The Issue
The Walsh Group is a 128-year-old titan, but size is a double-edged sword. When you have 3,000 full-time staff members and 6,000 tradespeople on jobsites across the country, and the main communication from the field to the office relies on paper, you aren't able to scale confidently. One of The Walsh Group's challenges was growing a company that received 4,000 handwritten weekly time cards without getting slowed down by the massive administrative burden. Worse, critical field data was trapped on paper, vulnerable to the harsh reality of the job site. In a high-stakes industry, information lag is not only frustrating but also creates unnecessary risk that compounds by the hour.
The Solution
The Walsh Group didn't just invest in HCSS software; the company took a proactive stance against the unknown by refusing to let data and field intelligence get lost or forgotten. To combat this, the leadership equipped the frontline with digital time cards and real-time work plans in HeavyJob, and they put life-saving safety tools (like inspections or JHAs) directly into the hands of the foremen. The solution centered on empowerment over administration, equipping their people with real-time data to deliver safer, more accurate, and more profitable outcomes.
The Outcome
The ROI was immediate. By eliminating guesswork, Walsh improved communication and reduced rework by 20%, outperforming industry standards. Replacing manual updates with real-time plans ensured proactive quality control. That isn't just a metric. Those savings add straight to the bottom line. The payroll process was streamlined, with 4,000 weekly time cards now paid with precision and speed. Trust was also established between the corporate office and the people in the field. With better information coming in, the team can confidently identify safety risks and quality hazards in the pre-planning phase, rather than reacting to them in the field. Walsh took a world defined by risk and bought themselves the ultimate luxury: certainty.
The builder who wanted more than just scaling
The Walsh Group is a century-old American institution. But when you grow to 9,000 employees, the definition of success depends on so much more. It's no longer about whether you can build the bridge; you obviously can. The challenge becomes building the bridge while maintaining the soul of a family business.
Walsh wanted to scale their culture of "people first" just as aggressively as it scaled its revenue, seeking a way to make a foreman in a remote muddy trench feel as supported, informed, and valued as a VP in the Chicago headquarters.
The first hurdle to overcome was finding a way to communicate more effectively and efficiently. In construction, the physical distance between the field and the office represents an information highway where communication decays over time and space. Any ambiguity over time forces even the most talented crews to guess. And in this industry, a guess is the most expensive thing you can buy, manifesting as rework.
Joe Quattrochi, Quality Director and Director of Process Improvement at Walsh, describes a scenario where Walsh was managing complex logistics with limited real-time visibility, with paper being the primary conduit for time cards, safety information, and tracking what work needed to get done.
To combat this, as well as add live information from the field, the team pushed technology to the edge by putting HCSS HeavyJob and HCSS Safety directly into the hands of the foremen.
After adopting HCSS, an Atlanta foreman describes the change as everything he needed at his fingertips, right there on an iPad. "It gives him so much more sense of relief that he doesn't have to keep everything in his head,” said Quattrochi. “He's able to go back, refer to it, and find the information he needs as needed. And as that continues to grow, it becomes simpler and easier to use."
A system for truth
Walsh realized that the data pouring into the office needed a single source of truth that could enable them to make faster, more informed decisions.
During a six-month rollout of HeavyJob, HCSS wasn't just a vendor; the enterprise-level support and expertise provided to Walsh during the implementation helped create a game plan for ensuring the data from the field was verifiable and could be converted into actionable intelligence.
This is what modern construction looks like. It’s not about replacing workers with robots. It’s about equipping workers with the clarity needed to be safe, the right plan to do the job correctly, and the confidence that each person can make a difference.
"One of the biggest benefits we've seen has been the data that comes out of it, which has ultimately then created accountability that we're able to see quickly," says Quattrochi. "From a time card system, we can see who's submitting time cards on time, who's completing their meetings, and who's utilizing the work plan features and conducting their inspection checklist… That has allowed us to return to a people-first mentality, having the right conversations with our crews and project management staff to ensure they're leveraging the system to its full potential. They understand the value it can provide."
The ROI of certainty
When you replace ambiguity with clarity, the results multiply immediately. Walsh saw a 20% reduction in rework in a single year. Removing the guesswork removed the errors. This increase in efficiency directly benefits their bottom line and adds to a margin without requiring a single new job.
The true power of this transformation lies in the feedback loop. It isn't just top-down commands; it's bottom-up intelligence. Quattrochi describes a "feedback loop" where people off-site review work plans and offer fresh perspectives that help the company grow and pursue more work.
Payroll has been streamlined with the digitization of the field. With 4,000 weekly time cards coming into the office, with controls to require certain minimums on the time card to send it in, and an approval process that gives even more communication from the office to the field when time cards need correcting, payroll became more consistent with the ability to improve both the field and office.
The transformation was simple, yet it paved a way for many more years of success: Walsh moved from a company that survives risk to a company that designs certainty. The company proved that even at the scale of 9,000 employees, you can treat every single employee like family, not by hugging them, but by giving them the tools to do their best work, the first time, every time.
"Matt and Dan Walsh still show up, suit and tie every day, walk the halls, and they meet and greet everyone," says Quattrochi. "They want to know their names, what they did, who their family is, because it's that family approach to business that the Walsh Group is obsessed with. It's about being the employer of choice. And that is a commitment to new items, such as mental health and craft training that we've recently rolled out in the last couple of years, to finding ways to leverage technology to make our people more efficient and effective at what they do, and supporting the workflows from every aspect. And HCSS has definitely helped us do that in many ways."
