Challenge: As the Construction Manager for the City of Terre Haute, Bradley Utz often has to answer questions from project stakeholders, ranging from project contractors all the way to the Mayor himself. Not only does answering these questions take time, if Utz isn’t at his desk, it could be a while before an answer is ready.
Solution: Appia® for construction administration and inspection, with read-only licensing and real-time mobile access.
Results: By providing read-only access to contractors and other project stakeholders in the Appia service, Utz ensures project information is easily accessible to anyone who needs it. With real-time, mobile access, Utz is able to answer project questions in the field and take a closer look at daily reports.
“My response time was drastically cut with Appia.”
Project Transparency | Mobile Productivity | Stakeholder Access
Annual Use
Office location: Terre Haute, Indiana
+ Project amount range:
+ Team size:
+ Project types: Local transportation and infrastructure
+ Annual projects used:
Brad, You Have a Phone Call
That’s a phrase that Bradley Utz, Construction Manager for the City of Terre Haute, is used to hearing. Because of his high level of visibility on projects and access to project information, he’s often called upon to provide project updates or answer contractor questions about pay estimates, change orders, etc. Providing this information takes time, and Utz wasn’t always available to find an answer.
“根据他们要求什么,我有to be at my computer to get it for them. So if I was in the field, I’d have to make a note, get back to the office, hopefully remember, then print it off and get it to them,” said Utz.
Utz was previously using FieldManager® to manage construction projects that aren’t funded by the state or federal government. FieldManager is the predecessor to Appia, and it lacks two features that are now central to Utz’ usage: web-based access and read-only licenses.
Since Appia is web-based, Utz can access it anytime, anywhere on his mobile devices and always have an answer for the Mayor when he calls. For less esteemed callers, Utz can simply direct them to the information within Appia itself by providing them with a read-only license.
“When Appia came about and read-only access was free, I thought ‘well why don’t I just give them access and have them go in and find out themselves,’ so it saves me a bunch of time since I don't have to look up answers for them. If it’s something they can’t get, I can bring it up on my phone, or if it’s something they can get, I can tell them to sign in and get it. Big difference.”
Discovering Additional Benefits in Appia
The leap from FieldManager to Appia isn’t as big as the leap from paper or spreadsheet-based processes. That said, Utz and his team have benefited from the transition to a web-based program from one that requires users to be at their computers.
Accessing Daily Reports in Real-Time
Utz spends a lot of time in the field, so FieldManager required him to return to the office to review daily reports. With Appia, that’s no longer the case, and daily access means it’s easier for Utz to intervene when necessary.
“I would spend all Monday morning reviewing daily reports from the week prior, now I can review daily whenever I have the time to do it. I’ll be looking at a daily report and it will trigger some thought and I’ll call them. If it was something where I had to wait five days to get that information, it might not be worth dealing with at that point.”
Researching Historical Bid Pricing
Because Appia can act as an archive for project information, Utz uses it to help inform future bids. This process allows Utz and his engineers to produce accurate bids quickly.
“95% of the time that I go back to an archived project, it’s to look at past bid prices. The engineers are working on a bid for something and want to know what we paid for curb and gutter last year, I’ll get an average off what we paid for those past projects and I’ll use Appia for that.”
Mobile Access on State/Federal Projects
Utz and his team use Appia on locally-funded projects for the city, but for state and federally-funded projects, they use AASHTOWare Project SiteManager™. Still, Utz sometimes makes use of Appia on those projects as it allows for mobile access to key information.
“On our Margaret Ave overpass, every time the resident rep on site would do a pay estimate, he’d send me a hard copy of the pay estimate and I would enter those numbers into Appia, so if someone asked me how much money we’d spent on Margaret Ave, I’d be able to pull it up in my phone.”
Running Expedited Pay Estimates
Utz recalls massive time savings in estimate generation when moving from paper to FieldManager in 2007. In 2011, when the switch to Appia came, that process was expedited even further.
“A pay estimate would take 2-3 hours to put together, check all the numbers, and transfer between programs. It was pretty awesome to go from that to FieldManager and be able to do it basically any time. Now with Appia, not having to be in my office is even better.”
Overcome the Challenges of Construction Administration and Inspection
Streamline your processes with a web-based, mobile-accessible service built on intuitive use and flexibility.
- Increase stakeholder visibility with read-only access
- Work with the contractor for accurate data
- 在几分钟内生成支付估计,而不是时间
- Access daily report information in the field
- Inform future projects with historical project information
Visit infotechinc.com/appia to learn more.
