Jas Saraw
Vice President, Canada for Procore
A United Nations report projects that the global population living in cities will grow to 68% by 2050. Building infrastructure like housing, schools, and offices to accommodate 2.5 billion people would require something on the scale of building a New York City from scratch every month for the next 40 years to meet demand.
The demand could put pressure on builders’ productivity, which is currently not growing at the same pace. It has hovered at about one per cent year-over-year for the past two decades, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, a business and economics research firm.
Meeting the immense productivity challenge
Construction firms have seen an increasing number of software solutions designed to holistically centralize how they complete projects with greater efficiency. “Increasing adoption to tackle the productivity gap also necessitates addressing the challenges of retaining skilled workers and maintaining a safe job site,” says Jas Saraw, Vice President, Canada for Procore.
“In the last few years, we’ve seen construction companies really engage in conversations around digital transformation, including ways they can start consolidating their existing technology stack to derive insights from the data they’re producing on the job site,” Saraw says. “For them, having business continuity and a plan in place with cloud-based tools that are accessible from any device and anywhere is really mission critical.”
Procore’s cloud-based construction management software is designed as a collaborative tool that connects all stakeholders involved in a building project. That could include architects, builders, engineers, consultants, accountants, owners and speciality contractors, among others. Users are able to collaborate and access data in real time with anyone in the team, on any device, and from any location.
Scott Construction Group, with operations in BC, Ontario, and Alberta has replaced manual paper processes with the Procore platform. “Procore immediately improved workflows and cut down on repetitive or mundane tasks that were done in Excel or Word,” says project manager Matt Gore. “It automated a lot of the administrative tasks so now I’m able to do a lot of the things that in the past would have required an assistant.”
Meanwhile, Toronto-based specialty contractor Grove Project Management Inc. is using the platform to help it compete with larger firms. President Michael Stuart says, “We had rolls and rolls of drawings, both at the office and on-site. We ended up with multiple versions of drawings that were marked up in different ways by different people, in different physical locations.” Procore has allowed Grove to share information in real-time and work more efficiently.
Real-time collaboration reduces rework and administrative burden
Procore’s unlimited model – unlimited users, unlimited support and unlimited data storage – scales with all sizes of businesses from the smallest to the largest contractors. Regardless of your size, you gain access to the same tools, capabilities and resources, and Procore’s platform grows and scales according to your needs, says Saraw.
“As changes occur on the job site, drawings are revised, and potential change orders are prepared by the contractor — all of those are then presented and prepared to the owner so that they have full visibility across what’s happening on the site at any given time,” Saraw says. “A member of the field team could capture a potential issue, process it through their mobile device into the Procore database, which may require an architect or owner to respond. Rather than generate the issue on a static Excel sheet, the workflow extends to all other stakeholders in real time.”
That level of openness offers greater transparency, he adds, though another significant impact is in reducing the amount of “rework” from contractors on-site, which could limit cost overruns and maximize return on investment.
“One error in an Excel spreadsheet can have a six-figure impact on the bottom line, so there’s that level of accountability that needs to be in place,” he says. “Procore is a single user interface and single unified data model that offers insights to profitability and efficiency all in one place to help leaders determine how to take their business forward.”
