Blog
3 Steps to Improve Field Reporting Efficiency
Jan 15, 2020
The need for construction project productivity improvements is a common theme that we have heard many times. According to a report issued by the McKinsey Global Institute, the construction industry is noted for having the lowest productivity gain of any industry. How can multi-disciplinary firms who serve the construction industry improve field reporting efficiency and be part of the solution to the problem?
CMT firms are making a difference in their clients’ construction projects by improving their field reporting efficiency and construction materials testing processes. Here are some of their stories:
North Carolina-based S&ME was trying to improve their field reporting efficiency as well as the quality of the information they sent to their clients. “The main things we were attempting to address—both from a client perspective as well as an internal perspective—were how can we do this quicker, more efficiently, more consistently, and with high quality?” said Matt Moler, P.E., senior engineer.
S&ME chose Agile Frameworks’ MetaField® solution because they were trying to address challenges with their field reporting processes and saw that technology could help them do that.
Solar Testing Laboratories relied on in-house and legacy processes to collect field data and transfer it to the laboratory. This created labor intensive processes to create client-facing reports in a timely manner.
"In this digital age, we wanted to improve our report distribution by using an automated data collection process that is faster while maintaining our high level of accuracy,” said Anthony Kichurchak, executive vice president.
Matt Coaker, P.E., the geotechnical engineering manager at Southern Earth Sciences, Inc. (SESI) came back from a GBA conference with the idea of a technology solution that would help improve their efficiency in construction materials testing to SESI’s corporate team.
“We knew that it was time to make a change to keep up with technology to be more streamlined,” said Coaker. “We knew that we could be much more efficient in what we did—specifically in CMT—by bringing a system like MetaField on board.”
For Premier Geotech and Testing, automating field data collection and lab testing processes is the way of the future.
“To have these [software] tools available and not use them feels to me like you’re working in the dark ages. If the tools aren’t in your organization, they should be,” said Jason Engen, executive vice president, Premier Geotech and Testing.
For GeoProfessional Innovation Corporation (GPI), using MetaField’s powerful data workflow, entering data as well as reviewing and publishing the data for clients wasn’t as time intensive. The time savings for each of these tasks may be just minutes or hours, but when you start adding up each individual increment of efficiency, the total time savings can have quite an impact on the bottom line.
“MetaField offers a lot of opportunities to create efficiencies whether through real-time scheduling or managing the data. Profitability at the end of the day is your ultimate metric and I certainly attribute a significant component of our financial success today to a using MetaField,” said Travis Wambeke, CEO.
Engineering and design firm, Olsson, has found that MetaField's centralized database allows for a more efficient workflow. It is much easier and faster to take data logged in the field by a technician all the way through to report distribution to the client.
As Olsson’s field service team lead—one step removed from the project managers—Braden Hirsch, P.E., can easily respond to client and internal calls requesting project information.
“It’s been great to get a nice, quick review and the way that it’s organized and centralized, makes it easy for me to speak to a project that maybe I haven’t looked at recently,” said Hirsch.
Agile Frameworks offers MetaField as a field reporting solution. This platform is a subscription, cloud-based solution that is accessible on any computer or mobile device. MetaField also is the only industry solution that fully integrates corporate, field, and lab information management activities in one platform across multiple engineering and construction disciplines like construction materials testing, non-destructive testing, and many others.
To learn more about how the MetaField solution can help your firm with field reporting efficiency to be part of the solution for construction project productivity, check out MetaField's reporting and delivery capabilities along with many resources that may help in your journey to streamlining your project processes.