Software Improves Safety and Makes the Roofing Process Transparent for Clients

Safety is always a major concern and, at Castro Roofing, Dallas, it’s one of our core values. In fact, we have a full-time safety manager and a third-party safety consultant who evaluate every one of our jobs from a safety perspective. On top of that, we also have monthly safety meetings with the whole crew where we discuss best practices and train on new equipment. Safety should be a top priority for everyone in our line of work. I’m sure most contractors are pretty familiar with this routine.

So is there anything new to say about safety? Well, we’ve found a secret weapon! This past year we implemented an Online Project Management (OPM) software system. It has been a game changer for us.

How the OPM Works

The OPM streamlines communication with our clients and workers by archiving photos and information for every single project we have—every day. It notifies the client, via email, five days before the start of his or her job to ensure the client is prepared. We can personalize this email if we choose.

Once the job begins, each client receives daily reports, which include 12 to 16 photos from the job site covering the entire workday. Of course, someone on your team has to take the photos, but the software is linked to your smartphone and an app makes the process pretty simple. Through the OPM, everyone involved is made aware of the entire construction process.

The truth is, our clients really only have three questions for us:

1. When are you starting my project?
2. What have you done so far?
3. When will you be finished with the work?

Ok, maybe there’s one more:

4. How much is this going to cost me?

None of these questions take into consideration the personnel involved. Maybe this is a no-brainer, but if we are losing workers because of safety issues, our customers’ jobs are not going to be completed on time. Implementing this OPM addresses all those client questions and so much more.

OPM and Safety

The OPM allows quick response times by allowing us to fix anything we see that might become a hazardous issue before the next workday. Increased communication is literally available at the click of a button. Plus, the OPM makes it possible to go back and review any day of a project for different factors, like weather, safety and material delivery—not just work progress.

For example, while looking through the photos of a job’s progress as it was getting started, we noticed that if we unloaded and set up the scaffolding in a slightly different way, the unloading would be much smoother. We are constantly adjusting our approach to each job.

A New Outlook

While the OPM has made our work available in a much more transparent way—allowing our clients an all-access pass—it has also given us a new way to evaluate the ways we are utilizing our resources and our human capital.

When we know that others are able to keep such close tabs on the work we do, it changes the way we run our business. Our communication with clients should be as open and honest as possible. And the work that we do should be safe for everyone involved.

It’s pretty easy to pay lip service to safety in a monthly meeting and check it off the agenda. It’s altogether different when we are able to evaluate our daily routines from a different perspective. Our clients love it because our process no longer feels like a mystery to them. We love it because we can take our attention to detail to a whole new level—a bird’s eye view, if you will.

Before the OPM, it was nearly impossible to include our clients in our workflow. It was even harder to quickly evaluate and make changes that make work safer and more efficient for our employees. Now, we really can’t remember how we got along without it. Isn’t technology amazing? The OPM has genuinely helped us work smarter, not harder.

Online Project Management Software

Castro Roofing, Dallas, uses LookOut Software.