A mobile app to enable construction supervisors to be 10 steps ahead on projects and on-site activity, so they can meet their deadlines and budgets.
Carlisle Home’s Construction supervisors, who manage up to 15 houses under construction, experienced many inefficiencies:
-
Carrying around boxes full of documentation
-
Numerous phone calls and text messages to manage construction resources
-
Manually creating tasks and editing their build schedule
-
Spending hours coordinating vendors, build plans, workers, etc.
-
Travelling to their office location once a week to process paperwork
-
Delays in the approval process for purchasing extra equipment or materials
The manual processes involved in managing resource and activity on site resulted in inefficient use of the supervisors’ time, manual repetitive tasks and job frustration. Further, the manual workarounds, rough processes and lack of timely/accurate information created additional challenges and overhead for management. Ultimately these challenges result in delays in the production of homes, impacting revenue and margin.
Collaboration and app creation
Carlisle Homes identified a need for improved efficiency during the construction process of multiple houses in parallel. They needed higher job retention, wanted to attract younger workers and improve a manual paper and phone-based system. To do this they contacted Mobile Mentor to create a mobile solution to better serve the needs of their construction supervisors and managers.
Mobile Mentor collaborated with the construction teams and company’s IT department to develop a new digital mobile framework. This enabled construction supervisors to see 10 steps ahead and manage all job site activity in an efficient and consistent manner.
Build plan on an iPad
BetterBuild has become a game changer for the company. Supervisors can see the entire build plan and the details for each task on each property including the vendors, the purchase orders and key dates. Rather than creating paper task lists and manually contacting and coordinating resources, BetterBuild allows supervisors to view each project holistically and digitally “call-up” each of the subcontractors.
Managing purchase orders
Purchase orders are visible within the BetterBuild App for every task. Supervisors can view a purchase order and resend it to a vendor, subcontractor or supplier at any time.
In addition, Supervisors can create “Extra To Order” (ETO) Purchase Order, where additional material is needed or where equipment is damaged or has been stolen.
These ETO’s follow a workflow approval process based on their value and project managers can approve or reject each ETO using a separate Approvals App.
Call ups
Using BetterBuild, supervisors no longer have to manually call or text each vendor or subcontractor to co-ordinate and book time onsite to complete their task. Instead, supervisors send a digital “Call Up”, with the task, supporting documentation and a requested delivery date. The call up is sent via email and provides a link to the Call Up web app – which the vendor / subcontractor uses to accept or reject the request.
No longer are the construction supervisors required to pay out of pocket until reimbursement, keep track of paper forms and make manual calls. These features significantly reduced time delays and other work mishaps, like missed billing opportunities or spending more than what was in the budget.
Mobile Mentor designed the “Call Up” feature leveraging the BlinkMobile platform for the app and Jitterbit to integrate with the construction companies backend system – Microsoft Dynamics AX.
Outcomes of the app
BetterBuild saves time and money for the construction company as follows:
-
Holistic view of each “Build Plan” with a visual status of every task;
-
Delegating tasks to vendors and colleagues without using email, calls and text;
-
Digital “call up” for each trade to reduce project slippage;
-
Digital approval process for additional materials;
Mobile Mentor build the BetterBuild app leveraging the BlinkMobile platform and Jitterbit to integrate with the client’s Microsoft Dynamics AX environment. For more information, please contact one of our mobile consultants.
About Carlisle Homes
Carlisle Homes celebrates over 15 years of building quality homes across Melbourne and Geelong. Having completed over 9,000 homes, Carlisle has evolved to become a market leader in new home building.
