Concrete and civil contractor grows and scales with end-to-end solution

The Challenge

Fessler & Bowman, a concrete and civil commercial contractor based in Michigan, wanted to improve cohesion across its four regional offices to maximize productivity, performance and profitability. In order to achieve this, they looked for the right platform to connect all their teams with a single source of truth that could provide accurate data at their fingertips.

The Solution

On the hunt for a solution that would help elevate the business and improve their processes, Fessler & Bowman became an early adopter of Procore, taking on nearly the full suite of products when many specialty contractors only tried a few tools. Taking this leap of faith has paid off for Fessler & Bowman, and they’ve been able to efficiently grow the company from its humble beginnings into an industry-recognized organization.

The Results

• More than doubled the workforce fueled by data-driven decisions that attract talent and impress clients
• Holistic workforce view enables accurate forecasting and effective scaling, helping teams avoid burnout
• Eliminating manual processes increases productivity without sacrificing quality or performance

Building successful relationships—and projects

For sixty years, Fessler & Bowman has been providing quality concrete and civil services as a self-performing contractor. Founded by Don Fessler and George Bowman in 1963 as a residential flatwork and basement wall company, the organization today has developed into a premier contractor across commercial, industrial and infrastructure projects.

Headquartered in Flushing, Michigan, Fessler & Bowman works across the United States with three more regional offices in North Carolina and Tennessee. Since the beginning, the team has been dedicated to “Building Successful Relationships That Last.” This commitment to their customers and trade partners, paired with the right technology, has allowed Fessler & Bowman to grow exponentially across the nation.

Rob Krueger, Vice President of Operations at Fessler & Bowman, recognizes the impact that Procore has had on the organization since adopting the platform:

“Fessler & Bowman has nearly the full product and tool set in the Procore platform and that end-to-end solution is really important to us,” says Krueger. “I've been hearing Tooey [Courtemanche] for nearly a decade now talk about a single source of truth and it really does apply as much today as it did when he first coined that phrase. For our teams, that efficiency part comes in with multiple tools that have familiarity and share data across the platform. This becomes really important as we're trying to grow and scale a company where you're relying on the transfer of that data. It becomes fundamental to our productivity and production that we start with in the field, and we also work and report across the entire platform.”

Improved productivity and performance

Procore has helped Fessler and Bowman’s teams to eliminate manual processes, allowing them to be more productive with digital tools that take less time to use. This has allowed the team to homogenize across their multiple offices so that the same quality work is delivered, no matter where a project is located. This standardization comes back to having a single source of truth in Procore, especially for documentation and communication.

“Procore is the best solution for specialty contractors due to the breadth and width of the product set,” shares Krueger. “The ability for the team to have financial information, quality and safety information, productivity feedback, and highly accurate documents and drawings allows them to do their work and do it well.”

Fessler & Bowman were also happy to find that adoption of Procore went over well in the field. Teams had long struggled with working off of inaccurate drawings and outdated documents, so they were thrilled to have a way to easily access the latest and most accurate information.

“One of the early areas of excitement was in the field teams being aware of the effectiveness and efficiency of Procore always having the latest drawings at their fingertips,” says Krueger.

Attracting talent and work through tech and innovation

Procore not only improved productivity and performance at Fessler & Bowman, but also elevated their reputation in the industry. As an early adopter of Procore, clients and trade partners recognized that Fessler & Bowman had project data at their fingertips while other specialty contractors didn’t. This also meant that incoming workers were attracted to work for a tech-driven organization.

“Procore has helped Fessler & Bowman as a brand to attract more talent, to win more work, and have a great standing with many of our customers and clients because of the industry familiarity with Procore,” shared Krueger. “There were many general contractors and construction managers who were familiar with Procore, and when they learned that we were also utilizing Procore, they could entrust that from a data standpoint, they’re going to have a good source of information from us and we're going to be able to effectively transfer that data to the field. That helped to ensure high productivity meeting complicated, demanding schedules while also performing the work at the highest quality levels.”

Able to look ahead more accurately with Procore, Fessler & Bowman has insight to make smarter decisions to pursue new work and labor. With tools like Workforce Planning, they are able to get a birds-eye view of who needs to be assigned to what job and when.

“The ability for us to kind of have that chess board, as I like to call it, in an active daily meeting with our field leadership to determine what team members are going to what project site tomorrow, how many project sites might they go to tomorrow,” shares Krueger. “It allows us to not only look forward to tomorrow and the things that are necessary to deploy the crews, but also look ahead for the rest of the week.”

The effects of the labor shortage, while felt by everyone in the industry, are alleviated at Fessler & Bowman since they are equipped with the right technology to bring new employees up to speed quickly.

“Today, as we try to bring in talented people out of a limited workforce, many times we're bringing in team members who have very limited knowledge of the construction industry,” says Krueger. “The efficiencies that are developed across technology platforms allow us to bring people in and give them the tools that they can have an immediate impact on the effectiveness of our teams.”

Using Procore has allowed Fessler & Bowman to grow and scale without burning out their team because they have an accurate view of their workforce. This means they can look at their needs and schedules today, tomorrow and into the future. In addition, having Procore has helped Fessler & Bowman to decide what types of projects will best fit their backlog in the coming months to best optimize their team.

Looking to a tech-driven future

Fessler & Bowman understands the impact of having the right tech stack and encourages other organizations to do the same. “It's important for the construction industry to continue to adopt new technology and build efficiencies and effectiveness through the adoption of technology,” says Krueger.

Gone are the days of relying on paper and manual processes. No matter where a team member is, in the field or office, they’re able to stay connected via mobile or desktop within the Procore platform. Over the past few years since adopting Procore, Fessler & Bowman has been able to provide better and better service to their clients with data-driven decisions. By choosing a built-for-construction platform, Fessler & Bowman is able to build for success.

This commitment to equipping their organization with the right technology has allowed Fessler & Bowman to not just flourish, but to continue to build successful relationships that last on every project.