A heavy civil contractor crew chief or superintendent may waste almost 20 percent of their time on this one single task.
Making sure each crew member knows which project they should be on, its location, and what work they will be doing so they can come prepared—it seems simple. But a distributed team that may not have the most polished business communication skills and project details that change from day to day make sure it is not.
One software product category that aimed to change this was construction field productivity software. A recent study even identified this as the single most significant software category in construction.
So why aren’t things getting easier?
Field Productivity vs Construction Operations Software
One reason for this is the way that field productivity software came about. Construction software for back-office processes like finance and estimating did not extend well into the field. Over time, some of these companies added field productivity modules, designed primarily to issue job tickets to crews and even equipment and report back productivity against the plan.
Again, this software was designed to make life easier for the back-office people, not necessarily for those executing in the field.
Standalone field productivity solutions came about, and from these the new category of construction operations software, including IVO Systems, emerged. This software was less focused on that financial manager trying to determine what he could bill a project owner for that month, which is important, and more concerned with making sure resources required to drive productivity are accounted for and available.
That is hard enough, and often involves extensive phone and email time getting the word to each crew member. And then if messages are sent or voice mails left, that crew member may simply say they did not receive them.
Modern construction operations software automates this busy work away. A solution like IVO Systems’ ScheduleVO sends an automated text message to each crew member assigned to a project. When the crew member clicks a link in the message, it opens the application, with all the information that crew member needs for the next day—location, time, utility locations, even a list of other workers assigned to facilitate carpooling.
And once the link is clicked, the supervisor can see confirmation, proof positive the message was in fact received.
To find out how IVO Systems solves this and other problems, request a demo. And to learn more about the value leaks in your business we can help you fix, read it here.
