DeAngelis Diamond Construction was founded by David Diamond and John DeAngelis in 1996. What started out as a small construction management firm grew rapidly into a well-known and well-respected ENR 400 leader in the construction industry with a highly diverse project portfolio.
Today, DeAngelis Diamond has completed over a billion dollars worth of construction projects throughout Florida and is a top-ranked company in the Southeastern United States with awards ranging from the ENR top 400 to Business Observer’s Top 50 Contractors.
The Challenge
Without a doubt, construction is one of the most competitive industries in North America and across the globe. While project bids become increasingly competitive, general contractors are reevaluating their internal processes and looking to software and technology built for construction to streamline core processes.
DeAngelis Diamond is no stranger to technology adoption. “Technology solutions start from the very second we capture a new lead throughout the entirety of the project and into warranty,” says Brett Diamond, CIO and Principal at DeAngelis Diamond. “Every day we’re utilizing tools such as artificial intelligence, 360-degree field imagery, drones, virtual reality, and so much more.”
Brett Diamond tells the story of when he knew that there needed to be a new way to do workforce planning:
“One day, we walked by a conference room with walls that were pure whiteboard, and we saw that the whole board was just full of names, projects, and schedules. I asked our VP of Ops what the mess on the board was that they’d drawn up.
‘That’s how we do manpower tracking. We put it into MS Project after that.’
Putting it into MS Projects still doesn’t solve the problem. There’s no intelligence behind that. There’s no way to determine that you’re making the right decisions based on where someone lives or their skill set. That’s when we said we must start building or finding something.”
Having already established a strong foundation of construction technology, DeAngelis Diamond turned their focus to resource management to help widen the gap between them and their competitors.
The Solution
Being an active supporter of the construction tech community, DeAngelis Diamond is always looking for new opportunities to push innovation within their organization to drive the company forward. “While attending the Procore Groundbreak conference, we were introduced to the Bridgit team,” explains Diamond. “They showed us a beautiful new resource management platform called Bridgit Bench. After demoing it to our internal team, we knew we had to put it in play immediately.”
And put it into play they have. It’s not uncommon for clients to approach DeAngelis Diamond with ambitious project goals and unique, complex problems that need to be solved. With the help of Bridgit Bench, their team can improve resource planning workflows and build the best project teams with the right leadership, skills, and experience to achieve better project outcomes.
“Managing resources has always been a challenge for most construction companies. Now, we have Bridgit Bench, which has saved us a lot of time managing our resources, sorting and searching features, allocating our teams by position, and so forth. It’s great software, great customer service, and an awesome tool for us.”
Reggie Morgan, COO at DeAngelis Diamond
With work constantly shifting from one location to the next, DeAngelis Diamond has also been able to stay on top of their project resources using the Bridgit Bench mobile application.
“The question for me has always been, how do you manage resources when 50% of your time is in the office and 50% of your time is in the field,” shares Brian Hood, VP of Field Ops, about the difficulties of managing resources while moving from project to project. “Thanks to Bridgit and their mobile app, regardless of where I’m at, I can stay in touch with our resource plan and have visibility into what is upcoming.”
Staying ahead of recruitment needs
Beyond the workforce planning benefits, Bridgit Bench also helped DeAngelis Diamond in talent acquisition and HR:
“We went in thinking this is going to cure our problem for workforce planning, but what we got out of it went into the realm of HR and talent recruiting. We have a separate platform that our recruiters and house recruiters will use to look at what needs we have coming up. We can cross-reference job openings in that platform with Bench. I can look at the recruiting platform and see what the openings are. Then, I can go back to Bench and see where the projects are, what openings need to be filled, the accuracy of the data, and if we’re trying to hire too many or too few.
The insights are beyond what we thought we were buying when we originally signed on.”
Evaluating new technologies
Being passionate about leveraging construction technology has allowed DeAngelis Diamond to build complex projects faster, safer, and with exceptional quality – all for less cost. As they explore new technologies, DeAngelis Diamond keeps a very straightforward approach to evaluating different innovations:
- Does it help their projects achieve better outcomes?
- Does it improve workflows for their team members?
- Does it give them and their clients a competitive advantage?
“Bridgit Bench accomplishes all three of those,” says David Diamond, CEO and Co-founder at DeAngelis Diamond, “By helping us to identify and build the best project teams, with the right leadership, the right skills and the right experience to accomplish the mission and the goals set by our clients.”
