Can you meet tight project timelines and manage your resources efficiently? It’s a tall order for contractors already facing challenges with labor shortages, fragmented workforce planning data, and complex project coordination. The old way of workforce planning is a liability – spreadsheets and processes that reside in an expert’s head start to fall apart quickly when there is an unexpected change that requires real-time coordination. 

Effective workforce planning is the key to hitting those deadlines, managing costs, and keeping your workforce effective and productive. To meet these challenges, we need a new way of workforce planning – centralized, data-driven, and fully collaborative. Workforce planning software, like Bridgit, offers a better way to manage your construction projects. Industry leaders, like Skanska USA and Boldt, have embraced Bridgit to meet the challenges of workforce planning.

Challenges of Workforce Planning

The construction industry operates on razor-thin margins – setbacks like labor shortages, inefficient workforce planning, or compliance violations can represent significant challenges. For general contractors, the answer is to upgrade your processes and embrace new technologies to improve processes and profitability. 

We see six main challenges facing the industry today. Let’s take a closer look at each one and how a solution like Bridgit helps:

• Labor Shortages
• Complex Project Coordination
• Data Silos
• Compliance and Safety Management
• Forecasting and Strategic Planning
• Enhancing Collaboration Across Teams

Labor Shortages

The construction industry is facing historic challenges with labor shortages. According to research, the construction industry will need to attract more than 500,00 workers to meet current demand. The discrepancy between labor demand and supply is due to a number of factors such as aging workers retiring and not enough youth pursuing a career in the trades. This challenge means it’s harder to maintain tight project timelines and keep your workforce productivity high.

Solution

Workforce planning is integral to doing more with less. For example, Bridgit uses advanced forecasting tools to help you anticipate labors needs. This means you can plan recruitment and training efforts in advance based on gaps in your workforce. Being proactive and prepared is the best way to meet the challenges of labor shortages.

Complex Project Coordination

Contractors are often managing multiple projects run by different offices across the country. This creates a few challenges: 

• Managing workforce and staffing projects in an efficient manner to minimize downtime
• Coordinating projects in different locations which may have different compliance and regulatory requirements
• Keeping stakeholders informed about workforce planning and being responsive to changing circumstances on the ground

The complexity of coordinating multiple projects can quickly turn into a major challenge. For example, inefficient planning can result in overstaffing one project while another project is understaffed. As you know, conditions at a job site can change quickly and require real-time responses to keep your project on schedule. 

Solution

Meeting the demands of complex projects requires a solution more robust than spreadsheets and attaching files to emails. Bridgit Bench provides a real-time, holistic view of your workforce across all active projects. Not only does this allow for better allocation and load balance, but the added visibility can provide a command-and-control function for your stakeholders. For customers like Ryan Companies, this centralized workforce planning is essential for keeping everyone on the space page.

“We were managing our resources in 30 different spreadsheets, creating confusion and uncertainty. Bridgit Bench allowed us to consolidate our resource planning into a single platform.” said Morgan Traynor, Senior Director of Operational Excellence at Ryan Companies.

Data Silos

Workforce data is too often scattered across various systems, sometimes with individual offices managing data differently. The issue is that getting data on your workforce and resource planning is a cumbersome process that requires first figuring out if you’ve got all the data you need. This erodes trust in the information you have to make decisions, slows down planning, and introduces costly errors in your workforce planning.

Solution

By centralizing workforce data into a single platform, you can break through the silos and offer a single source of truth for resource planning. Bridgit acts as a central repository for your workforce data – integrating with third-party platforms to bring in data from multiple sources to create a single view. This saves time upfront by reducing the need to hunt down disparate data and speeds up the decision-making process.

Compliance and Safety Management

Complying with local regulations is a key responsibility for any general contractor. This means making sure your workforce has up-to-date certifications training and proper documentation in case of an audit or inspection. Neglecting this area of your workforce planning can result in costly setbacks – for example, if tradespeople on site lack sufficient or current training when an inspector visits the jobsite.

Solution

Certifications and safety compliance are part of the workforce planning workflow. Bridgit’s platform allows you to monitor the certifications and expiry dates for all your staff to ensure everyone has the requisite training. Automated alerts help you stay proactive by notifying you when certifications are coming close to expiring and need renewal. This means you will always stay compliant with industry standards and avoid costly compliance violations. 

Forecasting and Strategic Planning

The challenge with data locked in spreadsheets is that it’s hard to use in advanced analysis or forecasting. Contractors need to finally balance staffing requirements across various projects, and without the right data, it’s impossible to do accurately. You need to be able to meet current needs while anticipating future ones to stay competitive.

Solution

A data-driven approach relies on having a centralized platform that can collect and analyze historical data. Bridgit Bench uses advanced analytics and forecasting capabilities to provide insights into future project needs. It uses your past data to look into the future ball, so you don’t have to try to triangulate data points from dozens of spreadsheets. Workforce planning should be a strategic initiative, not a reactive one. Check out how Sellen Construction uses Bridgit. 

“Our biggest challenge was that we all had our own spreadsheet systems. I had one for the engineers; the executive team and project directors had one for project management staff; and field operations leadership had one for managing superintendents, assistant superintendents, and foremen.

“The biggest change [with Bridgit] was we were able to start talking about our business or strategic initiatives, whereas before, we were mired in staffing conversations.”

Jamie Miller, Director of Engineering Development, Sellen Construction. 

Enhancing Collaboration Across Teams

Workforce planning isn’t an isolated task – it involves input from project managers, HR, operational leads, and other stakeholders. Misalignments in your planning process can create project delays, inefficient workforce allocation, and increase project costs. This can happen when there is a lack of data availability, the data is shared in formats that few people understand or that discourages collaborations, or there is missing information.

Solution

Your workforce planning system should integrate with the tools you use everyday. Bridgit Bench integrates with software like Procore and Autodesk, ensuring you have up-to-date and complete picture of the information needed to make decisions. This fosters collaboration and helps to align everyone with real-time workforce data. 

Bridgit & Addressing the Challenges of Workforce Planning

Bridgit’s solutions were designed with the challenges of general contractors like you in mind. Our solution helps to optimize workforce planning to meet changing market demands, break through data silos, and foster collaboration across your organization. If you’re frustrated by these challenges and ready to tackle them head-on, let’s talk about how Bridgit can help transform your approach to workforce management.