Create an exceptional workforce with HeavyJob!

Mike Rydin, HCSS president and Mary Jo Burt, HCSS marketing director, visited Leon E. Wintermyer, Inc. in Pennsylvania to see what their 30 foremen had to say about using HeavyJob. The efficiency of Wintermyer's operation is extremely impressive. All foremen are e-mailing their time cards in from home or via their Nextel phones by 8 a.m. the next morning giving the general superintendent, estimators and project managers access to up-to-date jobsite information by 10 a.m.

The data from HeavyJob is then reviewed and transferred directly into their Bidtek Viewpoint accounting system. As a result, one payroll position has been eliminated, payroll is out two days earlier and errors have been drastically reduced.

The most impressive result of Wintermyer's implementation of HeavyJob is that the foremen themselves are studying their productions and asking why and how they can improve their productivity when they are in the "red zone." (When productions are behind, they show up in red on the screen.) This instant feedback and emphasis on making money everyday is helping Wintermyer create an exceptional and intelligent workforce. "HeavyJob tells me if I need to change my plan," said one foreman.

Lake County Grading in Libertyville, IL has 17 foremen, almost half of whom are using HeavyJob on laptops in the field. Time card data for the foremen who aren't using HeavyJob yet is entered into the system by the payroll clerk. All time cards are then electronically sent to their Dexter & Chaney Forefront accounting system saving them a great deal of time on payroll. This has been such a success for Lake County that they now have the hourly office personnel entering their time into HeavyJob so that no one's time has to be entered directly into payroll.

P.J. Hoerr in Peoria, IL has an extremely efficient HeavyJob operation. Their five foremen use HeavyJob on home PC computers to enter time card information and then e-mail it into the office by 9 a.m. the next day. The time is checked by one of the two project managers in the office and forwarded to payroll by 10 a.m. We watched the entire process and were extremely impressed with how fast and simple it was. The project managers actually place the time cards into their Bidtek Viewpoint accounting system as a batch. The payroll person simply checks the batch to see that everyone is there, the hours total, and posts the time cards.

Two foremen at P.J. Hoerr use HeavyJob interchangeably with their PC Field system and their handheld PDA running HeavyJob/Pocket. These foremen start each day entering the work conditions into HeavyJob/Pocket then entering material and subs and setting up their time card for the people and equipment on the job that day. Late afternoon, if they have time, they enter labor and equipment hours, notes, and progress quantities. At home they synchronize the PDA with their PC, finish the time card for anything not entered earlier, e-mail it in, and study productions.

P.J. Hoerr also sets up their subcontractors as note indexes specific to each job. This clever use of the system allows the foremen to simply check off which subs are on the job site that day giving them a quick and easy way to search for when each sub worked.

Herlihy Mid-Continent in Romeoville, IL, has made the fastest implementation of HeavyJob that we have seen thus far. Only three months after purchasing HeavyJob, they have 13 foremen entering their time cards on laptops and e-mailing it in by 9 a.m., where it is studied by project managers and then transferred to their Shaker COINS accounting system. To see the entire process run smoothly across three major areas of a company this quickly is amazing!

Gohmann Asphalt in Clarksville, IN has 17 superintendents proficient at entering time cards into HeavyJob via laptops. Now they are working on training the rest of their foremen. This implementation presents an additional challenge. The superintendents want to review the time cards for their foremen and make corrections if necessary before transmitting them to payroll. However, they are not back in the office at the main computer to review them. Based on what we saw, we will be creating a version of HeavyJob that will receive the day's time cards e-mailed from the foremen, import them into the superintendent's system where they can be modified, e-mailed to the office for project management review and imported into their Bidtek Vision accounting system. One thing we are finding is that the logistics for making HeavyJob work at each company are different. At HCSS, we are committed to doing whatever it takes to help our customers get the job done.

T & C Contracting in Louisville, KY has seven foremen entering data into HeavyJob/Pocket using a handheld PDA. Each night they synchronize their PDA with HeavyJob/Manager via dial-up modems. They have been doing this for a year and a half. They chose this method because it costs less and they thought it would be easier for foremen than laptops. This procedure has been very successful for them.

So far, HCSS has interviewed 19 foremen at six different companies in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. None of the foremen complained about having difficulty learning the software. Everyone that has used HeavyJob loves it, although not always for the same reason. Most say it cuts their reporting time in half and makes their life easier by eliminating paperwork - the part of their job they dislike most. "I'd never want to go back to paper," said one. "I hate paper." Another huge advantage HeavyJob offers contractors over using paper time cards is the ability for foremen to enter their daily diary notes about the job into HeavyJob. One manager said, "We not only get the reports we need, along with that, we are getting notes . . . when it comes up on the report that he's losing money, you can just look at the notes. That tells the whole story."

Because of the demand for HeavyJob, HCSS will have a new class called "Implementing HeavyJob" in the Fall Regional Training Meetings taking place in Princeton, Las Vegas and St. Louis. This is the perfect opportunity for companies wanting to automate to plan their strategy for a successful winter implementation of HeavyJob.