For those who joined us on April 4^th, both customer and partners, we sure had a great time talking tech-y and BYOD all day at the fabulous Doubletree resort in Scottsdale!

A GREAT SUCCESS for CPFS – LAI collected 46 Cell Phones for Soldiers! Each phone valued at $5 translates into 2.5 hours of calling time for our military personnel. That means we collectively donated 115 hours to our troops!  Ledgerwood Associates matched each phone donation with a half an hour of FREE consulting time!

Keynote speaker, Joe Granneman, had the audience in a state of highly entertained shock as he shared stories of security gaps in super-powers like Google and Facebook, and how easy it is to crack 7-character passwords in under four seconds (make sure yours is at least 8 characters, and no “dictionary” words)! That information alone may have saved thousands of dollars in potential fraud!!

Our friends Diane Haines and Todd Juhnke from Sage Construction & Real Estate put on an amusing skit (complete with a fake marriage) on the frustrations of timecards between the field and office, and how Sage Construction Anywhere will allow you to watch more football! How many software solutions can claim that?!

After lunch by the pool, attendees split up into two afternoon sessions with a choice of four different tracks. SMEs from Sage, TimberScan, Trapp Online, Piracle, True Wireless, Hard Dollar, and Ledgerwood Associates spent quality time demonstrating integration strategies, hardware, and mobile solutions. CFMA was there too, to answer questions and talk about their great organization (LAI is a member)!

Everyone regrouped for Ed Ledgerwood’s closing remarks, and mingled for the last time during Happy Hour on the patio! Check out pictures of Technology Day on our FB Tech Day album.

Yes, this is our last plug for the annual Technology Day event this week -  April 4th, and we are very excited to see everyone! Have you registered yet? If not…

Go Register for Tech Day Here

…so you can join us at the beautiful Double Tree Resort in Scottsdale Arizona. Bring your smartphone, tablets and other devices and plug-in to the future of construction technology.

Keynote speaker Joseph Granneman, CIO of Rockford Orthopedic, will kick things off with a presentation focused on information security and compliance.

Representing Sage, our co-hosts, Todd Juhnke, Regional Sales Manager-Construction and Real-Estate Division, and Diane Haines, Sr. Director, Product Management, Construction & Real Estate will be presenting the powerful cloud based construction technology solution – Sage Construction Anywhere.

There will then be afternoon sessions with multiple tracks for learning about specific topics. Head over to the registration page to learn more about all of the Tech Day Tracks.

And make sure you bring your old cell phones too! Ledgerwood Associates will be collecting them for Cell Phones For Soldiers, a non-profit dedicated to helping our troops stay in contact with their families here at home.

Don’t miss out on all of the fun and information this year. We look forward to seeing and talking to you all!

Every construction company owner and CEO knows that controlling costs and managing their people are keys to profitability. Ready access to financial and operational information are the foundation of effective control. Here’s a way to evaluate whether you are getting the information you need, from our friends at Sage CRE:

7 Questions to Test Your Construction Business Visibility

12/11/2012 at 12:31 pm by Deb Carpenter Beck, Sage Construction and Real Estate

You may feel you already have a clear view of your business from a financial and operations perspective.  Or you may be struggling with getting a handle on just the basics, like understanding your job costs and preparing financial statements.  To help you assess your firm’s business visibility – a key component to effective decision-making – I encourage you to take this short quiz.  It’s fun, informative, and you’ll learn your percent of business visibility based on answers to these seven key questions and more:

1. What do you do when a critical decision needs to be made during a highly condensed timeframe?
2. How many KPIs are you tracking and monitoring on a regular basis?
3. How do you determine what type of work is most profitable for you?
4. How do you collect benchmarking data to compare your performance against similar construction companies?
5. What do you do to predict the final profitability of a project or future impact of a decision?
6. How do you access information from the job site?
7. Do you conduct an annual business visibility audit?

Take the business visibility quiz!

For more information on how to control costs and increase profits at your construction company contact Ledgerwood Associates.

When R&J Construction was looking for a way to reduce labor costs they became early adopters of an emerging, cost saving technology that would soon be requested by their peer organizations nationwide -  “mobile data collection”.

Employees of R&J Construction recorded their time on paper timesheets that were unverifiable and required manual data entry into back office time/labor, payroll and accounting packages. Controller Paula Wiens decided to “tighten the ship” by eliminating the costly paper processes. She implemented a solution that allows employees to clock in and out of job sites using their mobile phones.

With the new mobile “apps”, R&J gained better insight into billable versus non-billable time and improved their management of mobile workers with real time GPS, time and job tracking. The solution allowed R&J to process payroll and bill clients more quickly and more accurately. It also turned the gathering of critical data for time and billing into a “paperless” process, reducing errors  and saving time.

After a few weeks, Wiens began using the application’s reporting features to look for trends and to identify ways to manage job costs. If an employee took six hours to complete a job which should normally take three hours, Wiens checked in with the project superintendent to find out what happened to increase the labor hours.

An area where R&J saw immediate savings was in fuel costs. The mobile data collection application automatically captures GPS data and calculates miles driven.  A mileage report allows Weins to audit and compare the employees’ fuel expenses with actual use to uncover any abuse or mistakes. R&J saved $6,000 the first month, when employees were notified that the GPS system was in place, and about $10,000 a month since.

Adding up the savings from paperless time reporting, jobs trends analysis and automatic mileage reporting, mobile data collection helps R&J save about $200,000 per year! The company also does more accurate job costing for clients. In addition, the data collected on mobile apps is seamlessly integrated into R&J’s Sage accounting application and their ADP payroll solution.

R&J Construction understands the power of mobile data collection to save time and money. It is. It does. It saves.

Ledgerwood Associates has aligned with two of the leaders in mobile data collection, True Wireless and About Time, to provide our clients with cutting edge technology at discounted prices.

Contact us to see how you can integrate mobile technologies with your existing Sage Timberline applications.

What are you using your iPad, iPhone or Android device for at the job site?

Here’s an announcement of interest to companies in the infrastructure; mining, oil & gas; shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STO); power; and process industries.

FutureTech Reader Survey Reveals Hard Dollar as Leading Project Cost Management Solution

SCOTTSDALE, AZ–(Marketwire -03/22/12)- Hard Dollar Corporation, the category creator and worldwide leader in Project Cost Management software solutions for capital projects, announced the inclusion of Hard Dollar in the Engineering News-Record (ENR) FutureTech newsletter article “Hot Tech Topics” published March 12, 2012.

In the ENR reader survey, open-ended questions prompted readers to suggest which products they considered “the best new tech tools they use now as well as the tech tools they would like to see in the future.” Hard Dollar was the only Project Cost Management system recommended in the entire survey.

The group, comprised primarily of IT project managers, listed Hard Dollar as one of the 159 recommended software products that “they are now using with good results that have potential to improve their jobs, or even the entire industry.”

The inclusion as a top technology tool supports Hard Dollar’s consistent record growth, and mass adoption worldwide by owners, EPCM’s and contractors, as the single choice to build cost model estimates, cost and resource load schedules, measure progress, and forecast ompletion in capital projects.

About Hard Dollar

Founded in 1989, Hard Dollar Corporation is the category creator and leader for Project Cost  Management (PCM) solutions. Over 800 Owner, EPC, and Contractor customers worldwide within infrastructure, mining, oil & gas, STO, power, and process industries utilize HD software. Hard Dollar’s PCM solution centralizes project cost and productivity — connecting estimates and budgets, schedule, progress, and forecasting. Customers routinely reduce project costs by 15 percent and increase salaried worker productivity up to 300 percent. HD software has been used to construct over $1 trillion in capital projects and is sold and implemented around the globe. For more information, visit www.harddollar.com or call 800.637.7496.

According to Joseph Contomo, author of an American Payroll Association study on timekeeping – “The Incredible Time Machines: Taking Time Clocks Out of the Dark Ages, “ payroll clerks, timekeepers, department managers and millions of employees have viewed the recording of time as a constant source of error and problems almost since the beginning  of the Industrial Revolution.”

These problems equate to elevated labor costs as a result of manual timekeeping  due to:

1. The time it takes to manually compute hours worked per employee.
2. Errors made in manually computing time.
3. Lost time – also known as time theft.
   Note: Robert Half Associates conducts an annual survey of theft of
   time and estimates that the average worker “steals” four hours and 18
   minutes of time – or more than one half a day’s pay –  per week.

Advancements in mobile technology allow employees to record time either in real time or via after the fact allocation all-the-while tracking employee whereabouts with GPS. From standard feature phones to PDAs, iPads and Netbooks, these devices may be enabled as GPS enabled tamperproof timeclocks to collect data from the field such as employee arrival at  job sites to job transfers, phases, codes, quantities and  even equipment time tracking.

Furthermore, data may be automatically exchanged via  TimberCloud or a pre-built server connector which allows administrators to enter data once – into Timberline – and make it viewable and accessible without dual entry via the mobile app.

Ledgerwood Associates has aligned with two of the leaders in mobile timeclock solutions,
True Wireless and About Time, to provide our clients with cutting edge technology at discounted prices.

Contact us to see how you can integrate mobile technologies with your existing Sage Timberlline applications.

Adapted from an article published at www.constuctech.com  March 28, 2012

Mobile technology is a game changer for the construction industry, which relies on communication and collaboration among many invested parties within the lifecycle of a build. As the industry continues to adopt technology solutions, going mobile is a natural extension for many construction professionals looking to take their investment to the next level.

For that reason, a number of construction-technology providers are expanding their product portfolios to include mobile capabilities.

One solution for AEC (architectural, engineering, and construction) firms offers a complete system for capturing and managing project information from the field to the back office. By keeping project team members accountable for cost, scope, and schedule, the solution helps adopters deliver
projects successfully.

Construction professionals can access construction field-management functionalities from mobile devices such as the iPad and those that run the Microsoft Windows mobile platform. The app allows field staffs to view and manage project information such as punch lists, inspections, and daily
construction reports in real-time. Data collected in the field is automatically synced with data back in the office.

Another company also offers a mobile component to its software solution as part of the company’s enhancement to its cloud-based construction program-management software. The app extends the functionalities of its enterprise software into the field, therefore increasing project teams’ productivity and improving project delivery quality. The solution gives access to project data in real-time, giving project managers more freedom to act on issues immediately. All actions are synced for project members to see and the app can be used on Apple devices such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

As smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices become more ubiquitous in today’s society, these devices are following professionals to work. On the construction jobsite, mobile components of
construction project-management solutions offer the ability to improve communication and collaboration among team members, while reducing costs and contributing to faster project delivery.

How are you using mobile technology in your business?

Ledgerwood Associates Consultants can help you sort out the technology options and help you improve all of your business processes.

Mobile devices are on everybody’s minds these days. Here’s an interesting case study about how one construction company is profiting from the technology.

“Thanks to mobile data collection devices and services provided by True Wireless, we know where our workers are and what they are doing at all times, enabling us to pay and invoice more accurately, route and dispatch more efficiently, and to more successfully control costs. Simply put, True Wireless gives us a tremendous competitive advantage.” Paula Wiens, Controller at R&J Construction

R&J Construction realizes significant cost savings while improving productivity and customer service by deploying integrated mobile data collection and payroll technologies from True Wireless.

Situation
R&J Construction is an award-winning custom building company, well known for providing superior service and high-quality craftsmanship at a competitive price. Key to maintaining this reputation is R&J’s ability to automate critical business processes, such as mobile worker management and payroll administration.

Challenge
Improve the time-intensive and inexact process of recording worker timesheet, project status and vehicle mileage information. Also, gain the ability to respond to emergency situations by knowing the whereabouts of field workers at all times.

Solution
R&J deployed a GPS mobile workforce management solution from True Wireless, along with the ezLaborManager payroll solution from ADP. GPS time and tracking information is transmitted wirelessly and automatically to the ADP ezLaborManager system.

As a result, R&J knows in real-time precisely how many hours each worker is on a job and what projects he is performing. Workers choose a customer job number, then select the type of work they are doing such as framing a wall or interior trim work and can also enter job details. Both the GPS and ezLabor-Manager are web-based hosted solutions providing anywhere anytime access and minimizing maintenance costs. The GPS application and ezLaborManager work together “out-of-the-box,” so deploying the solutions was fast and easy for R&J.

Benefits

Billable Time Increased by 12 Hours per Week
Elimination of paper-based timesheet and project status recording along with improved accuracy and worker accountability creates an impressive 12 hours of additional billable time each week per worker.

Mileage Reimbursement Costs Cut $6,000 per Month
Improved vehicle mileage tracking, job-costing and worker performance reporting has reduced R&J’s vehicle mileage reimbursement costs by $6,000 per month.

More Precise Job Estimates
More accurate Job-costing allows for more precise job estimates.

Improved Customer Service
Enhanced mobile worker location tracking has improved customer service.

What has been your experience with mobile data collection devices?

For more information on construction technology visit www.ledgerwoodassociatesusa.com

In Utah, those annoying orange traffic cones and all those construction slow-downs and rerouting as a result of heavy highway street improvements are getting a different reception.  They are actually making a lot of people SMILE.  Why?  They’re the reason many construction companies are able to keep their doors open and their employees busy.  With today’s economic climate, more and more construction companies are heading into unfamiliar territory of government-funded stimulus jobs.

LAI consultant Gary Jacobson was in UTAH last week to provide Sage Timberline Project Management training to a company that will be working on the $1.7 billion expansion to include all-purpose auxiliary and express lanes and interchange construction.  Construction will take place along Intestate 15 in Utah County.

Gary spent several days training Project Managers on ways to make the most of their Sage Timberline system and ensure that not only do the projects stay on time and on budget but that they also keep the meticulous documentation the Federal Government is demanding of all companies working on Stimulus projects.  The government has promised to audit any and all companies using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  It’s promise of unprecedented transparency requires extremely detailed records be kept by those companies working on ARRA projects.

Want to more about Sage Timberline and how it can help you with your government-funded projects?  Email Daren@LedgerwoodAssociatesUSA.com.  He’d be glad to help.

To read more about the I-15 expansion project, click here.

In Utah, those annoying orange traffic cones and all those construction slow-downs and rerouting as a result of heavy highway street improvements are getting a different reception.  They are actually making a lot of people SMILE.  Why?  They’re the reason many construction companies are able to keep their doors open and their employees busy.  With today’s economic climate, more and more construction companies are heading into unfamiliar territory of government-funded stimulus jobs.

LAI consultant Gary Jacobson was in UTAH last week to provide Sage Timberline Project Management training to a company that will be working on the $1.7 billion expansion to include all-purpose auxiliary and express lanes and interchange construction.  Construction will take place along Intestate 15 in Utah County.

Gary spent several days training Project Managers on ways to make the most of their Sage Timberline system and ensure that not only do the projects stay on time and on budget but that they also keep the meticulous documentation the Federal Government is demanding of all companies working on Stimulus projects.  The government has promised to audit any and all companies using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  It’s promise of unprecedented transparency requires extremely detailed records be kept by those companies working on ARRA projects.

Want to more about Sage Timberline and how it can help you with your government-funded projects?  Email Daren@LedgerwoodAssociatesUSA.com.  He’d be glad to help.

To read more about the I-15 expansion project, click here.