Tech Talk: Project Management Software Coordinates Builders' Timelines

By Elizabeth Wasserman

A commercial kitchen designer and builder uses project management software to ensure its teams are working together efficiently.

R.W. Smith & Co., based in San Diego, Calif., designs and builds full-service commercial kitchens for restaurants, hotels, hospitals, etc. The process is complex and involves coordinating with many different contractors and suppliers. After installing project management software, productivity increased and projects were better kept to schedule, General Manager Eric Gildenhuys tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman in this Q&A.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What were the problems involving communication and coordination that you needed to address?

Eric Gildenhuys: Kitchens are usually the last thing that gets installed in a building like a hotel or a hospital. You have to deal with the plumbing, the gas, the electricity first. The last thing to come in is the equipment. We usually have a 'go live' date. But what happens is during the installation process, we have to make sure the contractors are on time and putting in the plumbing correctly and the gas lines in the right place. We're a fairly well established business. We've been in business 75 years. If you came here four years ago, they weren't even using Excel. The field manager was on site using pen and paper. He would go to another site the next day. As business started betting bigger, he had to start dealing with crisis management -- you know, who is screaming the most. We decided that we needed to start formalizing job roles, setting expectations, and using more information technology.

Wasserman: Why did you opt for project management software?

Gildenhuys: We opted for a project management tool called Project Insight from Metafuse. It's not only for our own staff, but for our clients, and the general contractors we work with. This ensures that the general contractor was held accountable for getting his stuff done when we would show up. It took from January of last year until April or May to get all of our project management people and field managers trained to use it. We're using this as a Web-based tool, as software-as-a-service.

Wasserman: Why did you opt for software-as-a-service?

Gildenhuys: Our organization was not technology-oriented. This is not an IT savvy organization. We did not have an IT manager. Secondly, it's far easier for me from a capital budget standpoint to get this approved. You don't have to pay for it all at once. It's the classic question of whether to rent or own. If you do the renting, you can quickly adapt your number of users if you're growing or reducing staff. You're also getting all the software updates.

Wasserman: What kind of results have you seen?

Gildenhuys: We've managed to triple the amount of jobs we're doing with only a 50 percent increase in staff. We've seen huge productivity gains. We've gotten different kinds of reactions from general contractors. There are basically two types. The ones that are IT savvy and the ones that are not. This helps us visualize all the tasks and subtasks and who is responsible, the start date and end date and the status. Now they know what they had to do and they know what we have to do.