The Hardy Corporation discovers Procore isn’t just for GCs

The Challenge

The Hardy Corporation, a mechanical contractor in Birmingham, Alabama, had long struggled to achieve digital transformation, relying instead on spreadsheets, emails and employees’ memories to track vital information. The result was frequent errors, delays, miscommunications and duplicate work, such as having multiple foremen stacked up on a single job.

The Solution

The Hardy Corporation found the solutions it needed in Procore. Providing a single repository for all of Hardy’s critical data, Procore streamlined workflows, enabling smoother communication, faster decision-making and more efficient workforce management. Procore’s ease of use and hands-on training made it easy to deploy the software across the entire company, showcasing the power of technology to optimize the business.

The Results

• Saved time by having all critical information in one place, allowing the team to focus on future goals
• Streamlined decision-making by centralizing RFIs, drawings, and submittals, keeping everyone aligned
• Reduced personnel overlaps and strategically deployed skilled workers, enabling Hardy to pursue more projects

A Resistance to Technology Was Costing the Company Money — and Opportunities

Founded in 1943 as a mechanical contracting company serving the emerging commercial air conditioning market, the Hardy Corporation has grown into a nationally recognized, open shop HVAC, plumbing, piping and full-service contractor. As the industry went increasingly digital, Hardy needed to modernize its approach — but an overall resistance to adopting new solutions was holding it back, with a scattershot approach to data resulting in poor communication, costly delays and scheduling mishaps.

Though the need for digital transformation was clear to some, others were afraid that they would be paying for expensive new tools that employees might not even use, or that those tools would become obsolete within a few years. “From a technology perspective, it's really hard to say where the industry's going to be in five to 10 years,” says Jay Gilchrist, Business Solutions Specialist, Hardy Corporation. Having worked with GCs that used Procore, Gilchrist knew from experience how it could help with certain core functions that would always be needed. “What we do know is we still need field workers, we still need that communication. We still need help managing programs.”

Procore? That’s just for GCs.

However, many in the company had bought into the pervasive myth that specialty contractors don’t necessarily need Procore, particularly if they’re working with general contractors who use it. “Some people think Procore is just a tool for GCs,” says Gilchrist. “But do subcontractors not have alignment issues? We still have to print prints and drawings. We still have to send RFIs, and we still have all the same needs that a GC would have in terms of managing a project.”

Working with Procore directly helped Hardy see the reality behind the myth. Rather than being limited to the Procore tools a GC allowed them to use, Hardy was now able to access the full spectrum of capabilities, equipping the team to more easily perform everyday essentials like getting automatic updates in the field and dropping their own to-dos and punch list items directly onto drawings.

“There are a lot of things that you can do with your own Procore account that just using a GC’s is not going to cover,” says Gilchrist. “In my experience, Procore is an essential tool for a subcontractor.”

Everyone Is on the Same Page — and Safer Because of It

Deploying skilled workers for maximum impact and efficiency across projects and keeping track of where everyone should be is a challenge for any construction company. But doing so without a centralized, accessible schedule is nearly impossible. With Procore Workforce Planning, Hardy was not only able to identify underutilized team members, it was able to improve scheduling so the company could take on more work. “We used Workforce Planning to get the details of scheduling out of one person's head and make it publicly accessible for our team,” says Gilchrist. “It really helped us understand something we already knew but could never see: we could take on more projects if we spread our supervisors out more.”

Likewise, BIM modeling has allowed the BIM and field teams to be on the same page, helping Gilchirist and his team reduce rework:“When we can get the field team and the BIM team on the same page at the same time, it's very easy to see errors before they actually happen,” he says.

Of course, reducing errors and increasing organization is pointless without improving safety. With Procore Inspections, Hardy can create a comprehensive set of inspection checklists that can be reused and customized for each individual project. “Procore has helped us with quality and safety standards by making it a consistent thing that we do every time we're on a jobsite,” says Gilchrist. “We can go through the same inspection every time, so we don't miss anything. It's a great checklist, and it helps us prevent accidents.”

Converting the Tech Skeptics

Working with Procore has transformed Hardy in ways the company hadn’t expected. In addition to being more organized, streamlined, prosperous and safe, Hardy now finds itself far more open to using technology across all aspects of its business. Gilchrist accounts this turnaround not just to the results they’ve seen with Procore, but the ease with which they were able to adopt the tools. “The built-in training really helped our people master Procore very quickly, so we were able to see results soon after getting started,” he says. “Now, we’re doing a lot of technology-based things that we’d had no experience with before, like using iPads and different kinds of software out in the field.”

“For specialty contractors that are on the fence about Procore, I would just ask them, Do you have problems with communication or getting your team all on the same page? That's the kind of thing that you get Procore for,” Gilchirst says. “It's really hard to think about what Hardy would be like without using Procore. It's essential to our business operations at this point.”