Balfour Beatty is an industry-leading provider of general contracting, at-risk construction management and design-build services for public and private sector clients. The company’s US Buildings Texas team specializes in healthcare, corporate office, hospitality, multi-family, aviation, K-12 and interiors.
One of the goals of the Balfour Beatty’s Texas team is to work with like-minded clients and put their teams in a position to execute their job and complete successful projects. It’s clearly working as the company has “enjoyed a great history of repeat clients,” says Steve Dillon, Vice President and Business Unit Leader of Balfour Beatty’s US Buildings Texas team.
Dillon credits a great preconstruction and operations team who work closely together early and often whether it is high-level budgets or detailed estimates and execution planning.
THE CHALLENGE
While Balfour Beatty is one of the largest contractors in the booming Texas construction market, they confront some of the same challenges that others in the market face.
Because the Texas marketplace has been experiencing tremendous economic growth for the past eight years, it has resulted in a fatigued and overstretched labor market. “People go from job to job and are constantly busy with virtually no downtime before they are tasked with the next project start,” says Dillon.
To meet the growing market demands for construction, many construction companies, including specialty trades and construction managers, have shifted to onboarding a workforce at a more rapid pace. The pace of onboarding has increased to feed the demand and that results in much of the workforce learning on the job.
With a stretched labor market, workforce planning takes on greater significance as everyone needs to work to the fullest and maintain fit-for-work readiness.
The booming market has also led to an escalation in the price of labor and materials. Dillon says, “A part of our job is to educate our clients on where things are trending, so they can make the best and most informed decisions to further the development of their projects.”
THE SOLUTION
Balfour Beatty’s team in Texas created an internal system for resource management. “Our previous system was cumbersome, slow, and offered few visuals,” says Dillon. Its predictive analytics capability was limited.
Because of these limitations, Balfour Beatty’s Texas team was determined to adopt a new resource management system that was reasonably priced, intuitive for the user and easy to stand up.
This led them to Bridgit Bench. says Dillon.
“With Bridgit Bench, our Texas teams can quickly gain access within five minutes to navigate the system.”
Steve Dillon, Vice President and Business Unit Leader of Balfour Beatty’s US Buildings Texas Team
The Bridgit Bench app is also mobile and web-accessible, giving users easy access.
Dillon estimates he’s on Bridgit Bench six to eight hours a month to handle workforce management-related issues.
“It is crucial to get resource planning information updated in a timely manner so our team can get other critical tasks done.”
Steve Dillon, Vice President and Business Unit Leader of Balfour Beatty’s US Buildings Texas Team
Dillion estimates that resource updates previously took an hour, but now take thirty minutes, and entering titles for new projects can be done in a third of the time.
Because of the speed of the system, Balfour Beatty’s Texas team can quickly assess how to respond to Requests for Proposal (RFP).
“I can huddle with my team and get Bridgit Bench on the screen and make decisions based on our resources. Within a few minutes, we can determine if we have sufficient resources to staff a project which helps us in decision-making on whether or not we want to continue the pursuit.”
Steve Dillon, Vice President and Business Unit Leader of Balfour Beatty’s US Buildings Texas Team
Bridgit Bench’s visual dashboard is a new feature for the team. “It paints a picture of not only current needs but any over-allocation issues that we might have,” says Dillon. “The dashboards let us filter by business units. We are able to use the visual dashboards to convey resource gaps and needs in a quick and clear way.”
Bridgit Bench provides experiences in quick planning and clear answers, enabling users to provide excellent service to their partners and clients.
