The pace of construction has increased rapidly over the past few years and the demand for quality team members has skyrocketed. This makes it difficult to find and train people, especially if your company is growing. So to meet the current demands of today, companies are staying competitive by empowering their current team with technology that makes their job easier while doubling their productivity.
With the right tool and a properly trained team, you no longer have to choose between efficiency or effectiveness. You can have both in order to improve construction productivity for each job role.
“Normally, to grow this fast, you would have to add so many administrative employees, accounting employees, project managers. Having all of this technology has helped us basically triple our revenue and almost keep the same overhead.” - RAWSO Constructors President Dylan Stephens
Improve Construction Productivity for 7 Core Job Roles
Here’s a few ways that technology can enhance your team’s productivity in 7 core roles that support construction companies throughout the organization.
1. Project Managers
People in this role can be running multiple jobs at one time. The success of jobs depends so heavily on them for everything from catching mistakes before they become costly to ensuring materials are scheduled and permits are submitted - it’s almost impossible to make a profit without help from technology.
Keeping projects on track is easier when they can digitally walk the field with photos, daily logs, and production reporting that shows each job’s variance from the budget, down to each cost code.
HCSS products that can help Project Managers: HeavyJob, HCSS Intelligence, HCSS Dispatcher
2. Foremen
Where foremen spend their time is important. They have to monitor each step of the job, direct crews, plan production, and perform JHAs while also capturing information from the field. If foremen are spending lots of time recording field information, that’s time that could be better spent working with the crew instead.
Powerful digital tools help Foremen by cutting their time spent recording field information in half (photos, crew hours, equipment, materials, quantities) and by giving them access to everything they need to manage work for that day in a few clicks. Foremen have instant access to the most updated plans, safety meeting content, estimator notes, crew certifications, and more. The iPad becomes a tool for a foreman to not only save time, but to always have everything they need to engage with the crew.
HCSS products that can help Foremen improve productivity: HeavyJob, HCSS Safety, HCSS myField, HCSS Plans
3. Fleet Managers
Equipment is a major investment with costs that are difficult to manage, especially when an unexpected breakdown occurs. Jobs and shops run smoother with fleet managers that use digital tools to double their effectiveness by implementing a robust preventive maintenance program.
Two keys to a successful preventive maintenance program are centralizing equipment data and keeping accurate, up-to-date meter readings. This can be accomplished through automatic meter readings from telematics, alerts for planned and unplanned maintenance, digitally accessible equipment histories, GPS-drive equipment theft prevention, and organized data around equipment utilization.
HCSS products trusted by Fleet Managers: Equipment360, FuelerPlus, HCSS Dispatcher and HCSS Telematics.
4. Estimators
Competitive companies have found success doubling the productivity of estimators while maintaining or increasing their accuracy with construction estimating tools and software that focus on automating manual tasks and making it easier to spot errors. HeavyBid does this in a few different ways.
Estimators can start their bid easier and faster by importing from the DOT, copying from past estimates or standardized activities of work, or pulling information quickly into their quote folders. Even bid day is made a little easier with tools that make it easy to solicit, receive, and pull quotes into your bid. To consistently find problems without sacrificing speed, HeavyBid uses a color coding scheme that helps visualize your bid and provides tools that support the bid review process.
HCSS products that can help Estimators: HeavyBid
5. Chief Estimator
The best way a digital tool can help a chief estimator is by helping to reduce their time to review the estimate while increasing the likelihood that they can catch problems before the estimate is finished. So how do tools like HeavyBid help do that? They make error catching a team sport, help teams create a structure that is consistent and repeatable, make it easy to compare estimated production against achieved production captured in HeavyJob, track what was reviewed and what hasn’t been yet, and provides an audit process for after the review is done.
The Estimate Review, Queries and Reports are unique tools that help estimate teams find mistakes before the bid is finalized by looking at the costs and how they are distributed throughout the bid to see how this job fits your strategic needs and strengths while also making it easy to share the necessary information with others in the company that need it without wastefully searching for details. These tools add a few minutes to the estimating process but can save hours of frustration and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in mistakes.
HCSS products that can help Estimators: HeavyBid, HeavyJob
6. Safety Managers
Enacting real change in the field isn’t easy but it’s what is required in order to create more effective safety programs. HCSS Safety helps you by dramatically increasing the volume of incoming, real-time safety data. We help you and your crews learn from past jobs, prepare for future jobs, and pivot safety efforts when needed.
Our intuitive HCSS Field app makes it easy and fast for crews to collect safety data in the field. We provide hundreds of safety meeting, inspection, and JHA templates. By collecting and analyzing observations, you can control things that could cause a near-miss or incident after the work starts.
By using the data collected to teach your crews about safety, HCSS Safety can help you move away from rule enforcement and move towards a progressive, people-based safety culture.
HCSS products that can help Safety Managers: HCSS Field, HCSS Safety
7. Executives
Executives want to make the best decisions for their company but need up-to-date field information that they can review without spending days just trying to chase down field data or shop reports. It’s true that what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed. The HCSS suite makes data as visible as possible for better data-driven decisions.
Executives can better decide if it’s time to purchase new equipment or make changes to a current job when they have 24/7 access to data on estimating, job time and production, safety and quality, equipment, plan sets, measurements, and more. Teams can move more cohesively when executives and managers can all look at the same data to see where the company is at and if there are any opportunities to train or coach people to more efficiently meet internal goals.
HCSS products that can help Executives: HCSS Cloud, HeavyBid, HeavyJob, HCSS Safety, HCSS Dispatcher, HCSS Plans, HCSS Quality, HCSS myField, Equipment360, HCSS Telematics, FuelerPlus
Contact us to start working toward improved construction productivity throughout your organization today.
