How customers are using Procore during COVID-19
As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, the construction industry is undergoing a time of adjustment and transition and many construction projects span from essential and ongoing to entirely stalled.
While some companies are still eager to get back on the project site, others are returning and some never stopped. As the construction world heads back to work, how can companies be best documenting the effects of COVID-19 on their projects?
Procore’s suite of tools can help document, group COVID-19 items, share and store information as well as facilitate communication across project and office teams.
Capturing documentation in real time
Monterey Mechanical, a specialty contractor based out of the San Francisco area, is using Procore to document and group various COVID-19 items including inspections and daily reports.
Ed Moore, Monterey Mechanical Division Manager says, “Despite the unprecedented times we are experiencing, we’ve relied on Procore to allow us to comply with the requirement to document the COVID-19 inspections on our work in the Bay Area. We created an inspection template in the Inspections tool in order to do this. We are also able to log people on site each day through the Daily Reports tool, which allows us to provide all the contact information that the Health Department would ask for if there was a case of COVID-19 on site.”
Procore’s Inspections tool allows you to create comprehensive checklists to capture all of the requirements associated with different types of inspections that occur during the lifecycle of a project. In response to COVID-19, Procore has added new inspection templates, which have been automatically added to the company level Inspections tool for all companies with the Inspections tool enabled.
The other tool Monterey Mechanical mentioned they were relying on during this time is Procore’s Daily Log tool. Procore’s Daily Log is designed to provide project team members with a central location for viewing, tracking, and emailing updates about daily project activities such as labor, communication, equipment, materials and more. You can create custom delay types in the Delay Log for COVID-19 to track cumulative time delays across a defined duration.
Not only do Procore’s Inspections Tool and Daily Log tool help with documentation and grouping, but with Procore Change Order and RFI tools, you can group by COVID-19 to accurately capture cost and schedule impacts.
Sharing and storing information in one place
Procore customers, including Justus Company, a real estate owner based out of Indianapolis, are using Procore during this time to share and store information with their teams. Jim Boots, the Senior Vice President of Construction at Justus Company said, “Our use of Procore has allowed the company to continue to effectively manage the projects and maintain progress remotely. With all project related information loaded into Procore, we can monitor schedules, process pay apps, manage contract issuance, address RFI’s and observations, etc. from wherever we are working. Using the photo capabilities also allows us to minimize visits to the site.”
As Mr. Boots mentioned, Procore’s Schedule Tool, among others, can keep your team up-to-date with a real-time view of the current project allowing you to manage and monitor all project activities from one place.
While Procore allows users to effectively share information, Procore’s Documents and Directory tools allow you to actively store information such as mission-critical project documentation like drawings, specifications, bid packages, emails, safety checklists, warranty information and all contact data for project team members and vendors.
Communicating with teams remotely
The obvious challenge this crisis has presented is for teams learning to work remotely. Nichole Carter at Big D Construction, a general contractor in Salt Lake City, began using Procore’s recently released Zoom Integration and now her teams can, “quickly create a Zoom meeting with one click in Procore’s Meetings tool,” Carter says, “and at the same time visually show real-time project detail to the attendees — wherever they are — that’s a game-changer.”
Procore’s Meetings tool manages all aspects of your project meetings from agenda distribution to post-meeting approval of minutes. Customizable meeting templates and categories allow you to streamline the entire process. Additionally, the Procore platform offers newly integrated virtual meeting software with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and GoToMeeting.
Procore’s customers are also using Emails and Announcements tools to effectively communicate across teams. With Procore’s Email tool you can create COVID-19 specific email tags that can be applied to pertinent emails for easy filtering. With Procore’s Announcements tool you can create distribution groups to make sending updates even easier. For example, your team could have distribution groups for the office staff and field workers so they only receive announcements that are relevant to them.
Although this time has been a challenging time for most companies in the Construction Industry, Procore is determined to provide customers the tools they need to face these challenges head on. This is why we created a comprehensive log of best practices for using Procore during COVID-19.
See the full guide here and visit Procore’s COVID resources center for more information.
Procore’s mission is to improve the lives of everyone in construction and that includes allowing teams to effectively document events in real time, share and store information, as well as bring everyone together on a platform to simplify communication.
“Let’s face it, it’s thanks to Procore that we are all still able to do this work as efficiently as possible,” said Ken Weinberg, VP of Business Operations at the NRP Group.
