From Sticky Notes to Strategic Planning: How Touchplan Transforms How Willmeng Builds
We sat down with Rod Lawrence, Operations Support Manager at Willmeng, to talk about his journey with Touchplan, which began with deep skepticism. In a previous role at Jacobsen Construction, Rod was a big believer in traditional pull boards and sticky notes and initially resisted the idea of going digital. But after trying Touchplan, he quickly saw the value it could bring to field planning and trade coordination.
When Rod joined Willmeng and discovered that sticky notes were still the norm, he knew it was time to introduce a better way. Starting with a pilot project, a boiler replacement in a high-rise tower, Rod helped bring Touchplan to the team. The results spoke for themselves: better collaboration, stronger owner engagement, and a cultural shift that has improved visibility and efficiency across the company.
What is your background with Touchplan?
Rod Lawrence: My first exposure to Touchplan was when I worked at Jacobsen Construction, a large Utah firm. We were utilizing the pull board sticky notes, which at the time I just loved.
And then one day our corporate scheduler said, “Well, we want to try this program called Touchplan.” And I thought, “No, I love these pull boards.” So I really kind of fought it until I was asked to really give it a chance.
Then when I came to Willmeng and found out that they were still pushing the pull boards, I said, “You guys need to try this Touchplan.”
Tell us about your pilot project.
Rod Lawrence: The pilot project that we introduced—it was a boiler replacement project up on the eighteenth floor of a tower downtown Salt Lake City.
After getting the team up to speed on using it and falling in love with it, what we found out in the OAC meetings was the owners looking at it really understood what a valuable solution it was.
As the weeks have gone by, I mean, they almost get excited when we say, and they’ll ask, “When are we going to look at the Touchplan schedule?”
Being able to get on and look at Touchplan and see where we are with the activities—makes it an extremely valuable tool and brings them in as a trade partner, which has really helped our relationship with those owners.
How did Touchplan improve coordination and collaboration on the jobsite?
Rod Lawrence: It really made everybody think more effectively about how and where they were going to be working and how they were going to be working amongst all the other subcontractors.
One of the things you find out when you hold your trade partner coordination meetings is how each trade partner interacts with each other, collaborates, figures out where they can work effectively—especially based on what we call the long bars, which reflect the master schedule.
The collaboration with each of those subcontractors really makes the project more effective. It makes each subcontractor more effective.
Everybody’s able to see the project in a completely different light than the way we used to push our pull boards and just looking at a master schedule. It helps the project pick up time on the schedule.
How has Touchplan transformed company culture?
Rod Lawrence: It’s really created an atmosphere of being valued more and being able to work with each trade partner and Willmeng in a way that they never had been able to before.
What advice would you give a company considering Touchplan?
Rod Lawrence: The advice I give them is I just really do not understand the hesitation.
Because of the ability to be in an administration role and pull up any project that is under you—even a president like our president of Willmeng, our general managers can pull up any project they want.
At one time, our CEO said we had a client that called him up and said, “Where are we going to be at in a month? I need to know for certain activities.”
And we were telling him, “You could then pull up the Touchplan and tell that client exactly where we will be,” instead of having to run down and find the project manager, find the superintendent, get the schedules out, start asking questions.
You have it at your fingertips, which is such a valuable tool in my mind.
It just makes for a better workplace, better environment, and makes things much more efficient.
