Procore Workforce Planning is the cutting edge solution for Prime Build

The Challenge

For Prime Build, a general contractor based in New South Wales, Australia, workforce management has always been top of mind—but they were ill equipped to effectively navigate their people from job to job. Their Excel sheet that was bursting at the seams was their faulty source of workforce information, and led to frequent frustration in labor meetings.

The Solution

Prime Build needed a digital platform to replace their tedious spreadsheet solution. That’s where Procore Workforce Planning came in—removing the difficult, time consuming Excel sheet and instead providing a single source of truth with accurate data.

The Story

Prime Build is a rapidly growing general contractor based in New South Wales, Australia that leverages technology to handle dozens of projects spread out over a large geographical area. An early adopter of construction technology, Prime Build has spent over a decade ensuring they are equipped with the right tech to support their business and clients.

But in early 2019, they still hadn’t solved the challenge of workforce management, and were managing their workforce in a huge Excel spreadsheet that wasn’t up to the task. A weekly labor update meeting would grind to a halt while everyone waited for the bloated Excel file with more than 1,000 lines to open. It was difficult to compare and understand what was happening across jobs in different states.  Tim Thompson, Director and Co-Founder of Prime Build, knew there had to be a solution.

“Resource management and forecasting has always been a huge challenge,” Thompson says. “If you have ten people trying to hop into an Excel spreadsheet, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

Prime Build searched for a platform that could provide real-time information on scheduling and resources at both the regional and national level. Workforce Planning was the right solution.

“We can have the right conversations a lot quicker. Now, with a few clicks, we can be talking about the right things at the right time,” says Thompson.

Prime Build chose Workforce Planning because it offered the ability to customize workforce management and realize savings with accurate, up-to-date information on a cloud-based platform.

Customized, Cloud-Based Platform

Workforce Planning provided a custom platform that met the needs of each division. Managers were able to see and allocate available resources, while directors at the national level could shift resources between divisions.

“With Workforce Planning, we could really set up the platform to handle the projects we do,” Thompson says.

Ditching the Spreadsheet Saves Time

The Excel file that threatened to crash the weekly meeting was replaced with a digital interface—a cloud-based platform that lets everyone move at their own pace and drill down into projects in real-time. Thompson estimates this one change saves Prime Build at least three to four hours every week.

With Workforce Planning, Prime Build can quickly and efficiently look at the current project mix in order to plan for new work and onboard new employees.

Powering Growth ‍with Improved Forecasting

Prime Build receives a host of tenders and now, through Workforce Planning, the team has the ability to look at a single page that tells whether or not a team is available to allocate to a new project.

“Workforce Planning gives us a view into when we should chase work and when we’re at capacity,” says Thompson.

With a clearer approach to forecasting potential resources required on current and future projects, Prime Build is now able to plan total resources by role several months in advance. Prime Build launched a new line of business, shopfitting more than 200 stores across Australia, that leveraged the improved communication and analysis provided by Workforce Planning.

Strengthening Culture ‍at Prime Build

A stronger grasp about where and how people were being utilized enables Prime Build to focus on the onboarding process. The contracting firm can be thoughtful about when it is hiring and how new hires are trained. Workforce Planning also helped Prime Build navigate the economic challenges presented by the Coronavirus pandemic. Management shifted crews to regions where work was available in order to keep workers employed and position the company for future growth. With Procore Workforce Planning, the team is now equipped with the right tech to keep building “The Prime Build Way.”