At DP Electric, Labor Planning starts with a WFM platform
It might not feel like it, but labor is the one aspect of construction you have the most control over. Labor makes or breaks the profitability of every job and usually it’s one of the biggest revenue and expense drivers. That’s why reining it in it is so important.
But how do you do that?
By Labor Planning every job in a software platform that makes quick work of creating visual Labor Curves.
DP Electric’s, Jason Sherwood used to spend roughly 18 hours a day – up to seven days a week – scheduling manpower with last-century tools. He went from using an 8′ x 15′ half-magnetic whiteboard to a custom color-coded and macro-filled live spreadsheet in Numbers shared with 87 other people.
This “hodgepodge” worked to a point, but then it buckled under the pressure of DP’s Workforce Management demands.
“It basically broke and we needed something better,” he said on our recent Engineering News Record webinar.
That was a year ago.
Now DP Electric uses RIVET to monitor every single project, even in the service department, for small work orders and bids in pursuit.
“I’m tracking everything,” he said.
Once DP is 80 percent confident about winning a bid, Sherwood will add the project to RIVET to help dial in his labor forecasts.
For him, RIVET provides a seamless way to share this critical info to high-level decision makers – the folks who need this data to chart the proper course for their organizations.
At DP, everyone from the executive team down to the field teams use RIVET’s Labor Planning, Rostering and Scheduling features to ensure jobs arrive at or under budget.
“The cohesion, and how transparently the data is able to sync and share really quickly is critical when we’re on these projects and need to communicate information out to the team,” Sherwood said.
That can only happen with a tool fit to the task. One built specifically for the construction industry’s unique challenges and processes.
Everyone does some form of Labor Planning. Even if it’s just a two-week lookahead. But making a good plan and executing against said plan is extremely difficult.
It’s why we work with our partners to implement SOPs tailored to their individual businesses that create accountability and foster discipline so you can get the most out of your Labor Planning process.
To see how RIVET Labor Plans can help boost your bottom line by up to six percent, schedule a demo today.