Unless you returned recently from a long visit to some nearby planet, you are well aware of the tremendous evolution in both communication and computing technology over the last 25 years here upon mother Earth—and of late, especially when it comes to portable devices.
Moore’s law—Gordon Moore’s 1965 prediction that integrated circuit density will continue to double every 18 months or so (while the price will halve)—is, it seems, very much alive and kicking.
Today, there is actually more computing power in a smartphone than in the IBM 360 mainframes of the 1960s, which covered a small city block. As a comparison: Had Moore’s law applied to the auto industry, the Rolls Royce would now cost about five bucks and get more than 80,000 miles to the gallon.
Today, you put a mainframe in your pocket without a second thought.
Cutting Edge
Remember the fax machine? Twenty-five years ago these things were cutting edge—slower than molasses, but innovative and wonderful nonetheless. Today they are either wholly replaced by email attachments and cloud-based file sharing applications, or they sit in some corner gathering dust, feeling unloved.
Every day seems to bring some new break-through or bleeding-edge product that—if the ad copy is to be believed—we cannot live without.
But how have these technological advances affected our industry, and does the now ubiquitous portability technology help or hinder us in our day-to-day tasks and projects?
Industry Fit
Technology advances do not fit everywhere. You do not need Building Information Modeling for a small renovation, nor do you need a smartphone to make a phone call—a regular old landline will do just fine.
What areas, then, of our industry could be managed via portable devices and applications, and what areas should be so managed?
Peter Battisti, a consultant at SRCA (Subcontractor Resource Center of America), shared a comprehensive list of what applications could work on portable devices: “Production tracking, pricing changes, purchasing, punch lists, schedule tracking, time cards, job costing, contracts, temperature and humidity measurement, photography, documentations, pre-construction information, personnel tracking, daily logs, extra work tickets, vehicle and equipment tracking, small tool tracking and of course estimating, business development, modeling and presentations. These could all be managed with portable devices today. As for what should be portable, I’d say that all task-related actions—such as punch lists—should be managed with portable devices.”
From a GC’s perspective, Andre Grebenstein, project manager at The Martin Group in New Jersey, sees a good fit with “daily site reports, deficiency and punch list tracking, photo documentation linked to subcontractors and daily reports, as well as remote surveillance of site (via earth cam).”
Then he adds, “In our business, estimating stays in the office. Also, certain database management functions need to remain in the office to maintain integrity, consistency and soundness of the input.”
Robert Aird, a Certified EIFS Inspector and president of Robert A. Aird, Inc. in Maryland, sees few limitations in today’s portable technology, “Today, we can manage almost any part of a business from anywhere—office, field or home. There are businesses without offices that seem to function well. Equipment, software and the cloud have all revolutionized how we do business.
“As for which areas should be portable; from my perspective, project management is the area that can most profoundly benefit from portable technology. Today, assuming a good bandwidth Internet connection, a project manager can research details for a project, shop for materials, write change requests, and read the RFIs, etc., from a computer on the job site.”
Dave DeHorn, chief estimator at Brady Company/Los Angeles, Inc., agrees that most, if not all, construction areas can be managed with portable devices; but when it comes to estimating, he is quite adamant that it stay in the office: “Our estimates and bids use many in-office resources. All plans come to us electronically, and everything is taken off electronically. You need a very fast Internet connection to deal with the amount of drawings and data involved, and you need a lot of computing power for the number crunching, none of which is available in the field, yet.”
“As for what should be automated and portable,” DeHorn continues, “I’d pick change orders as one of the first. Today, the estimator who did the job originally handles them, but they could and should be done in the field.”
Gene Cox, president of Custom Drywall in California, agrees with DeHorn: “Estimating is done in house, no exceptions.”
Michael Chambers, president of J & B Acoustics in Ohio, says the same thing: “Estimating stays in the office. Change orders are best done in the field.”
Richard Huntley, president of WeKanDo Construction, Inc. in Puerto Rico, says, “What should stay in the office is the estimating and payroll, though the payroll time data can come from portable devices.”
Roger Olson, president of Sig Olson & Sons Plastering in Minnesota, feels that while most areas could be managed by portable devices on-site, “At a minimum, information can be gathered in the form of photos or digital input, then sent back to the office and processed there. I don’t think the construction industry is ready for full-scale portable management. It should be added in small increments.”
Mike Heering, president of F.L. Crane & Sons, Inc. in Mississippi, reports that he is already quite a ways down the portable road: “We are doing a fair amount of portable management already. At this point most of our foremen have either iPads or Android tablets out in the field. We don’t do estimating in the field, however. That’s all done in the office. The same is true for scheduling and time management that is still all done in the office.”
“Foremen reports are emailed in, Heering adds. “Also, we use Dropbox a lot. [Dropbox.com is a file-sharing website.] We drop a file in there and if the application is open on your device, you’ll see a message that something’s waiting for you.
“Say we receive a change order or a change in the drawing that affects that project. We immediately drop it in Dropbox so the guys in the field have access to the changes immediately. We used to do this by paper before. That could take days. Now, it is almost instantaneous.
“Also, today we put our punch lists on the tablets, and we highlight and check off the items as we do them. Once complete, we email the list to the GC right away, which speeds up payments, too.
“As for payroll, that’s entirely in-house, but we are now implementing AboutTime’s Biometric Authentication technology, which uses fingerprints for employee clock-in and clock-out in the field. This will produce very accurate time records, and no one employee can clock in for someone else. All the data are then sent to our payroll application in the office.”
With all this technological advancement, Heering says that “portable devices have both sped up and improved the accuracy of the communication between field and office—tremendously.”
Dick Mettler at the Northwest Wall & Ceiling Contractors Association sees few limitations as well: “All these areas can be managed from the field. A lot of our contractors have their foremen report payroll hours from the field. When it comes to change orders and punch lists, the GCs often set up dedicated Web pages that we then access from the field.
“Looking at myself, most of my communication these days is non-verbal—email, texting. It speeds up communication a lot.
“Also, on job-walks, the guys take pictures of anything relevant and send them back to the office as email attachments. The office can then review and solve any problem and email back a solution.
“I believe the actual story is that we’re seeing greater and greater real-time synchronization between field and office.”
Chuck Taylor, director of operations at Englewood Construction Management, an Illinois general contractor, also stresses the improved speed of communication: “We use portable devices for daily updates, for photos, for reports, for updates on details on, say, certain wall sections.
“Some things need to stay in the office, though. Accounting, for example. Estimating as well, as it requires a lot of bandwidth and computing power. Yes, we need good real-time information about the site, but estimating should be done in office.
“Also, we use Procore, which you could describe as a Dropbox for the construction industry, quite extensively.”
Dirk Squire, owner of Squire Construction, a California-based GC, has this take on the coulds and should: “The evolution of electronic devices has enabled us to do live feeds in the field; you can have architects, structural engineers and clients see, in real-time, what is going on at the site without actually going out to the project. I believe this has changed how we do business.
“I also think that in these days, you have to be pretty up on current technology to stay ahead of, or at least level with, your competition.”
Gerry Roach, owner of Forks Lath and Plaster in North Dakota, has this take on the portable issues, “Portable devices in the field would be best used for change orders and punch lists,” he says. “In our line of business, however, most electronic devices are wrecked pretty fast. Let’s face it, our guys are manual laborers, not office workers—what smartphone can take a 30-foot drop? The only portability that saves time for us is cell phones. But like I said, no smartphone or iPad can take a 30-foot drop, while paper can.”
Gabriel Castillo of Pillar Construction, Inc. in Virginia weighs in thoughtfully: “I am a tech guy and I like to use technology, but I am not a Facebook person. I am a shake-their-hands, see-their-faces person. This new communication process falls short in some areas. The written message lacks the non-verbal cues that you get from a person-to-person communication. Electrons do not transmit sentiments. It is up to the recipient to assign emotions to the text, and that can sometimes be risky.
“We do work in more than 15 states as well as overseas. These devices definitely have shortened distances and response times. But remember, we are dealing with humans, too.”
Time and Money
The rub of this whole issue, however, is whether or not portable devices like iPads, tablets and smartphones save time and money.
In Battisti’s experience, “As contractors don’t yet know their true digital costs, I believe current portable devices and software are actually losing us money. For some reason, contractors have decided that, as a sales tool, they need to incorporate as much technology as possible into their projects, but they bring little to the bottom line unless you know what your digital costs are and include them in your bid.”
Aird has a different take: “While we have not, as yet, embraced all the portable options available, cellphones, laptops and digital cameras have enabled very much faster communication between the field and the office. There was a time when we had weeks to respond to an architect’s or general contractor’s RFI. Today, we have days and in some cases hours to respond. Without electronic communication and computing, that would be impossible.”
DeHorn views this pragmatically: “You may be able to do things faster out in the field, but since you also have to purchase the $1,600 laptops, you may not save money in the end. Portability saves us time, for sure, but not necessarily money.
“Also, on-site Wi-Fi is not always available, and that rules out portable computing. For example, all subs on our current LAX project are assigned to the basement levels at LAX, with very bad or no Wi-Fi connectivity. And it’s not like we can step outside, we’d be run over by airplanes.
“Most things can be handled by smartphones, of course, but the RFIs we see for the LAX job come in sizes of 10 to 15 megabytes of info, which is more than a cell phone can handle, so now you need a tablet.”
Charles Antone, a consultant with R.J. Kenney Associates, Inc. in Massachusetts, sees saving time especially in communicating. “With the use of images and good notes,” he says, “situations and problems are easily and clearly communicated back to the office or to the GC.”
Craig Daley, AWCI’s president and president of Daley’s Drywall in California, sees definite time-saving: “We use Dropbox extensively to share those parts of the job file the foremen need, including plans, specs, RFIs and field reports. Before Dropbox our foreman would file their reports on their hard drives that we then had to access in the office. This created double work, and often incomplete files. Sharing the one Dropbox location is a real time saver.
“Nowadays, our foremen fill out their field reports and extra work orders electronically, and we get them by email the minute they are done. This let’s our PMs know what’s happening while issues are hot, not a week later.
“Also, processing extra work tags the day they are written speeds up the client-approval process, and that helps cash flow.
“Another side benefit is that every document created electronically is readable, no more messy hard-to-read handwriting.”
Olson agrees on the time saving: “It saves time by allowing me to communicate from anywhere with the crew in the field. If problems arise on the job, I am available almost 24/7.”
Heering also sees savings in time and money with portable devices. “Now can receive, price and turn around change orders very rapidly, and have a price to the GC in hours,” he says.
Taylor concurs: “Portability saves us time, absolutely. In the past we would have to print docs and do everything with paper. Electronic communication has speeded everything up and compressed the schedules.
“Still, I’m not sure it saves money, yet. We have the burden of buying the devices and the increased cost of additional IT persons. However, portable devices and electronic communication are quickly becoming the industry standard. You have to use these technologies, or you lose business.
“Of course, if you turn a project over early, you’ll save money, too.”
Mettler takes this view: “Look at cost of electronic devices—they’re dropping daily. Look at the wages, benefits and payroll taxes for your worker; it’s about $520 a day per worker now. Well, that’s the cost of one of these devices. If you save eight employee hours over a month, you’ve paid for the iPad. Even the smaller contractors see the economy of this now.”
Squire says, “Electronic devices in the field help my superintendents save time and money by not having to come to our office to do their paper work. It saves money in the following areas: fuel costs, wear and tear on company trucks, and on payroll expense.”
Castillo says, “I think it saves both time and money. Being able to instantly record work progress, being able to respond to an unexpected condition, being able to access consultants and decision-makers instantly and to then move forward right away definitely saves time and money. I do not want to have a crew and/or equipment sitting idle waiting for a solution to a site condition.”
The Cloud
The cloud is basically a network of very, very large computer centers. Google has a constantly growing one, ditto Amazon. These centers offer—primarily, so far—remote, secure storage of vast amounts of data, and as of late, applications that require nothing more than a good Internet connection and a browser to access and deploy.
Trust. Sounds very good on paper, but can you trust the cloud not to lose or compromise your data?
Battisti says, “There’s no reason not to trust that everything will be stored and accessed just fine, but access should be limited depending on project type and setup.”
Grebenstein has very good reasons to trust the cloud: “Our business is about 80 percent construction of these data centers. If we didn’t believe in the cloud, we wouldn’t believe in our customer base.”
Huntley agrees: “Yes. Even though the cloud is fairly new, we have yet to run into a problem. In fact, we are currently looking at the option of using Sage 100 Contractor Everywhere, which is a cloud-based app.”
Aird begs to differ: “Not necessarily: If the cloud shuts down for a single contractor, potentially everyone in that system is affected and/or shut down. We have an in-house mainframe and will continue to store our information in-house for the foreseeable future.”
Antone takes this view: “As long as the connection is pretty good, it should not be any less seamless than non-cloud computing.”
Chambers is more cautious: “I trust it to a point. I’ll certainly limit the information I store in the cloud.”
Daley, however, is confident: “We trust the cloud completely and I am surprised to hear how many people don’t trust it these days. Everything is encrypted, and even if our info was hacked, what are they going to get? It’s not like we store nuclear destruction codes in our job files.”
Mettler says, “I’m living with iCloud right now, backing up data to it all the time. I was a little scared of it at first, but I’ve had no issues so I trust it now. I don’t think I’ll keep personal financial data in the cloud, though.”
Taylor doesn’t trust it. “I love physical redundancy,” he says. “I have a friend who lost all of his photos he had scanned and uploaded. He then dumped the actual pics, and then lost them all. I personally back everything up on external hard drives.”
Castillo says he trusts the cloud, but his accountant does not. “There is still the perception of losing control of your information,” he says. “Give us some time to adapt. I trust the ATMs, and I do my banking online, cloud trust will come, too.
Cloud Apps. Some say that cloud applications are a perfect fit for the construction industry, since all you need is a tablet, good Wi-Fi and a browser. Is this the future for our industry, or is it pie in the sky (pun intended)?
Battisti believes “this is putting the cart before the horse. The cloud is of little use unless the devices and software actually do the job. So far, and in most cases, contractors spend more time making their devices and software work than they do building the job.
“Cloud software has yet to improve worker productivity when it comes to actually building things. My observation is that most contractors are now bidding jobs at higher production rates and lower margins, while spending significant money on devices and software.”
Grebenstein says, “I’d say yes, because it optimizes the efforts of the lone IT guy who has to answer to 20 PMs and 20 supers.”
DeHorn says, “I would say it’s a perfect fit. So many people need access to the information from so many different locations. The cloud answers that need.”
Chambers says it really depends on how their software adapts to cloud computing, and Antone believes it’s ideal if there is good connection speed.”
Daley says, “I believe the cloud is perfect for the construction industry. Our foremen have to deal with massive amounts of e-paperwork. By sharing job folders with our office, the office staff can keep these files organized so that everything is neat and tidy the next time they log on.”
Huntley is another fan: “The construction industry has a large amount of information, paperwork and documentation to keep up with for compliance purposes—there are owner/GC contractual agreements, schedules, etc. Having all this available in the cloud allows the main office, the PMs and the supervisors to have all the documentation at their fingertips from wherever they are.
Olson says, “If it’s secure enough, I believe it is the future for our industry. It would be a huge advantage to have all of our job information at all times on the job site.”
Mettler says that “the cloud approach makes perfect sense, though I’m looking for the first Quick Bid cloud app to come online.”
Castillo says, “I agree, it’s the future. We work constantly from site to site, every job in a different location. This way I can bring along all my documents, forms and drawings as I move around.”
Cloud storage applications such as Dropbox are already a mature and proven technology. Specific cloud-construction applications are beginning to come online, but it is too early to assess long-term impact.
As most agree, however, on paper, cloud applications seem a perfect fit.
Industry Standard
If there is one unequivocal view on portable devices, it is that they speed up communication between field and office, and between sub and GC. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, that is up to individual preference and comfort.
However, portable electronic communication is what is expected these days—by architects, by owners, by GCs—and in order to remain part of the construction team, we really have no choice but to adapt and join the club.
That said, we would also do well to heed Michael Chambers’ parting words: “There must be a point where you turn things off, decrease stress and enjoy your family.”
Los Angeles–based Ulf Wolf is the senior writer at Words & Images.
