O.C. Jones & Sons

An HCSS power user, O.C. Jones & Sons have successfully taken their operations from manual entries to an automated flow of data between departments. This impressive transformation won them the Silver medal in the 2007 Constructech Vision Awards.

General contractor O.C. Jones & Sons, www.ocjones.com, Berkeley, Calif., primarily focuses on grading and paving projects throughout the greater San Francisco Bay area, working in both the private and public sector.

The old method used by O.C. Jones in handling timecards and tracking daily job costs presented multiple problems. For one, timecard information was rewritten at least three times from the moment the crews were set up in dispatch until the information was entered into payroll. This also increased the chance that wrong employee or equipment numbers would be entered.

Getting the timecards back into the main office was also a drag on time and expenses. The common timeframe for getting job cost information back to the foremen and project managers would take up to two weeks.

Already using HeavyBid from HCSS, www.hcss.com, Houston, Texas, to estimate projects, the company decided to integrate The Dispatcher resource management software and HeavyJob field management software into the mix.

Employees and equipment are now dispatched to projects daily using The Dispatcher. The foremen, equipped with laptops running HeavyJob, can download the resource information to populate timecards.

The need to rebuild cost codes and budgets is eliminated as the project data in HeavyJob is brought over from the estimate in HeavyBid. Using drop-down menus, foremen can access cost codes while completing the timecard. Since crews and equipment are imported from The Dispatcher and budgets and cost codes are brought from HeavyBid, timecard errors are greatly reduced. Once a foreman has completed the timecard, it is transmitted back to the main office via FTP (file transfer protocol).

O.C. Jones has experienced real savings in both money and time collecting dispatch and payroll information and moving it around the company. This process has also reduced timecard errors and the time and effort spent correcting them.

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