Rummel Construction, Inc. (RUMCO) came to HCSS looking for a new way to manage its projects.
For years, the highway and street construction company had relied on handwritten notes and text messages to generate daily cost reports.
But Vice President Carlos Gonzalez said the numbers never quite added up.
“Between our superintendents, our project engineers, and our accounting system, we were getting to where we had three different sets of books,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez wanted to turn Rumco employees into users of data instead of just creators. The company also needed to eliminate the duplication of data, which had become a problem for project management.
Rumco implemented HCSS HeavyJob management software to combat these issues. Starting with a few pilot jobs, a small group of employees worked through the system to fully understand it before introducing it to all jobs across the company.
“We now have about 25-30 active jobs at once using HeavyJob,” Gonzalez said. “We have one guy using the feld version on a laptop, but pretty much everyone else is using HeavyJob Mobile on iPads.”
The HeavyJob Mobile app has allowed foremen to work from the feld and cut down on paperwork. HeavyJob sends reports of all jobs’ daily quantities, cumulative quantities, and costs.
“They enjoy having the immediate feedback on how an activity stood, cost-wise,” Gonzalez said. “It has increased their awareness of their operations costs on a much more real time basis. We even created a custom report which is set up on a batch process that goes out through a notifcation system to our managers.”
The report also highlights issues and exceptions, such as when a project manager reports a higher daily quantity than what was budgeted. This gives Rumco’s managers and superintendents a starting point to direct their attention and find problems.
“We can also monitor jobs that are tracking along well,” Gonzalez said. “You can quickly see at a glance that we’re on track.”
Rumco also uses HCSS’s estimating software, HeavyBid. Gonzalez said the combination allows Rumco to get better job cost information back into HeavyBid.
Rumco’s estimators are even using HeavyJob to compare their bids to the actual job totals.
“Since the structure is very similar in HCSS HeavyJob and HeavyBid, it’s easy for them to navigate and look at production,” Gonzalez said. “They can see what crews we actually used and be able to get quicker feedback on how their estimate performed to see how we’re actually doing. Then they can take some of that back to a future bid.”
RUMCO CONSTRUCTION OVERVIEW:
• Previous HeavyBid user
• Used handwritten notes and text messages for daily cost reporting
• No solid awareness of job progress or success
• Purchased HeavyJob Mobile on iPads, HeavyJob Field on laptops
• More than 30 active jobs at once using HeavyJob
HOW HCSS HEAVYJOB HELPED:
• Foremen able to report numbers from the feld
• Reduced paperwork for feld and offce
• Custom reporting with automatic notifcations
• Estimators comparing bids to actual job totals
RESULTS:
• Increased awareness of real-time operation costs
• Field workers become data users, not just data creators
“We enjoy having the immediate feedback on how an activity stood, cost-wise. It has increased awareness of operation costs on a much more real-time basis.”