Procore Helps Life Time Make a Happier, Healthier World

The Challenge

As a company dedicated to making the world happier and healthier, Life Time is always looking for ways to make life easier for their people. Years before construction management software was commonplace, the company was in search of a solution that could drive operational efficiencies by standardizing their processes and serving as a common source for all their critical data. It was especially important that it was easy to use so everyone in the field and office could collaborate.

The Solution

Life Time decided to give Procore a shot after hearing about it from other general contractors in the area that they respected. Once they started, there was no going back. The project teams were instantly hooked, and six years later, Life Time continues to add new Procore tools to help improve their business.

The Results

• From design phase to closeout, Procore is used to manage critical processes and keep everyone on the same page
• Life Time worked with Procore to create an integration with its ERP, Workday, streamlining every aspect of financial management on every project
• With all their data in one place and the ability to easily generate detailed reports, Life Time never has to wonder about the state of their business

‘This is a platform that was built for us.’

Life Time is on a mission to build happy, healthy lives. Based in Chanhassen, Minn., the company designs, builds and operates luxury athletic health clubs, with more than 170 currently in operation. Life Time is a dynamic owner that delivers new clubs in multiple ways, from partnering with local GCs and acting as a construction manager to leveraging its in-house general contractor to build ground-up prototypes and build outs.

As a Property Development Team focused on growth and remodeling health clubs, Life Time knew from the beginning that standardizing their procedures would make every build more efficient and ensure the highest level of quality. The company also wanted to cut down on miscommunications and wasted time resulting from people working on different versions of drawings, change orders and punch lists. When Life Time project teams started hearing about Procore from other general contractors in the area, it didn’t take long for them to decide to give it a shot.

“Once the team used Procore on their first project, there was no stopping,” says Neal Katorosz, Senior Manager of Construction Technology at Life Time. “The team members literally voted with their feet and said, ‘This is a platform that was built for us.’”

“They loved that it wasn't an accounting system where drawings or RFI’s were an afterthought, but a tool literally built by construction team members for other construction team members,” he says.

Six years later, working with Procore has helped Life Time connect all the phases of construction, from their pre-construction teams managing the design and drawings to their project management teams managing progress and RFIs to their business ownership teams managing punch list items and making sure that every club is up to their brand standards. “As an owner, Life Time has a historical repository of past projects in Procore — all of the history, all of the RFIs, all of the drawings,” says Katorosz. “If our facility operations team is trying to make a decision about opening a wall, we probably have a 360 degree photo stored in Procore that shows them exactly what's on the other side.”

And the relationship has only grown over time. After starting out with Procore Management and Quality & Safety, Life Time has added tools like Project Financials, Invoice Management, Analytics and BIM. And they recently integrated Procore with its ERP, Workday.

“We use Procore to create operational efficiencies by storing all of our data in the same place, and we can use Procore Reports and Analytics to get information and insights into what's happening in our business,” says Katorosz. “But out of everything we do in Procore, the thing we appreciate most is how dynamic the product is.” As longtime partners, Procore and Life Time have grown together, with Life Time helping shape Procore’s development by sharing their evolving needs and challenges.

“They’re not just a software company that's interested in having a sales call,” says Katorosz. “Procore wants to build a relationship with you and understand the use cases that you're trying to solve for, and they have a team of people that are passionate about the construction industry and want to solve real-world problems.”

A custom ERP integration becomes a core product

One such use case was integrating with Life Time’s ERP, Workday. Life Time had wanted for years to adopt Procore Financials, but was hesitant to do so because there was no Workday integration. Recently, Life Time and Procore partnered to make that happen. “We were the first customer to go live with the Procore Workday connector,” says Katorosz. The integration lets Life Time have all of its financials, vendors, WBS codes and contracts integrated, while still allowing them to make payments out of Workday.

Though the integration started out small, Procore soon added other features that Life Time and other clients were asking for. “The Procore team has responded incredibly fast to all the feedback and all the use cases,” says Katorosz. “They took those ideas and rapidly turned them into core product, so we’re no longer on an island with a custom API integration. Now we're using a standard product with out-of-the-box integrations, and it's working really well.”

When Life Time needs management technologies that Procore doesn’t provide, Katorosz turns to Procore Marketplace, which gives users access to over 150 partner solutions, like StructionSite. “We use StructionSite to capture 360 degree photos of all of our clubs,” says Katorosz. Life Time has over 16 million square feet of clubs, and their goal is to take 360 degree photos of each one. “This benefits the project teams so that they don't have to travel as far when they're trying to come up with scopes for remodels or communicate progress to others offsite.” Procore also integrates with StructionSite so the 360 degree photos can be synced to albums inside the platform, making for a seamless user experience. “Project teams can't tell where StructionSitestops and Procore begins.”

Moving at the pace of progress, together

Having learned about Procore through other GCs, Life Time is eager to return the favor. “If you're a GC or an owner that's considering Procore, you should check them out,” says Katorosz. “Procore's dynamic platform allows you to not only manage the project, but get insights into your data and provide a tool that team members are going to adopt. It's not something that you have to push from the office. They're going to pull it from the field.”

That eagerness among teams to adopt the platform isn’t just because Procore is easy to use. By providing the tools that Life Time needs to streamline its business — all in one place — Procore empowers their teams to be more effective, more nimble, and to spend less time on process and more time doing the work that makes the company unique.

“Procore moves at the same pace as Life Time,” says Katorosz. “We have a dynamic pipeline, and we're constantly reevaluating the projects, the timing and the resources that it takes to deliver those projects. Procore is able to keep up by allowing us to create all of our project financials, all of our project drawings, everything that has to do with construction administration in one platform.”

With more time to focus on work, Life Time is better able to make the world a healthy place, one club at a time. As Katorosz puts it, “Procore helps Life Time achieve our mission and support a healthy way of life by allowing us to grow and add more clubs to reach more members and serve more communities.”