Construction App Wins Award

Okay, so it's not exactly the Emmy Awards, but it's still worth celebrating.

busybusy, an app designed by the construction industry, for the construction industry, was nominated and won best start up app in Southern Utah. This is big news for a few reasons.

First of all, Utah is growing in their tech sector. California has Silicon Valley, Utah has the Silicon Slopes. Utah County is surging with technological creativity, and it's effects are being felt around the world.

Second, the construction industry is surging ahead with technology, with companies doing business better, and making huge profits.

Construction is surging forward in big ways with the technology the industry is being offered. busybusy is one of these great systems that is revolutionizing the industry, and helping construction companies worldwide to do business better. There is quite a bit I could write about this company, but I can't say anything without spending a moment on the CEO and founder, Isaac Barlow.

Isaac has a heavy background in construction, specifically excavation. His passion is systems, processes, and techniques that increase profit, estimate accuracy, and protect against law suits. With the economic down turn of '08, Isaac lost it all, just as most of us did in the construction industry. His company went under, and the result devastated his life. He decided to do something about it, and put all the reasons he failed down to an idea board. The next step was to create a way to overcome all of those reasons for failure.

Here are some of the reasons for his failure:

Inaccurate Estimating
Too often he found that he was shooting from the hip on his estimates. He would start a job, and six months after the job was finished, when the final bill came in, he would find out whether or not he made a profit. This was compounded by not knowing which projects had used what amount of labor, which leads to the next issue.

Labor
The problem wasn't labor itself, but rather the measurement of it. The systems were not in place to accurately measure which projects were using what amount of labor. Crews would start a day on one job, but finish on another. Oftentimes employees would fill out their time cards at the end of the day or week, and wouldn't remember where they had been working, so they'd throw in whatever came to mind. This further complicated issues because time entries weren't accurate to time worked, which means employees were also getting paid more than the productivity they actually produced. This issue was made even worse when combined with inaccurate estimating, and usually enhanced the effect.

Lawsuits
It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. It's the cost of doing business, especially here in America. A business that has any level of reasonable success is going to spend some time before the judge. When that time comes, the winner is not determined by who is right or wrong, but rather who has a better set of records. Isaac realized he didn't have an accurate way of keeping the valuable information that may or may not be needed in the case of a lawsuit. Unfortunately, this led to him losing more than his fair share.

Field to Office Communication
The field to office communications weren't effective. Sometimes the office would get a change order and there was not an effective way to relay that information to the field. Issues in the field weren't documented properly, sometimes not at all, which means his company had to eat the difference. Wanting to get the job done, the field would sometimes make decisions that were not in his company's best interest and would jeopardized their ability to finish the job profitably. You can't really fault an employee for trying to make the customer happy, but the result wasn't always mutually beneficial.

Essentially, Isaac discovered what many of us discover, that the construction industry has many variables. We can't stop these variables, they are just part of building things. However, It is a lot like sports; a successful team isn't always about the best athletes, but rather the team that works together to overcome the variables. Similar to that, a successful business is built on their ability to manage those variables that arise in day to day business.

Once Isaac realized how large of an affect these different failures had on his business, he decided he could do something about it. He went to work creating a system that would handle all of these items, and then some. He concluded that if he was going to overcome these issues that his solution would have to be simple to use and accurate.

All of this led the creation of busybusy, and this is where the story gets interesting. During the process of creating his system, he decided to get some input from others in the construction industry. The response was resounding, and very positive. It turns out that Isaac wasn't the only one contending with the issues that did his first few businesses under. As he dived deeper into the issues, and discovered more solutions to the problems, he started getting calls from people who were excited to hear about the work he was doing.

Several companies wanted to try out the new system he had created, and the results were more than satisfying. First though, I should tell you about some of the solutions.

Accurate Labor
Seeing as how labor caused so many different issues with his previous business, and that labor also threw off accuracy, this is one of the first things that had to be dealt with. The affect of labor management was far reaching, and had a positive impact on the bottom line. Isaac designed his system to provide a day by day view of what labor was costing his business, which gave him the ability to drive his business like you would a car. He knew when to scale up, when to scale down, and was always aware of the effect labor was having on his bottom line.

Accurate Estimates
Now that a system was in place to manage the labor variable, the accuracy of estimates began to get better and better. Because of the simple solutions that had been put in place using the app, Isaac could easily know where he was making money, and where he wasn't. The result was that he could confidently walk away from jobs where he knew he would lose money, and take the jobs that he knew where he would make money.

Simple To Use
Designing his system to be simple was key. People aren't going to want to use something that is difficult or clunky. The industry is moving forward into technology, just as many others are, and through diligent research it was discovered that over 80% of the construction workforce has a smartphone, and that number is growing every day. Because of this, an app based system became the obvious answer. It had to be easy to access, and have simple functionality.

Progress Photos
"A picture is worth a thousand words." You might not think that progress photos are really that necessary, but when you have progress photos, and manage them properly, you give yourself all of the control. Lawsuits have gone from common, to not very often. The lawsuits that do happen are easily settled, usually for much less than was originally proposed. In the excavation industry a retaining wall can be misplaced, and the correcting of that wall can be in the hundreds of thousands. Many companies are finding use of progress photos by snapping a picture of received goods, completion of a project, proof of a paid invoice. The possibilities are endless. The reason this particular feature is so powerful is because a photo can be directly linked to an archived/finished project to be reviewed later when the evidence is needed.

Communication
It was clear that both the office and the field needed to be on the same page. Therefore, he decided to make it simple. Everything within the busybusy system is cloud based. When an employee starts work in the field, they can see it back at the office. The system can even be set up to tell you what machine the employee is using, so that you know how many hours you've run your equipment. As part of the communication abilities the accounting needed to be accurate and simple to retrieve. Within the system you have a dashboard view of what is going on with your employees. Phone calls to the field were greatly reduced, confusion has gone down, and productivity has increased.

So after all that, what happened next was truly exciting. People started asking Isaac if they could also use the system. Of course he said yes, but it began to take off faster than he expected as the excitement from the industry grew. The results that companies of all trades reported were astounding.

Here are a few examples:

A mason out of St. George, Utah, started using the system. Leo, the owner, wanted to focus on what he enjoyed, which was laying block. He ran in to Isaac and started telling him how many hours he spent working in the field, and every day he would go home to hours of accounting. He was never sure if he was making or losing money, and he didn't know what to do.
Since using busybusy his days look very different. His labor management is easily viewed from his phone. He can see what everyone is doing and he doesn't have to be on the job site at all times. His accountant can get the information necessary for payroll without ever talking to anyone in the field, and the information is always accurate. The crew is happy because their checks are always on time and accurate.
He now knows with surety that his business is growing, and he doesn't spend hours sorting through time cards, trying to differentiate what time was spent on which projects.

A telecommunications company out of Phoenix, Arizona, started using the system hoping to make payroll more simple. They build towers for companies like Verizon, and it is necessary for their crews to be spread out over several states.
They would have two people spend a combined 20 hours every week to get the payroll done on time. They would start out by gathering up all of the different time cards, spend hours trying to allocate where the time belonged, try to interpret the hand writing, and fight with the hassle of getting inaccurate cards corrected. Consistently the payroll would barely squeak in on Wednesday at 1:20, when it was due by 1:00.
They decided to start using the busybusy system and the results were everything they had hoped for. Now it takes one employee about 6 hours to get the payroll done each week, and it is complete finished by Monday at 4:00.

One of my favorite success stories is of an excavator from St. George, Utah. James had started using the system a few months previous when an inspector came to him with news that a retaining wall had been placed in the wrong spot. James contended that the location of the wall was where it was supposed to be, and that it had been signed off by the inspector. The inspector claimed that the wall had not been approved for it's location, and that James would have to eat the more than $100,000 cost to correct the issue.
James had told his crew a few months back to document daily the progress of his excavation projects. He went to the project within the system, and right there was a photo of the inspector standing on the very retaining wall that the dispute was about, along with signed documentation that everything was approved and that work could continue.
The issue resolved itself in James' favor. Work continued without delay, and he was protected from losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After seeing the positive improvements busybusy has made to these and many other companies, it is clear to see why they recently won the award for best start up out of Southern Utah. Essentially, busybusy is a construction company that figured out a better way.

Congratulations, busybusy! We can't wait to see what other exciting things you've got planned, and we look forward to the lasting positive impact you'll continue to have.

If you would like to speak with me about the busybusy system, and what it can do for your business, feel free to reach out to me here on LinkedIn, or by phone.

Herbert Timpson
435.212.0136

Here are some other posts I've recently written:

Common Wage Violations
Labor Laws Exist . . . For The Employee
Construction Industry, Labor Tracking Headache
Construction Association . . . To Be, Or Not To Be