Case Study  

Customer Profile

Tedesco Construction, Inc.

Reno, Nevada

Industry

Commercial concrete contracting

Product

PowerTrack Mobile Workforce Solution for Construction

The Challenge

Tedesco Construction, Inc. is an award-winning concrete subcontractor located in Reno, Nevada. The company, founded in 1984, does commercial and manufacturing concrete placement in Nevada and California. More than 180 employees contribute to Tedesco’s $25 million annual revenue.

Tedesco encompasses three additional independent companies that provide concrete pumping, rock and sand delivery, and curb and gutter equipment. These companies operate in Nevada, California and Hawaii. They employ over 50 people.

Tedesco employees do not work in set locations. Instead, a Tedesco employee may work hundreds of different jobs in a year, in different towns and sometimes in different states. Because Tedesco employees are widely dispersed and may work for more than one of the Tedesco companies, Tedesco found it challenging to collect timely and accurate labor hours. And because concrete work is weather-dependent, the company wanted to track how weather conditions affect job progress.

In addition to time and attendance and weather tracking, Tedesco sought to keep track of equipment assigned to jobs, material delivered to job sites, vehicle mileage, accidents and equipment repairs in the shop.

The company needed an application that would integrate with Tedesco’s Sage Timberline Office accounting package, and be easy enough for non-technical employees to use.

The Solution

Tedesco visited vendors at the Timberline Users Group Convention and Sage Timberline Convention to look for the right time and attendance application.

“We looked at about 20 different products, but only came up with two that might work,” remembers Windie Ruprecht, Tedesco’s payroll administrator.

Ruprecht and Tedesco’s project manager, general manager and vice president extensively evaluated PowerTrack and the other solution.

Says Ruprecht, “we chose PowerTrack over the other product because PowerTrack is a good value and easy to use.”

Tedesco uses 15 Palm^® Treo 700 WX smart phones for data collection in the field. The Treo, based on the Windows Mobile operating system, provides wireless connectivity with broadband-like speeds. Because the device is a phone, PDA and a mobile computer, field supervisors do not need to lug around and keep track of multiple, heavy devices.

Field supervisors use the Treo to collect field employee timesheet information, materials delivered to the job sites, mileage and hours from Tedesco’s pumping trucks, and information on any accidents that may have occurred. Employees can even sign their timesheets on the Treo using PowerTrack’s signature capture capability.

“We digitally collect all the information an employee might write on a timecard so we can eliminate the paper timecards altogether,” explains Ruprecht.

Managers who work in the office enter their timecard information using the PowerTrack Timesheet application on a desktop computer. In the shop, supervisors use the PowerTrack PC Client application to enter shop hours and information on equipment in the shop for repair. PowerTrack uploads timecard and other data to Tedesco’s accounting software at the company’s central office in Reno.

Tedesco’s workforce, while excellent at the technology of concrete, include many who are not technically savvy. Some are even a little reluctant to work with computers. The company chose PowerTrack in part because the technology is easy to learn.

“Most of our employees 'got it' right off,” remembers Ruprecht. “I paired up a few of the less computer-savvy employees with those who understood PowerTrack well.”

Employees call Ruprecht if they have any questions, and she usually can explain a procedure over the phone. In turn, Ruprecht calls Compsee's technical support when she has questions. “They are always on their toes to find the answer, give me ideas or provide help. They really do go the extra mile for us.”

The Results

Since implementing PowerTrack, Tedesco has reduced its data entry errors to nearly zero and reduced data entry time by 65 percent. The accounting department now enters new employees into the accounting system more quickly, and foremen complete timesheets daily.

Also, Tedesco is able to collect information that the company previously was unable to track, such as weather, mileage, equipment location and status. Tedesco plans to expand PowerTrack to additional sister companies and to tracking more types of equipment on projects.

Tedesco originally was looking for a solution to managing timesheet data across a complex organization. With PowerTrack, Tedesco has done away with paper timesheets and their associated errors, and gained more jobsite, equipment and shop information. This information provides data for executives to make decisions and predictions to better manage the complexities of multiple companies.

“We are a growing company that needed a better way of collecting man-hours,” says Ruprecht. “PowerTrack pays off because we spend far less time on data entry and on fixing mistakes.”

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