his dailies.

Don Mason says “With the software that information is being gathered in real time throughout their day, and we could give them that hour and a half back to their life at the end of the day so for me. I wanted to invest in our employee’s personal life, and the software did that for us. It’s really simple: before he leaves he signs his name to the bottom of the sheet and that daily log gets sent out to all parties involved and he can move on.” Now his workers are happier that they get an hour back at the end of the day and don’t have to worry about filling out their reports late into the night.

DJ Mason says “It has saved an incredible amount of time. A hard day for us in the field, where there’s a bunch of changes or we incur a challenge, it takes a lot of reporting so it can save you hours. To be able to coordinate all the documents and send them off efficiently at the end of the day saves us countless hours. Countless hours.”

Did It Work? Reaping the Benefits.


Just knowing that there’s one place I can quickly look to and say ‘is this filled out, okay, yes it is’ means I don’t need to bother them. I don’t need to track them down. I don’t need to try to call them on the radio or the phone. That’s where I save a lot of time not to mention them stopping what they’re doing, coming up here talking to me in the office, or me going out in the field and finding them. I think that’s been the biggest time suck is just the tracking of ‘is it getting done.

David Witt, Project Engineer

And it’s not just the superintendents in the field that are saving time with construction management software, but the office feels the benefit too. After implementing, David Witt notes “I don’t have to go hunt down my foremen anymore and find out where the hell they are, where’s their daily, and then remember to do that because oftentimes I’m getting pulled in a hundred different directions,” he says, “Just knowing that there’s one place I can quickly look to and say ‘is this filled out, okay, yes it is’ means I don’t need to bother them. I don’t need to track them down. I don’t need to try to call them on the radio or the phone. That’s where I save a lot of time not to mention them stopping what they’re doing, coming up here talking to me in the office, or me going out in the field and finding them. I think that’s been the biggest time suck is just the tracking of ‘is it getting done.’”

Between the “countless hours” being saved in the field and the added time saved in the office tracking it down, implementing construction software saves the entire firm money.

Is Value Added to your Reports?Apart from saving time in the actual process of daily reporting, construction management software adds additional value to the process in the form of photos, videos, and attachments.

Don Mason says “it’s fantastic compared to what we used to do. First of all, pictures can get attached to the work logs, so you don’t only get a report but you get pictures too, I consider that to be a huge advantage of having good reporting,” he says.

Or take Dominic Daughtrey, the Continuous Improvement Program Manager at Sundt. After implementing construction management software he says “the value-added activities of capturing that data and then getting them into the daily report form has never been easier. It can add value, it doesn’t matter what scope of work you’re doing, where you’re doing the scope, you can benefit from it.”


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Is Compliance Higher?After rolling out his construction management software with a bottom-up, end-user focused approach Witt noticed a marked improvement in compliance. He says “Definitely daily compliance has gone up. It’s just hard to remember with the dailies the next day, and if guys forget they are way less likely to do them because they have to think ‘okay, what was I doing last Wednesday, or what was I doing three days ago…’“ he notes, “It’s just hard to remember and it’s not usually as clear so a lot of guys are all or nothing: they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t the day of, but now with it being easier I’ve seen a lot more foremen go up in compliance.”

But Witt noticed that something else, besides the ease of use, was helping boost compliance on his sites after they had implemented the construction management software: everyone could see who had or hadn’t done a report yet. While keeping a close watch on proprietary information, Witt observed that his crews started holding themselves accountable for the activities they saw in the software.

He says “Everyone can see it too when you go in and you can see what activities have had a daily put in, so its crowd-sourcing accountability as well. People can say ‘oh, he didn’t put his daily in, what’s up with that?’ or when, as a group, we have our plan of the day meeting in the morning they can say ‘hey so and so where’s your report? Why didn’t you fill out your daily?’” he observes, “So I’ve seen that compliance go up because rather than just coming from me, tracking that person down and saying ‘hey you didn’t fill out your daily’ then they say ‘David why are you on me for this? I have other stuff to do…’ but if we’re all together, and other people are seeing it too, then that gives higher compliance.”

Not only does Witt not have to spend time tracking down his superintendents anymore, but the increased transparency in the company has led to them holding each other accountable for accurate documentation.

It’s a Project Manager’s dream

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3 Steps to Implement Construction Software · 3 Steps to Implement Construction Software One of the things we love most about construction is its age. It’s one of the most ancient