As one of the top General Contractors in the country, Suffolk manages some of the most complex and exciting construction projects. These large-scale projects create new and unique challenges that require significant adaptability from both their team and their highly-qualified subcontractors. Effective change management and Time & Materials tracking are critical components for successfully delivering projects, and keeping project stakeholders informed on jobsite activity. Their paper-based Time & Materials workflow made this process extremely difficult to manage.

Properly documenting, categorizing and pricing T&M tickets required massive amounts of time from both the Suffolk team and subcontractors. Suffolk Project Managers on large-scale projects were spending at least 20 hours a week tracking down these tickets, deciphering handwriting, verifying information, putting them into a spreadsheet, assigning GC reference numbers, and making sure they were signed. When you add in the time to make sure paper tickets were scanned, saved, and paper copies were organized, the T&M tracking workflow was nearly a full-time job. Suffolk knew that there had to be a better way to manage this process than shuffling through stacks of paper or collecting digital PDFs.

One of the biggest challenges of implementing a T&M solution was ensuring that Suffolk’s subcontractors would be able to easily on-board and use the digital system. A mobile, user-friendly platform was critical for maximizing the effective implementation on the jobsite. Also essential in the evaluation process was the ability to centralize all the reporting so that their project teams could easily monitor, manage, and approve T&M submission across numerous subcontractors and projects.

After a thorough search and evaluation of potential T&M solutions, the Suffolk team deployed Rhumbix on several projects, worked with the Rhumbix team to incorporate a few updates, and in the end, confidently selected the Rhumbix solution. With a mobile-first field app, cloud-based dashboards, and real-time project visibility, the Rhumbix T&M workflow delivered the critical features Suffolk needed to effectively transform their cumbersome paper-based system into a digital, data-driven T&M process. Suffolk was able to transition major projects from an entirely paper-based T&M process into a fully digital system in just a few weeks. Project Managers at the jobsite saw immediate returns on their investment, with massive time savings and increased transparency around all the change work being conducted on the project.

With anywhere between 20 - 30 subcontractors on a major project, ensuring buy-in from these construction partners on any T&M solution was critical. With the help of the Rhumbix Customer Success team, Suffolk was able to quickly train its own team and begin onboarding subcontractors into the Rhumbix system. This “train the trainer” model, coupled with Rhumbix’s intuitive user-interface, enabled the Suffolk team on the Clinical Building project to quickly replace paper-based T&M tracking with a digital, cloud-based process in a matter of weeks across its project subcontractors. While some subcontractors were initially hesitant, the dedicated Suffolk team was able to demonstrate how easy the system was to use as well as the immediate benefits the subcontractor would see.

By fully transitioning to the Rhumbix digital T&M workflow, Suffolk project teams and subcontractors quickly saw faster submissions and ticket processing. The Suffolk team had almost no issues with subs once they were on the system. This meant Project Managers now had critical reports and updates at their fingertips, and they could easily see the full scope of T&M work across their subcontractors. These new insights provided Suffolk stakeholders added visibility into cost impacts well in advance of what the paper-based system would have allowed, ultimately allowing the teams to better control costs over the course of a project.

For the Suffolk project teams already using Rhumbix, there is no going back to paper based T&M. The ease of use, time savings, and increased visibility has transformed the way their teams manage T&M processing. What used to take some Suffolk Project Managers 20 hours a week, now is only 4 hours, meaning the team can focus their efforts more on driving project success. The increased access and visibility to T&M tickets enables the Suffolk team to surface in real-time what is happening on the jobsite and keep the client updated on the work being performed, how many hours are being spent, and estimates on incurred costs. During the initial disruptions of COVID-19, the Rhumbix digital T&M system meant that their team could remotely monitor the work occurring on the jobsite.

Simplify and streamline field workflows like timekeeping and time & materials tracking, enabling your team to transform static, paper-based reporting into data-rich field insights. Save time and increase productivity with centralized project reporting, connected workflows, and software integrations built for the way you work. Get ready to own the digital era of construction with the Rhumbix Field Data Platform.