With their headquarters in Tampa, Florida, PCS Civil is a small construction company that primarily focuses on building roads and executing other heavy highway work. A little over four years back, they made the decision to implement both HeavyJob and HCSS Plans into their daily operations. As the Human Resources Manager for the company, Trish Sevigny is responsible for helping PCS get onboarded with new applications.
“We were doing everything manually, and it was a lot of work carrying around the books,” Sevigny says of life before the software. “Now we do everything on the plans. We have one person that uploads and makes the revisions and have one admin that takes on all the plans for all the jobs. It works well. More efficient, especially if there are revisions and [with] the road work we do, there’s constant revisions. So it’s just a great program.”
One benefit that HCSS Plans users unanimously agree can be a game-changer is the ability to communicate instantly.
Empower Your Foremen to Work Smarter
“We have so much better communication with the field and the project managers and the project engineers. It’s right at our fingertips. That is super important for productivity and day-to-day activities on the job."
– Trish Sevigny, HR Manager, PCS Civil
PCS is busy year-round helping shape the future of Florida’s infrastructure. Relying on HCSS Plans comes with the expectation of exchanging lightning-fast information that anyone on their team can access right away.
“It’s super fast. That’s what’s nice about it,” comments Sevigny about the need for speed in the construction industry. “That is a key piece to building roads, whether it’s densities, or having a change on the job, and being able to keep up with the DOT specs, and things like that.”
In the software, there are so many cool ways to digitally annotate your project plans sheet, from writing, drawing, and measuring on them to making instant changes that are needed. For other heavy civil construction operations out there who haven’t gone paperless, PCS is an example of a company that can’t imagine going back to their old ways.
“I don’t know how we used to do it with paper,” Sevigny says before adding, “or even get information from the field. But now, there is no question it comes in the way it needs to. The ease of it for everyone involved makes it good.”
From HeavyBid to HeavyJob to HCSS Plans
A heavy civil contractor in Northern California that’s been around since 1946 is Bay Cities Paving & Grading. During that time, they’ve grown to over 200 employees and use their own in-house fleet of equipment to handle road and freeway jobs that cover everything from paving and grading to sanitary, storm, and water work.
At the most recent HCSS Users Group Meeting, we caught up with Tom Warner, who serves as their Area Manager and has hands-on experience with HCSS products.
“HeavyJob allowed us to take control of our workforce by creating accurate quantity records and then performing daily cost analysis, allowing us to determine whether we're on budget or modify our plan of attack if we are not,” Warner tells us.
Like many HCSS Customers, Bay Cities followed the pattern of implementing HeavyBid, then learning HeavyJob, and about five years back, ultimately adopting HCSS Plans.
“[HCSS] Plans allows me to get information to the field in a timely manner and ensure they have the most accurate information,” Warner continues. “Working with traditional paper plans, there’s room for error, and there's no guarantee the foreman is always working off the current set. [I’m] able to provide them with the most current version of the plans, add my notes to the plans, annotate with any field directions or more insight they might need to do their job quickly, efficiently, and accurately.”
As for specific features, there is no shortage of great ones within HCSS Plans. Personally, one of Warner’s favorite aspects is the ability to compare sheets.
“Not only can you compare revisions on a single sheet - an older version versus the newer version - you can also compare cross sheets as well,” he says. “For example, you can identify if you're going to have a conflict with your electrical line compared to your storm drain line.”
On that same note, eliminating rework has been one of the biggest advantages for Bay Cities’ management.
“Again, just by having the most up-to-date plan set and then being able to annotate the plans, even if a formal plan sheet has not been provided by the owner, you can create an annotation, attach a picture, [and] attach an email directive so that the field has that information without having to look in multiple places."
– Tom Warner, Area Manager, Bay Cities Paving & Grading
Help Fellow Employees Realize They Can Say Goodbye to Paper
Importantly, utilizing HCSS software (and specifically HCSS Plans paired with HeavyJob) can help your operation:
- Do away with printing out any paper and ensure that your information is available to anyone who has a tablet or smartphone. This way you don't have to worry about trying to print out multiple plan sets for the field.
- It also encourages the use of technology for the field, which boosts operational efficiency – that’s really the entire point of both HeavyJob and HCSS Plans.
"Once they see the benefits of it," Warner comments, "then they can really get behind the product and start to become a partner in the process of utilizing the technology."
Learn More
Are you a HeavyBid or HeavyJob user who’s interested in getting more out of the software by implementing HCSS Plans?
Reach out to your Customer Success rep to explore using more of the platform and start unleashing greater efficiency and profitability in future contracts.
