Blogs Archive

Supporting the Superheroes

Touchplan recently formed a marketing collaboration with Genda, a real-time data gathering platform for the superheroes on construction sites, namely superintendents and project managers. We sat down with CEO Erez Dror to learn more about their technology and why they chose to collaborate with Touchplan.

So to kick it off, we’d love to hear more about Genda and what was your motivation for starting the company?

So allow me to start with a bit of background on myself because, as you will see, it ties directly to Genda. After spending some time in the military like every Israeli, I started working in construction as a construction laborer about 13 years ago. The company that I worked for was building single-family homes, and as I gained more experience, I fell in love with everything related to construction and decided that that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I made two simultaneous paths in construction, a professional one and an academic one. So I became an assistant superintendent working on projects in Tel Aviv for a prominent developer in Israel. I also held positions as a structural engineer, BIM Manager, and eventually a Project Manager. At the same time, I earned a Bachelor’s and Masters in civil engineering. So I got to see the industry from different perspectives. The challenges that I was facing as an assistant super on-site, I discovered the solutions as a researcher as part of my Master’s thesis, and it all clicked. It was at that moment I realized I had something. My first call was to the people that ended up being my co-founders. Eyal Kulik, our COO and a childhood friend was the first to join. As we started working on Genda a few months later, Shai Levy joined the company as our CTO. That was three years ago, and the motivation to start the business was that we had all experienced construction challenges firsthand and knew we could develop technical solutions. We did the initial technical work and field/pilot testing in Israel, but the first commercial project, we deployed in Texas. Today we have been used on quite a few construction sites totaling a few million square feet.

Can you tell me more about what Genda does and its greater value to the construction market?

So when you look at it from the 10,000-foot level, it’s a software solution for general contractors. We are mainly working on commercial construction firms, and Genda provides construction project teams with visibility and clarity on what’s happening on site. We generate data from the construction site, the production floor at the construction phase. So we monitor the site resources, like labor equipment and material, in a way that generates data. We then analyze the data to understand what activities are happening on site. For instance, plumbing is being done in unit 1571, and flooring is being done in level 19, then we analyze those activities to optimize operations and safety. We like to look at it as a sidekick for the superhero (the superintendent & the PMS). So it’s a tool that shows them exactly what’s happening and makes sure they’re not missing anything.

So how’s the reaction been from the market so far?

We see that the fun part about building a solution is that we’re solving a real pain for many stakeholders in the construction industry. The hard part is prioritizing what problems you want to solve. The construction industry is amazing, but many things can be done more efficiently and safely. So with every step we take, we see a value for the developer, the subcontractor, and the worker. We’re choosing the ones that we think can best solve these people’s present challenges. So the reaction has been good. People get what we are trying to accomplish right away. As you know, it’s not always an easy sell in construction because it’s a very traditional industry, and adoption/acceptance can take some time. Still, it got way more manageable as the value is easily seen.

So what’s that value that the field staff gets from it?

Clarity. Genda fosters data-driven decisions on site. It enables field workers to make sure they’re not missing anything. When decisions have to be made, they can be made based on data, which is happening daily. For example, if I want to send a team to work in a specific location, Genda provides the status of that location and makes sure it’s ready for them. We can also look at it from a historical point of view because the data documents everything that happened on site. So we know which trade worked in which location and for how long. It also helps with a lot of aspects related to risk management. If someone gets injured, Genda tells you who was there in case you needed to speak to anyone about the incident.

Tell us about the motivation for partnering with Touchplan?

Let me start with the vision for Genda because that’s one of the steps that we’re taking in that direction. We’re aiming to automate a lot of the superintendent’s activities. We want to help them optimize the way they assign tasks. So to assign an activity, we need to understand there is a plan. The project team created a plan of what they want to do, in what order, and the time it should take. We know in many cases, the plan doesn’t meet the reality, or the reality doesn’t meet the plan because construction can be complex. Genda is making those optimizations for a plan with the software. In following Lean principles, we have to Plan, Do, Check, and Act. We plan, we do, then we need to check and fix the plan. So, to do that, we need a plan. So we knew from day one that we needed to have the plans in Genda. Planning was a world that we did not want to go all in. So we always intended to take partnerships, not only in the scheduling phase but with other software solutions. Touchplan does a fantastic job planning and scheduling. So if we can take the plan part and provide the doing and check part, it’s a win-win situation for both.

You mentioned earlier that Genda is a tool designed for superheroes (Supers & PMs). Are they the only users of it?

That’s a great question, and it relates to what I said before that everybody can get value. When you have data, the possibilities are endless. Our key users are absolutely the field management team. But related to your question, subcontractors also see a lot of value in the tool. So the exciting part is that the subs pay their workers on an hourly basis. However, they can have a lot of constraints that don’t allow them to work as they want. A sub gets paid for the work they’ve done, but they pay their workers according to the time they spend. So subcontractors want to make sure that their workers can work as much as possible. The data that Genda generates shows to the subs if they can do that work, and we’re enabling them to report to the GC, so that’s a value add for them.

So what do five years down the road look like for Genda?

We have a big vision. If we look at the industry at the macro level, the first wave of innovation is digitalization. There has been digitization of plans, schedules, RFIs, etc., so everything is there. But we’re missing the execution part. I believe that in five to ten years, we will see the next phase optimize the execution on-site, which will lead to several data sources and very sophisticated AI. The main challenge for the construction industry is the labor shortage. Not just laborers but the backfill of field managers. Unfortunately, not enough people want to work as field managers. If we look at the trends of how much new construction talent is coming into the pool, we won’t be able to build. We must make our field managers more productive so they can execute the challenging projects they are working on. And while many tasks can only be done by a person, things like daily reports, analysis, and other data gathering can be done by machines and done better because, for a computer, it’s a simple analysis. Our goal is to grow and do very sophisticated stuff for the superhero. So we’re not planning to replace the superhero, but we understand that in five years, there won’t be there won’t be enough superheroes left. So if the project needs five supers, we want to fill the needs of three. And to do that, we need integrations and tech partners. Working with Touchplan is a significant relationship. But 360 Capturing solutions, laser scanning, and other data sources like crane monitoring; are some of the things we hope to develop in-house, and eventually, we want to be the insight machine.

Where can folks find out more about Genda?

The best place to head is our website, https://www.gendatech.com/ to learn more about how we help construction field staff each day on the jobsite. Also, please take a look at our video.

Power the Frontline: Enabling the Eyes and Ears of the Field to Own Safety

By Kevin Gausch, Customer Engagement Manager, SafetyCulture

There’s no better time than Construction Safety Week to stop and take a minute to celebrate the work of the amazing people in the industry who go above and beyond to make safety the foundation of everything they do. These people are often taken for granted, and it’s not until something goes wrong that they are truly valued. But is safety solely up to them?

SafetyCulture has helped some of the world’s largest industries embed a culture of safety and accountability in their organizations. In doing so, we’ve found that democratizing safety is a guaranteed path to operational excellence. Using technology, we believe we can empower every single worker to have a voice and in turn, help create a safer and more efficient workplace. It’s not just up to those with ‘safety manager’ in their job title. It’s the people on the frontline in every industry who have the visibility to own safety practices from the ground up.

From what I’ve seen, most organizations have a ways to go when it comes to giving their workers a voice, particularly those on the frontline. But this largely unheard-of workforce is the key to safer and more efficient workplaces.

Are frontline workers actually being heard?

Recent research conducted by SafetyCulture and YouGov made one thing very clear. The majority of frontline workers feel unheard by upper management. These critical workers want a say in the operations and running of their workplaces. Two-way communication between frontline workers and management is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ it is a business imperative.

Leaders need to be arming their teams with the right tools to allow them to add value, be heard, and keep themselves and those around them safe. Striving for compliance over empowering staff and trusting their insights will only get an organization so far. Let’s examine some of the statistics that stand out.

67% of frontline workers say that they are never, rarely, or only sometimes listened to on topics that matter to them the most. Among those frontline workers with office-based colleagues, nearly two in 10 (18%) feel that office-based workers are more respected than those on the frontline. A staggering 66% of US frontline workers surveyed feel they are sometimes, rarely, or never listened to by management on the topics that matter most within their organization.

Are we actually seeing action when it comes to safety?

For most, lack of action prevents frontline feedback. Close to 1 in 3 workers agree their willingness to provide workplace feedback is impacted by a belief that nothing will be done once reported. 24% of workers, more than 1 in 5, agree that feedback is only one-directional in their organization, from management to employees.

When it comes to driving action, just over 1 in 4 American workers feel empowered to solve issues themselves. Feeling confident they have a valued voice is a top priority or very important for frontline workers, and when considering new jobs or roles – 60% overall.

Most frontline industries have relied on the traditional top-down approach to communication and safety management, including safety practices, where frontline workers are told how and when to adopt processes, with no formal buy-in process.

What’s the key to driving a safety culture?

Empower your frontline to be the eyes and ears in the field. Put the right processes and tools in place to connect teams from a distance, engaging and enabling them to speak up, raise issues, and take action. Deliver results based on their observations to show the frontline their insights are making a difference. When workers have more of a voice, the whole organization benefits.

Open communication with management can potentially provide an opportunity to make processes better, and identify areas of improvement or gaps in safety practices that have gone unnoticed. After all, those who are closest to procedures are best placed with knowledge on how to improve them.

To accomplish this communication between the feedback and the frontline, focus on building out a continuous feedback loop that connects your core initiatives with frontline feedback.

Manage – open up channels for two-way communication, feedback loops and problem-solving.
Plan – Get your teams on board. Initiate collaborative planning and processes with your team.
Improve – Build a holistic picture of your workplace operations with data and feedback. Develop new standards and training programs to match.
Act – Empower the frontline with tools to take action. Foster a culture of accountability and proactivity.

At SafetyCulture, our most successful customers in the construction industry are using technology to make this two-way communication possible. With SafetyCulture’s flagship product iAuditor, teams can quickly capture safety issues anonymously, drive action, and manage operations digitally.

For example, Faith Technology Inc, an organization comprised of construction, engineering, manufacturing, and renewable energy experts, data captured in the field using iAuditor has allowed frontline employees to be more aware of the hazards they’re exposed to, and the safety team to adopt proactive safety mindsets and remain agile to changes in risk such as poor weather conditions. Read more.

About SafetyCulture

SafetyCulture is the operational heartbeat of working teams around the world. Its mobile-first operations platform leverages the power of human observation to identify issues and opportunities for businesses to improve every day.

More than 28,000 organizations use its flagship products, iAuditor, and EdApp, to perform checks, train staff, report issues, automate tasks and communicate fluidly. SafetyCulture powers over 600 million checks per year, approximately 50,000 lessons per day, and millions of corrective actions, giving leaders visibility and workers a voice in driving safety, quality, and efficiency improvements.

The Five Minute Fix: Increased Construction Site Safety

Load the gang box, lace up the steel-tipped boots, pack the lunch and fill the thermos with hot coffee to help get you through the day. Breath in, breath out, repeat. Drive bleary-eyed to the site, headlights guiding the way through traffic as other early risers make their way to their place of work. Stomp the breaks, spill the coffee, curse, change the station, breath in, breath out, repeat.

This isn’t American Idol, being in the top five isn’t going to lead to fame and fortune. When Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) hands down the rankings for most dangerous professions, being in the top five is a devastating designation. 43.3 of every 100,000 construction workers are subjected to worksite injuries that lead to death each year. Their workday will end and never begin again. We know the dangers, and yet convince ourselves that cutting a corner in the interest of expediency won’t make a difference this one time, or the next, or the one after that, but it does. Bad judgment abounds when we are tired, irritable, suffering from the stresses of a pandemic, conflicting demands for safety and speed, the breakdown of relationships on-site or at home put safety in jeopardy.

There are so many things that we are tasked with doing in a day which could help to mitigate construction site safety risks, that frankly, we can lose track of all these protocols. Like forgetting that one piece of equipment necessary to complete the job, one might understandably get distracted and forget to check for live wires, reach just a little further than recommended, trip, or any number of issues that might be avoided if we weren’t suffering from brain fog.

17,000 – 30,000 times a day. That’s how many times we breathe and we do it spontaneously, automatically, so how can something that we do without thinking provide an answer to our safety predicament? If you want to do anything well, you must practice it. Which will require you to think about it. I understand that this feels entirely contradictory to the very notion of automatic. It’s supposed to just happen. We have enough to think about without adding to our seemingly endless list of responsibilities, something that is supposed to happen without our need to participate.

I understand your frustration but bear with me here. Five minutes of breathing exercises in the morning have so many benefits that you’ll be crossing out items on your To-Do List because they will be TA DA – Done. Among the benefits of a daily breathing practice are:

Reduced stress – increased ability to cope and manage emotions,
Increased energy – one less trip to the coffee shop,
A strengthened immune system – lost time puts you behind, good health gets you ahead,
Improved mental clarity which leads to better decision making,
Better sleep – better relationships,
Lowered Blood Pressure – fewer visits to the doctor,
Body relaxation – fewer pulled muscles and strains, and
Oxygenated muscles which are stronger – who doesn’t like feeling powerful.

If breathing feels like some new-age hoax let me assure you it is not. Rooted in ancient Buddhist tradition, accessed by First Responders, and Trauma Counselors as a means of restoring calm, the effects of deep breathing are both immediate, and when practiced daily, provide measurable benefits that could have our industry increasing our safety ranking. Now that’s something to breathe a sigh of relief over.

How Women Can Maximize Project Certainty and Transform the Construction Industry: A Webinar Recap

As part of its Women in Construction Week celebration, Touchplan recently hosted a webinar featuring MOCA/Touchplan CEO Sandy Hamby and President of the National Association of Women in Construction, Doreen Bartoldus.

Hosted by NAWIC member and podcast host Angela Highland, Sandy and Doreen had an engaging conversation about their experience and insights into how women can change the construction industry and advice for younger women in construction and how they can best grow their careers.

Some of the key takeaways from the event include:

As a woman in construction, don’t be afraid to speak up. If you have something to say, say it. If people dismiss it, it will come back around later, and they’ll know you were right. Put yourself out there and respect yourself and all the talented people around you. You deserve to be in this profession just as everyone else, so don’t be afraid to be direct and who you are.
For women to tap into construction, we must be able to both have and receive support for our work. Construction is just as important as anything else out there, and it’s not a default career. Especially for women, we have to find a way to show it’s an honorable, profitable line of work where a trade is as equally valuable as working in the office.
As a woman, when someone underestimates your ability, you don’t need to explain yourself, your experience, or your background. In other words, you don’t need to read them your resume or credentials. They will figure it out; the best thing to do is move on because you know you belong there. Stay calm and let it blow itself off. Remaining calm and listening is critical but also understanding that everybody wants each other to succeed- so communicate that. If they are willing to listen, you can both learn from each other and get something out of the conversation.

If you want to listen to the entire webinar, you can find it on our website. Additionally, be sure to tune into Build.Lead.Succeed., the official podcast of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC).

Guest Blog Post – Lee Kennedy Company Discusses Envision Equity

(By Lee Kennedy Company & Strategy Matters)

In 2021, Lee Kennedy Company (LKCo) undertook an initiative to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of our company’s operations. We did not know, at that time, all that initiative would entail, and we continue to learn and grow through this work. One thing, however, has become immediately apparent: we cannot achieve equity without developing the ability to envision it. What does equity actually look like in action?

We hired a consulting team from Strategy Matters to assist in this effort, and they started with definitions. Strategy Matters defines equity as follows: “A system is operating equitably when all people receive fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement through addressing the varying barriers experienced by different groups. A system is equitable when it produces a proportional distribution of benefits and burdens across groups.”

We know who the “all people” in our company are – every one of our employees is mission-critical, and we care about their treatment. What, however, are the “barriers,” “burdens,” and the “benefits” referenced here?

We can see both benefits and burdens when we look closely at our practices in the areas of hiring, promotion, and retention. We can also see benefits and burdens in the areas of salary structures, office locations, access to “perks,” and personal leave policies. Informally, we can see benefits of social interactions and opportunities for employees and leadership – the proverbial golf games or going out for beers together yield access and build network capital.

To ensure an equitable workplace, we have to examine the impact on all of these things – both formal and informal – on each of our employees and our employees as a group. Do women get paid equally to men for the performance of the same or equivalent jobs? Do our Black employees have the same opportunities and advance at the same rates as our white employees? Even asking these questions, let alone acting on any data gathered, is a radical act in our industry. And yet, if we shy away from asking these questions, we cannot possibly envision equity.

LKCo is committed to ensuring that we both attract and retain a diverse workforce. We know that investing in equitable practices is essential to meeting that goal. Consequently, we are opening these dialogues and also investing in a more inclusive culture to enable any employee, whether in the field or in HQ, to raise a concern, voice a suggestion, or offer an idea for improving our practices.

How do we build an inclusive culture?

We believe that an inclusive culture is one where everyone feels valued, welcomed, and inspired to share their opinions and views. To create such an environment, we are investing in training for both our managers and our future managers, specifically in these areas:

Managing Unconscious Bias. We are all hardwired for bias – it is our evolutionary way of taking shortcuts in our thinking. Shortcuts are sometimes helpful but can also lead to decisions made on incomplete information. When we lack the ability to overcome our innate tendency toward mental shortcuts, we amplify the likelihood of creating inequities and diminishing inclusivity in the company. Both of these problems can also undermine our efforts to diversify our team.
Building “healthy conflict” into teams. Healthy conflict is present when teams can disagree about what is right while avoiding fighting over who is right. We have to train our teams to solicit divergent opinions, respect them when they arise, and work through them for the sake of better decisions down the line. When people can’t do this, we say that they live in “artificial harmony” – which is no fun and also no good for the company. We aim to use healthy conflict to build relationships and also kick the tires on decisions before we take them live. Healthy conflict is a skill which can also help teams manage their own biases; when we challenge each other, we all come out with better, sharper, more well-grounded decisions.
Training our leaders to be both “warm” and “competent.” We know that great team leaders are like great coaches: they care deeply about their staff and they also have the capacity to execute on difficult decisions. Think of Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights – that is how we hope our managers can lead their teams!

As we build these skills and competencies across the company, we expect to expand equity – and we also anticipate that we’ll be increasing our own ability to envision a truly equitable company. Envisioning equity means that we can share our hopes for a company that offers fair opportunities to everyone, and in which everyone who works here is valued primarily for who they are and what they bring,

We know that this work is a way that we can bring the courage of our core values to everything we do. Whether re-thinking our decision-making processes, our organizational chart, or our pay scales, using a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens is making LKCo a stronger company day by day.

How will we know?

One thing too often overlooked in DEI plans is tracking and long-term accountability. We’ve started with our baseline analysis of how diverse (who works here, in what positions?), equitable (pay equity, fairness in policies about perks, performance reviews, and promotions), and inclusive (how valued and respected do our employees feel?). Having this baseline data will help us over the coming years to track our progress, make course corrections, and continue to invest in being best-in-class in the construction industry when it comes to being a great place to work.

Celebrating Women In Construction – A Q&A with MOCA’s Katie Sepulveda

As we continue to celebrate Women in Construction Week, we are pleased to present an interview with Katie Sepulveda, Contracts Manager for MOCA Services. Katie is a project management professional with more than 20 years of experience working with general contractors, owners, corporations, and the military. She shares her experience within the industry and provides some suggestions for rising women leaders in construction.

This year’s theme is Envision Equity, to raise awareness of opportunities for women to enjoy a wide range of roles in the construction industry. What can the industry do to make those opportunities more accessible?

If there were a culture of visibility and inclusion, it would provide more participation and interest in opportunities. The challenge is that most office cultures are not as transparent about available opportunities.

Do you think that training and development opportunities for women in construction are easily accessible? What changes would you like to see?

Not as a whole, I think that it is more company-specific. The challenge is without a straightforward procedure in place within any company and a budget specifically assigned to training and development; then it is challenging to identify development opportunities and personnel who would be interested in those opportunities.

What are three things that you do to foster collaboration on a jobsite?

I manage collaboration by team building. When the entire team is included in the project’s goal and has a voice in how to accomplish that goal, it fosters that collaboration needed to be successful. I also make it a point to hold monthly updates and recognition of team members who have contributed to the effort.

What are the top three things you would tell others about your experience of being a woman in Construction?

It has been a difficult but fantastic journey. I have been blessed to see the industry grow and continue to improve the overall feel of inclusion for women.

As a project leader, what do you do to minimize project risk or errors from happening on-site?

To manage risk, the risks need to be identified, managed and updated. Being proactive and including the experience of all the team members, risks from all phases of the project are typically identified.

What are some suggestions you would give to emerging women project leaders (Supers, PMs PE’s) to be successful in their careers?

My advice is to be humble. Change takes place over time, and being positive and proactive will go a long way.

A Look Inside Touchplan’s Latest Product Feature – Clickable Hyperlinks

Touchplan recently added a new feature letting users enable integration via hyperlinks within Touchplan’s custom fields to direct users to a specific instance in another platform’s interface.

We sat down with Product Manager Cory Brennan to learn more about it.

What was the motivation behind creating this feature?

Hyperlinks allow Touchplan users to bring information required to get their job done to the tickets they were working on. The new Link Custom Fields lets the team connect to other systems (from reality capture to document storage) like OpenSpace, Oculo, BitRip, Procore, PlanGrid, Google Drive, Dropbox, StructionSite, FieldChat, or TopDeck with a single click.

How exactly do Clickable Hyperlinks work?

We have added a new Link Custom Field that allows your project members one-click access to external systems via hyperlinks, making it even easier to connect with information wherever it lives. Add multiple custom fields for hyperlinks to tie back to safety reporting, quality documents, and drawings. From the field or the office, drop a URL into a ticket and go.

You can quickly jump to visual references, drawings, photos, etc.

If a Touchplan user wants to use this feature, how do they get started?

Admins need to add Link custom fields to their project and set up a list of allowed websites. Learn more here

What will users like the most about this feature?

Being able to more easily pair information from their external systems to their work in Touchplan. The ease of use that Clickable Hyperlinks within Custom Fields offers is essential to our users to get through their planning sessions more quickly and get back out into the field.

Tickets can now be used for planning activities and as complete work packages: link drawings, submittals, and safety reporting tools to keep important information accessible from one place.

Why did Touchplan add this feature now?

This feature is actually an addition to Custom Fields that came from feedback we received from many of our users! We understand how important it is for project teams to minimize the amount of time spent searching for information, which in turn leads to fewer miscommunications. We are always looking for ways to make our existing features better and more user-friendly.

Let us know what you think about this new type of Custom Field and if you have ideas on how you feel Custom Fields can be even better!

A View From The Top

Touchplan recently formed a collaboration with Topdeck, a leading provider of end-to-end, visual intelligence solutions that enables general contractors and developers to capture, manage, and analyze their assets and turn the collected data into valuable business insights.

We sat down with Mitchell Ersek, Head of Sales and Business Development at Topdeck, to learn more about the company and its collaboration with Touchplan.

I would love to learn more about Topdeck and the motivation for starting the company?

We started as a company called Aeromana, working with tethered drone systems. That was back in 2015 – 2016 when drones began to come around. This was also before I joined the company. Back then, the drone market was progressing a lot. However, we started to run into several issues with the FAA; regulations were developed and an on-premise pilot was required for tethered drone operation. These new regulations defeated the purpose of our solution at the time. The challenges sparked a switch in focus from the tethered drones to determining a better way to provide our solution to construction sites.

Since our focus was on the construction industry, we wanted to find a way to achieve the same results as a drone would, with regard to visual intelligence solutions, on a construction site. With large commercial construction, you see a lot of tower cranes. Or, the construction site is within the vicinity of other vertically large buildings, thus giving you two options to mount cameras and achieve a good vantage point. Topdeck’s goal was always to provide a more in-depth analysis of what was happening on jobsites, and how does one provide that without a proper vantage point of the jobsite? That’s how Topdeck got going. It started with live streaming of a jobsite, archived video, time-lapses, and stuff like that. We slowly evolved into productivity analytics and real-time progress tracking, leading to in-depth jobsite analysis for project teams and upper management. That’s the growth path and where we’re going today.

What has been the reaction from the construction industry to Topdeck versus having to rely on a drone and the requirements that can come with it?

It is a huge weight off the project team’s shoulders to not have to deal with the individual scheduling of drone flights, especially considering the ever-changing nature of construction schedules. The other half of this is that construction doesn’t wait for anything. If a drone pilot isn’t available at the specified date/time, all that data is lost forever. So, to have a system with a constant uptime running in the background is a major plus for our partners.

In terms of adoption, technology in the construction industry has taken off over the past five years. It is sometimes a slow road, but I think we’re just getting started with our capabilities. The market potential is there, as it applies with several ConTechs; you can choose to partner up with Topdeck or potentially be building with outdated project management tools.

One thing I want to step back and ask is; Topdeck cameras aren’t exclusively mounted on a tower crane, correct? If I was building a ten-story building in downtown Boston, that construction site is next to a forty-story building. Can the cameras be mounted on the adjacent building (with proper approval)? Does Topdeck have any instances like that?

Absolutely, and we have a few jobs like that right now. One, in particular, is in downtown Los Angeles. The building will be around a 56-story building, and they do have cranes; however, we have occlusions. So, to have full coverage of the project, we’ve got two cameras mounted on the neighboring building that is several stories taller, so it’s not a problem. We are also doing a Cal State Fullerton student housing building where we mounted cameras on the neighboring buildings. It’s not an issue for us at all.

I know you mentioned that you are still in the early stages of adoption, but for those who do use Topdeck, what’s the greater value that your clients are getting?

The bottom line is it’s a real-time feedback loop for the project teams to act quickly and course-correct to save time and money. Topdeck provides the knowledge and insights for how contractors plan their jobsite operations. So rather than setting a budget and then going out there and checking that budget back monthly, not realizing something was missed until it is too late, you’re getting this feedback almost daily. Project teams can check information against the budget line items and see where they are running over. It beats waiting a month and hoping the project is still on budget. The feedback loop Topdeck provides allows quick and accurate decisions to be made without the headaches that typically come with them.

Talk to me about the motivation to partner with Touchplan?

At present, we’ve been focusing on self-perform contractors and concrete subcontractors for this type of process. In the future, we will be working toward looking at Topdeck from the general contractor perspective and analyzing the sequencing of different subcontractors in the high-rise divisions. We’d like to think that those insights can feed into Touchplan’s platform and, in a sense, be making suggestions in terms of where to move the digital scheduling tags. The visual data from Topdeck will support the pull planning process and allow more time, and therefore, money saved on tasks.

What do five years down the road look like for Topdeck?

Our dream is to have fully integrated jobsites with security, outdoor progress tracking, live streaming, and analytics all happening in sync. So rather than going out and hiring several different contractors, we will be one partner to replace them all. It’s an excellent time for companies like ours. As I mentioned earlier, construction technology is a burgeoning market. There’s been a massive boom over the past five years, and I don’t think that’s going to slow down. I firmly believe it’s going to continue growing at a rapid pace as adoption increases. It’s no longer a shiny toy but something that can be used for a cost-benefit/value-add. Construction in the U.S. is a very regional market, so expanding throughout the 50 states is a heavy initiative for us over the next few years. We’re already expanded into France with six current projects and are looking at several more. The five-year plan would be to continue expanding internationally into different markets and be the largest provider of visual intelligence solutions in the construction industry.

For more information on Topdeck, you can visit their website at www.topdeck.ai

You can also hear more insights from Mitch Ersek on our Voices of Construction podcast.

Guest Blog Post – The Construction Industry: A Cinderella Story

If Disney can turn a century of Princesses being rescued from death, debauchery, and an uncertain future by a Prince into a modern-day manifesto for female empowerment, then certainly the construction industry should be able to overhaul its image and reality, to reflect the cultural identity and changing societal norms of our time. This utopian version might have a merit-based system of pay rather than an equity-based one, do away with gender-biased norms, and usher in a new era where minds win out over muscle. In this new reality, we will be strapped into the roller coaster, climbing the tracks of the fourth industrial revolution, the winds of galactic digital change blowing all around us. It’s an adrenaline-pumping thrill that teeters on the edge of fear of the unknown will propel us to new heights and ways of working. This new world will do away with many aspects of our construction existence that will require manual labor, specifically for those tasks that eat up time. They will be mechanized, roboticized, and automated, removing the need for human labor in those instances but not removing the need for human ingenuity within the industry. Jobs will change, and the individuals that fill them will look different than generations past.

The good news is history repeats itself. The bad news is that history repeats itself. We’ve been through three industrial revolutions before. Well, not you and I, but mankind. Revolution 1 (R1), stone to metal; R2, wind to steam; R3 steam to electricity; and now R4 will open the door on information technology and the digitization of, well, just about everything. The difference between the revolutions of the past and R4 is not only the reduction and/or elimination of manual labor for many of the tasks that take place in the field or in manufacturing facilities but in the significant shortage of workers. The prick of pain we’ve felt during the pandemic around labor is going to feel like a prizefighter’s right hook pummeling us over the next eight or nine years as 41% of our industry retires out and as the interest in pursuing a career in the trades and construction in general dwindles.

If you’re wondering where the good news in this story lies, it’s in the potential for significant change. Gone will go the derogatory remarks and the tests designed to prove superior brawn. Like Disney’s eradication and sanitization of Cinderella’s story, we’ll wipe clean from the slate our own Grimm’s version of the sexualized workplace interaction and replace it with a reverence for problem-solving prowess, measured risk-taking tactics, and analytical insights, which will lead to a safer, more efficient, and revolutionized construction process. We will care less about gender and more about forming teams that align with the values of an organization. The companies that will survive and thrive in this new world will be those that self-publish their goals and aspirations and then go about the business of doing the hard work of putting their words into action.

While we number few, we women in construction, are mighty. Our challenges are not so different than those of other industries, but the reasons for pursuing construction as a woman are formidable – the wage gap between men and women is only 5%, a gap that many companies have self-selected into being held accountable for closing, making us well paid, and at higher rates than pink-collar professions, and we have our own version of turning pumpkins into carriages. Those conversions do indeed change the lives of the people that live, work, or visit the buildings we played a role in bringing about. I have a very good feeling this story is going to have a happy ending.

So You Want to Go Digital?

Although it seems more and more teams are looking to digitize their processes, many teams continue to face common struggles when making this transition. Gaining traction for initial adoption, understanding if you are on track with that adoption, and sustaining momentum are just a few obstacles that teams may see along their journey. We have compiled a few tips to help make this transition more successful.

Set clear goals and measure progress

Too often, we set out to implement something new without setting clear goals that we are trying to achieve. This includes our overall “why” behind the implementation in the first place. Is this going to reduce the amount of time you spend in meetings? Will this promote more collaboration? Understanding the goals will allow the team to stay focused and be on the same page about what they are trying to achieve.

As those overall goals are set, it is also essential to set interim goals. If your goal is to increase collaboration, maybe your first interim goal can be to have four people contributing to the plan each week. Then, it can expand to an additional four as a potential next goal. Eventually, the team can reach the overall number they are targeting. This allows the team to see and measure progress as it is being made, which is important to sustaining momentum and keeping the motivation high.

Touchplan allows you to see team usage immediately on an easy-to-read dashboard.

Take something off the team’s plate

Let’s face it; our teams are already incredibly busy without needing to learn and implement new software on top of it all. Teams often see a new software or process as something additional to what they are already doing. If they already feel like there is not enough time, then the likelihood that they will try something new is low. We need to make sure that we are correctly setting our teams up for success. This includes helping them understand how this process or software will save them time and effort. Are we shifting a process into a digital format? How much time will that save them? Making it clear that you are replacing a given process with a more efficient one is important to show that you are not piling on additional work.

We also need to remember that, at first, a new process will take longer than it is intended because the team needs to build their competence. Make sure everyone accounts for that. We don’t want the team to lose confidence and momentum because it looks to be taking longer than expected.

Make things easy for them to do it

This one is easier said than done, but the easier something is for people to do, the more likely they will adopt it. If there are too many steps to follow or buttons to click, it can immediately detract from any potential benefits that the team will see. If we can lessen perceived “friction” that people feel while doing something, it can help them adopt the new process into a better habit faster.

For example, many teams jumping into Touchplan for the first time are often new to collaboratively planning with everyone involved. This may mean that they are not used to thinking through their activities, talking through what they need from someone else, or even being able to access the plan. With Touchplan’s easy-to-use interface and mobile capabilities, the barrier to entry is much lower for teams, and they find it easier to quickly pop open their phone to check and status their work. As the teams go through this process, again and again, it easily becomes second nature.

These tips can help and can have a significant impact on the success of the transition and on the momentum to sustain it after the initial launch.

If you would like to learn more about the value of a digital planning solution please watch our recent webinar with LCI.