What areas of technology advancement/deployment are you focused and why?
We focus on the core workflows where profits are won and lost: estimating, resource scheduling and dispatching, performance tracking, and equipment maintenance. We provide differentiating opportunities to manage them, not only more efficiently, but also more cohesively and collaboratively through a true software platform.
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Priestly Demolition is a family-owned company incorporated in 1993 that utilizes innovation, technology, and experience to service the construction industry throughout Canada and the United States. Priestly provides various services, including excavation, hazardous material abatement and demolition. Before discovering LoadSpring, Priestly faced a choice between upgrading their on-premise equipment or migrating their entire network of applications to the Cloud. Their dilemma was two-fold: they needed a new on-premise solution or cloud service provider.
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One of the most popular thought-leadership sessions at this year’s B2W Software User Conference validated one of construction’s top challenges and presented creative solutions.
Close to 50 contractors shared experiences and ideas in the interactive roundtable session titled Strategies for Attracting and Retaining Talent. Herb Brownett, a former construction company CFO and industry veteran who consults on financial and operational topics, facilitated the discussion.
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Early adopters are praising a new ONE Platform capability that allows them to generate equipment repair requests automatically from inspection forms.
Danielle Ehler at Zutphen Contractors and Jon Ewart at GW-EX are among users confirming that the new workflow helps them to identify and complete equipment repair work more efficiently. A new video from B2W illustrates the process.
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With utility construction growing and poised for a boost from increased infrastructure spending, Utility Contractor magazine and B2W Software are teaming up for a webcast to explore how contractors can complete projects more profitably.
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Claiming with only slight hyperbole that “the fate of the heavy construction world hangs in the balance,” Bill Walton is all in as keynote speaker for the 2021 B2W User Conference. The basketball legend is preparing to share insights into big challenges, world-class performance, great teams and winning and relate them to the construction sector in his presentation on March 2.
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Paying construction employees properly isn’t easy but doesn’t have to be as hard as some contractors make it. Two recent trade media articles explain the advantages of electronic field logs over processes built around paper timecards, spreadsheets and manual data transfer. An article in Building Profits magazine focuses on using technology to eliminate payroll errors and inefficiencies.
“When you’re using paper, there are a lot of data issues that arise,” says Eric Sellman, a vice president and general manager at M.A. Mortenson. “Handwriting can be an issue. People can put hours against task codes that maybe they shouldn’t be assigning those hours to.” Patrick Holland, vice president at A.J. Coleman & Son describes the payroll information transfer prior to adopting B2W Track as time-consuming, slow and not very accurate or reliable. “Information was submitted weekly, and there were weekly disputes, depending on the diligence of the supervisor’s input,” he adds.
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With an in-person event unrealistic, B2W switched gears and redesigned its 2021 User Conference. The result is Innovation Forward, an event featuring unique opportunities for software training and technology exploration. Sessions will run in late February and early March and be set up specifically for online delivery.
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Construction fleet management and field tracking are different, but two new B2W case studies show how the move from spreadsheets to specialized software pays off in both workflows.
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Bidding faster is the goal of every estimator, and B2W Estimate includes major features and capabilities that speed up the estimating process while ensuring accuracy. However, we have paid attention to some little things too.
A keystroke or mouse click might not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of creating an estimate, but each one takes time. The larger the bid, and the more bids you do, the more they add up.
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Every golfer I know keeps score each round and can tell you several numbers about their game. These include best score ever, target score on home course and, if they are serious, their handicap. Why keep track? As a long-struggling golfer, I can tell you, it is to measure improvement and strive to be better. I recommend that construction managers and executives responsible for their fleets take a similar approach, assisted by construction equipment maintenance software like B2W Maintain.
Most businesses track key numbers. In construction, these include annual revenue, gross profit margin and backlog. Refining this with additional metrics tailored to the business called key performance indicators (KPI’s) has become vogue. The intent is to create and track KPI’s that reflect significant aspects of the business, so management can improve them. Think of this as a handicap for each key business activity.
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Creating an efficient, effective plan and adjusting it on the fly are big challenges in heavy construction project scheduling. Getting the latest information about assignments to the people impacted shouldn’t be.
In addition to providing enterprise-wide visibility into a central schedule, B2W Schedule makes it simple for users to push notifications about assignments by email or text message immediately, accurately and efficiently. This is another big advantage that real-time, online construction scheduling software provides over processes that rely on spreadsheets, whiteboards and the chaotic, disconnected phone calls, emails and texts that many contractors are all too familiar with.
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The equipment maintenance approach at a mid-size excavation and site work contractor that recently adopted B2W Maintain software was very typical.
The owner has a mechanical background, knows every piece of equipment inside and out and takes pride in keeping his fleet in top condition. He was managing a relatively effective maintenance program based primarily on his individual knowledge and supported by some basic spreadsheets and paper-based process.
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The recent Safety Management in the Construction Industry 2020 SmartMarket report by Dodge Data & Analytics provides a comprehensive look at efforts by contractors to improve jobsite safety. Here are three highlights related to technology and the potential safety benefits of replacing paper-based processes for data capture and analysis with a system like B2W inform.
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Whether they’re looking for performance and cost advantages across essential construction projects in general or specific ways to better use mobile construction technology and desktop applications, more and more contractors are considering the Cloud. These are the most common questions they ask us as they explore options for running B2W estimating and operations elements in a cloud environment.
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Construction management software might not command the attention of heavy machinery at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2020. Savvy contractors that visit software suppliers at construction tradeshows, however, could uncover opportunities that rival or even exceed the ROI value of that shiny new hardware.
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The unlikely football hero immortalized in the blockbuster film Rudy will be a keynote speaker at the 2020 B2W Software User Conference, and a senior strategist from construction consulting firm FMI will lead a unique panel discussion on innovation and technology. The annual event for B2W users runs March 6-8 in Las Vegas, prior to CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2020, North America’s largest construction trade show.
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Individually, each of these habits can improve a contractor’s ability to estimate with maximum speed and accuracy, free up more time to focus on strategy and, ultimately, win more bids at better margins. There is also strong crossover and complimentary effect across all seven, with specialized estimating software and the concept of real-time connectivity playing important supporting roles. Additional details are available in The Ultimate Guide to Heavy Civil Construction Estimating & Bidding Software.
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Switching from paper and spreadsheets to specialized software brings proven advantages to the equipment maintenance workflow. The benefits increase when that fleet management software is connected in real time with the construction scheduling and the field tracking software.
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Training might be the first thing that comes to mind when contractors think about a user conference for construction estimating or construction operations software, but classes presented by the supplier are not the only opportunity to get more proficient and get more out of the technology.
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Any construction management software company can claim a ‘client-driven’ approach to developing new features. The real trick is getting beyond the marketing cliché and backing up that claim. B2W does this with a structured process for encouraging input from users, prioritizing it and taking action. The online B2W Community Portal is a valuable part of this process.
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“When the yellow iron runs, we make money” is a known adage in heavy civil construction, but complex equipment maintenance, uptime and utilization challenges are a constant threat to profitability. Three leading contractors will share strategies and technologies they have adopted to tackle these challenges in an upcoming webinar sponsored by B2W and ENR magazine on Tuesday, October 22 from 2:00-3:00 PM EST.
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Accurate job cost reporting is essential for successful financial management but, in my experience, many companies not using electronic field logs in construction are plagued by their inability to capture two essential data points from the field. Labor hours and equipment hours, key building block of what are typically the two highest job cost items, are frequently inaccurate. This is because many contractors still rely on paper for construction time tracking and to record equipment hours.
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Anytime, anywhere connectivity for mobile devices may seem like a given in modern society, but contractors know the reality. Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity is not always available where heavy civil construction takes place. Even when it is, it may not be the most efficient way for some companies to use essential construction management software in the field.
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The profit killer lurking for many contractors is unplanned downtime. This is the time, outside of scheduled maintenance, when breakdowns or emergency repairs knock a machine out of service. However, contractors with best-in-class maintenance processes supported by software like B2W Maintain can change the equation by taking unplanned downtime rates to five percent or lower.
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Once the estimating and bidding are completed, the daily logs for construction projects become cornerstones to effective management. Foremen and supervisors know timely, accurate data is vital, but let’s face it. There are more productive things they would rather do than record labor, productivity, materials and equipment utilization.
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Best-in-class heavy construction contractors accurately cost their equipment. Doing this requires two things: an efficient method for tracking equipment utilization time on the job and an accurate calculation of what it costs to operate that equipment. The B2W Software ONE Platform can help with both.
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Recent comments from equipment experts using B2W Maintain sum up a simple truth about fleet maintenance and management. Preventive maintenance is essential to keeping maintenance costs low and uptime high, and heavy construction contractors will struggle to sustain a strong PM program without specialized software like B2W Maintain.
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Timely, data-driven decision making is a key to successful heavy construction operations, and contractors can’t make good decisions without gauging actual performance in the field against the expectations established in the estimate. That comparison on a daily basis provides supervisors with the means to address job issues and make corrections days or even weeks before reports can be generated through their company’s accounting/job cost systems.
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Getting crews, equipment and materials to the right place at the right time isn’t easy in the ever-changing construction environment. Doing it effectively goes a long way towards keeping projects on schedule and under budget.
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Heavy construction employees tend to be competitive by nature, and a growing number of managers are using performance data to turn that trait into performance improvements. Relying on tools like B2W Track and B2W Inform, allows them to capture data electronically and use it to populate timely reports and dashboards, which are easy to produce […]
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Implementing a software solution for field tracking and analysis can help construction contractors: Log, track and differentiate all work performed by a crew on a single field log, Keep costs and resource utilization separate for fixed price contract work and T&M work and add T&M work to a fixed-price job to handle additions to work scope and track those items separately from original scope of the contract.
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M&M Excavating used to refer to it as a “dreaded, day-long Monday ritual”, and the experience is all too familiar at heavy civil construction operations of all sizes and specialties. Two or three employees at that company used to spend most of the day pouring over job reports and time cards for work performed at each […]
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“We need technology to attract the younger, tech-savvy employees to grow the workforce industry-wide,” the CFO at M&M Excavating in northern Michigan says.
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In addition to personnel, equipment is essential to heavy civil construction operations. Keeping a fleet on the job and in safe, working order is a challenge with considerable financial risks and rewards. Add maintenance and repair costs to the impact that out-of-commission equipment has on productivity, and the bottom line can suffer significantly. The logical […]
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B2W Software clients review their experiences implementing our construction software, optimizing it and getting buy-in from their teams in the field.
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Any computer user who has ever placed a call to a support hotline knows the difference between a quality support experience and, well, the opposite. But what does quality support really mean? Let’s start by talking about what it isn’t. How many of us have… called a support line, only to be greeted by an […]
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While similarities exist between vertical and horizontal construction projects, there are key differences that alter software requirements.
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