Tech-empowered field teams boost labor productivity

The Challenge

Anderson Mechanical has always been an integral player in the HVAC installation market surrounding the East Coast's District/Maryland/Virginia area of the East Coast. However, the increasing demand of the market and their quickly growing team highlighted inefficiencies and communication disconnects that had increased potential to impact productivity, rework and team morale. To maintain the local Sterling, VA touch that kept their customers coming back, they knew they had to focus on increasing accountability, improving communication, and enhancing efficiency. Anderson needed a platform to help facilitate these improvements by increasing visibility and generating timely data for real-time course corrections.

The Solution

By leveraging the Procore platform, Anderson Mechanical collected and analyzed the data across their processes, highlighting their inefficiencies, and creating opportunities to configure new processes. Transparency was important for Anderson, and at the heart of creating new processes that their teams would leverage to ultimately ensure they could control and communicate schedules, materials, costs, plans and change impacts quickly and easily. This transparency led to better employee relationships, more thorough onboarding, and excellent customer relationships.

The Results

• Reduced rework by 15% by empowering field and office teams with the right software tools that boost collaboration and deliver real-time insights
• Achieved $250,000 in annual savings by identifying and quickly rectifying inefficiencies by leveraging KPIs across their material tracking and delivery process
• Doubled headcount in two years, keeping pace with growing DC Metro demands

Keeping Everyone on the Same Page

Anderson’s staff uses a combination of Procore tools including Timesheets, Observations, Inspections, Budget and Reports to get real-time feedback on how projects are running. They use these tools to help bring visibility to the budget, promote communication workflows from field to office, and measure key performance indicators that allow them to continuously improve. This data also helps installers keep track of customer requests and streamlines the entire installation process.

“We have projects that sometimes have 10 to 20 field staff on site and only last one to two months in duration,'' says CEO Tim Anderson. “In the past, we would need accounting to post the hours to the job, which sometimes would take two weeks.”

“Additionally, the field would have to ask the project manager for an update once the hours were posted. Now, with Timesheets, the superintendents can see the hours posted to each cost code at the end of the day, informing them of the potential problems immediately,” says Anderson.

Anderson says increased visibility brings out more open conversations between the field staff and project managers. He says the company now frequently has superintendents telling the project managers how they're doing with labor hours.

Using Procore to Cut Costs

Beyond keeping track of budgeted hours, Anderson needed to identify the reason for their frequent labor budget overages. They brought a consulting firm in and interviewed both their project managers and superintendents and asked what their top challenge was to finishing a job on time. Both groups gave the same answer: material orders.

“The field told the consultants that project managers never had the right or enough material on site to stay productive. The project manager said the field was always late giving the material takeoffs to them. Same problem, two very different sides of the story. This left management staff with the question, ‘Who is right?’” says Anderson.

“With our old workflow, we had to sort through hundreds of emails to figure out who was right. Obviously, this is not a good use of time nor is it scalable. So we looked to Procore for a solution.”

Anderson created a new process that uses a combination of Observations, Forms, and Photos to increase visibility. The superintendent makes a list of material they need for a specific project with a due date. After that, an email is generated and sent to a distribution list. The project manager then takes the list and shops the material to their vendors to determine who has the best price. The project manager updates the Observation with a comment stating the expected delivery date and writes a Commitment in Procore for the material.

“Once the material arrives at the warehouse, our warehouse manager takes a photo of the delivery and the packing list and uploads it into Procore by job. The superintendent then gets an email with proof of delivery and a copy of the packing list. The material is then delivered to the jobsite, which is documented via Forms by a delivery driver. The field super then closes the material Observation.”

Anderson says there are so many potential gaps in the process of ordering and receiving these materials But with the help of Procore’s workflows and tracking, they were able to save $250,000 annually on what would have been wasted labor and material.

“We've reduced rework by up to 15%,” says Anderson. “We've been able to create an audit trail to see where we have problems with followup corrective action. We've become more efficient, and improved every day. Our field is happier because we're being more productive, and they take more pride in their work,” says Anderson.