Maximizing project oversight with a unified platform

The Challenge

As a project nears its end, an unintended "sprint mentality” can set in as the builder looks ahead to details of project closure, and open action items get missed in the final-phase momentum. When the project gets turned over, there should be no need to send out "loose end” notifications.

The Solution

Using built-in flexibilities of their digital construction management platform, D.F. Pray’s CIO is able to design customized quality-control-based inspection templates that offer a clear view of remaining action items at project end.

The Results

• Digital platform offers project-wide data transparency, revealing previously hidden efficiency gaps
• Analysis of project data lets D.F. Pray dynamically mold processes to changing competitive environment
• Procore dashboard allows PM a single-view snapshot of real-time project progress through clearly presented data

D.F. Pray Leverages Flexibility

Phil Moran is Chief Information Officer for D.F. Pray—a family-owned GC out of Massachusetts founded in 1959—and he counts on Procore’s adaptability, particularly as manifested in the Inspections tool. "I can make Procore work for any project," Moran says. "Whether it’s residential, small box retail, big box retail, a milk factory in California—it’s just amazing that Procore adapts to any project we’re going into." He elaborates, citing a recent example.

"We’re taking a 33 story building in downtown Toronto—the Simpson Tower—and we’re re-enveloping the entire thing. 13,000 Cintec anchors are holding back the existing concrete while we completely wrap the building in a new exterior and replace all the windows. That’s a great project for Procore because the weather delay feature in the Daily Log has helped us communicate necessary project delays to the owner due to issues like high winds at that elevation and the harsh conditions."

Then and Now

"Before Procore, it was a lot of spreadsheet-format daily field reports, and photos that came in on SD cards. This is back when technology only allowed you to e-mail in 20mb files. A superintendent who had 20 project pictures would have to break them up over 6 e-mails."

Moran pauses and smiles in recollection. "And then you would have to scramble for that information, and then you couldn’t collaborate on it; the information just…existed! There were no follow-up items, no work flow or action items attached to that data." Moran saw the possibilities and ran with them. "Procore gave us the ability to bring the whole team together. I had superintendents that felt they needed to be closer to the rest of the project team from the time the project started. So I built kickoff inspection templates." D.F. Pray’s legacy "10 Operational Best Practices"—handed down from the company founder to the present day—got folded into Moran’s new kickoff template. "We’re going to make sure at kickoff we have all our architect reports, we have our laydown location…" Moran even tweaked the Procore Usage Reports to make them performance analysis tools, comparing projects against fixed KPIs (key performance indicators). "Procore gives us the ability to look at how we operate—and how we’re going to operate 10, 15, 20 years from now, and be able to compete in our market."

Tomorrow Starts Today

"Procore built an ecosystem, an entire market, that never existed," Moran says. He is speaking from the glassy "interview room with a view" at Phoenix’s downtown Convention Center, where Procore’s 5th annual Groundbreak construction technology conference is in full swing. "You can see it with all the exhibitors and innovation labs. Everyone is coming together for the common good: construction." Given that any information-rich endeavor will require the means to organize and optimize all that information, the marriage of data-rich construction with digital technology has been a long-time coming— and is like throwing fuel on a fire. "In construction, information has lived in paper, has lived in word docs and spreadsheets. It never existed in a form that allowed for true collaboration and workflow. It does now. Procore is a perfect fit for us."