Construction Coordinators, Inc. (CCI), a commercial builder renowned throughout New England for its expertise in the corporate interiors, restaurant and retail markets, has received a Constructech Vision Gold award for 2013. Each year, Constructech magazine honors companies that have realized the advantages of applying modern technologies to their everyday business. CCI was honored for its development of a custom-built web application to facilitate project management and synchronize data between the field and office, reducing the company's submittal turnaround time by seven days.
The development of CCI's web-based application, "Material Command," was borne out of necessity for a versatile online tool that could synchronize the paper and online data that needed to be easily accessed in the field as well as in the office. A large number of documents are generated during the course of a project, including submittals, shop drawings, samples, and requests for information (RFIs). This information arrives at CCI's office or field site - either electronically or in hard copy - and needs to be reviewed and processed quickly and accurately for projects to stay on budget and on schedule. Submittal tracking, review, and approval time has a critical impact on project success.
"This year's competition brought forth companies that have shown great devotion to pushing their companies forward using modern technology," said Peggy Smedley, editorial director of Constructech. "That is exactly what is so great about the Vision Awards. It brings to light the companies that have implemented innovation and have obtained notable success in the industry."
CCI's improvements to the firm's project management process occurred while project manager Brendan Dowdall was developing Material Command. Starting with a submittal processing function to track and organize project submittals, additional functionality was added to support daily job reports, meeting minutes, RFIs, drawings, and other types of shared files. All of the data is immediately available to the entire project team throughout the life of the project, with custom field reports and activity feeds facilitating the delivery of new information. Key to the success of CCI's process improvement, field supervisory personnel were issued laptops configured with the new system, allowing a real-time data flow between field and office. With new technology in the field and enhancements to CCI's submittal process, the average turnaround time of submittals has been reduced from 17 to 10 days, resulting in a direct and beneficial impact on construction schedules and budgets for CCI's clients.
CCI is an established general contractor specializing in corporate interiors, restaurants and retail stores throughout New England. Since 1991, clients such as Harvard University, Simon Properties, and Hyatt Hotels have relied upon CCI for its expertise in complex project management and time-tested relationships with the most talented subcontractor firms.