Read the article in Construction Outlook magazine - July 2019, page 73
3-Part Series: A Modern Software Platform at RJV Construction
NOTE: This is the first in a three-part series on software technology at RJV Construction Corp. This article covers the company’s approach to estimating and field tracking workflows. The next two articles will focus on equipment maintenance and electronic forms.
Querino Pacella, vice president and estimator at RJV Construction
The Pacella name has been associated with pipework in Massachusetts since the 1920’s. Today, core values of honesty, integrity, hard work and determination that have served the family business, now known as RJV Construction Corp. for close to a century are supported by a relatively new addition.
RJV has added a modern, unified construction software platform over the past decade to manage and connect its estimating, field tracking and equipment maintenance workflows. Technology has also helped the company convert from paper forms to electronic forms for many key processes and utilizes real-time data to manage operations more effectively.
RJV Construction was an early adopter of specialized software for construction estimating at a time when many underground utility contractors in New England and throughout the country were still using spreadsheets as their primary tool.
Vice president and estimator Querino Pacella says the company spent many years relying on and customizing Excel spreadsheets to build bids. “We found it to be very time consuming and eventually decided to take estimating to another level by investing in specialized software,” he recalls. “The biggest advantage to using this software is setting up the cost database and creating the workflow ahead of time; it’s a big time saver,” he adds.
In addition to providing a standardized process and eliminating the formula errors often associated with spreadsheets, estimating software allows heavy construction contractors like RJV to download standardized cost item databases frequently provided by MassDOT’s or other municipal project owners. Contractors can then pre-populate these databases with their own pricing information. “We can then create bids in a fraction of the time it used to take us with spreadsheets,” Pacella confirms.
The added estimating speed has provided a follow-on benefit for RJV Construction beyond the chance to bid on and win more projects. “I can spend more time focusing on the finer details of my bids rather than on creating and setting them up,” Pacella explains. “That’s allowed us to be more accurate and aggressive with our bidding and, in turn, has made the company more profitable.”
With the estimating software in place, Pacella and his team turned their attention to a similar opportunity to replace spreadsheets with specialized software for its field tracking and analysis workflow. Real-time reporting from the field and the chance to easily compare that information on actual labor, equipment and production quantities with the estimate as the job is progressing have been the key advantages.
Field logs were previously completed using Excel. Project Manager Matt DeLuca says the process was time consuming and that accuracy was a challenge. “Somebody can easily move a decimal place or double type a number, and you might not see it until the end of the month,” he explains.
The biggest drawback, however, was lag time in receiving vital data from the field. Spreadsheets were e-mailed to the office where they had to be processed. Often, a week or even two weeks would elapse before an issue in the field would be translated back to the office.
Now, superintendents, foremen, and operators at RJV are equipped with iPads and complete daily field logs in the specialized application.
“It actually saves a ton of time,” says Chris Gates, a superintendent at RJV. “We’re able to keep track of what the crews do every day easily, probably in a matter of minutes.”
Pacella says his team sees the data on labor, equipment and quantities that day or the following morning. They also look at reports between estimating and field tracking software to compare what is going on in the field versus the estimate.
“We see within less than 24 hours if there’s a problem on a project, so it can be addressed or corrected,” says Pacella. “In the past, that might have gone on for a week or so, and that impacts the bottom line.”
Pacella and DeLuca say that they use that data to make more informed and more immediate decisions. They might, for example, send an additional crew or a different crew to a site where production is lagging or move a crew if production is ahead of schedule.
“We would never go back to the old way we did things because, with the software, the reporting is basically instantaneous,” Chris Gates concludes. “What we do in the field is visible to management immediately. We’re not losing a week or two of production time before we realize if we need to make any adjustments on site.”
